When you’re rolling out a new product, everyone on the team is very much living in the moment: product marketers are perfecting the launch copy, graphic designers are making every pixel pop…
Then the product is launched! And the moment passes. (It passes so dang fast.) And all of that grand launch content starts growing old.
That’s the nature of the process. It’s still valuable. But in order to get the most value out of a product launch, you need to integrate organic content. It’s a simple extension of the process and it generates traction long after the launch party confetti has been swept up.
This post will explain how to use your existing launch content to publish blogs for organic SEO.
Why doesn’t product launch content work for SEO?
To be clear: product release content is essential for any rollout. But its strengths live primarily in the short-term content cycle.
The messaging centers around the product (ie. specific features) and the release (ie. the newness).
Where does product release content really shine?
- Newswires
- Social campaigns
- User engagement
- Sales outreach
- Bottom-funnel conversion
But the timeliness and brand-focus are less useful for long-term content plays.
Where does product release content fall short?
- Organic search
- Lead generation
- Upper-funnel conversion
The short-game and long-game are both important. The product release content will help you catch the industry’s attention right now. The organic content will help you hook new leads for months and years to come.
If you haven’t created the organic SEO content, relax: all the work you put into the launch content can easily be adapted for companion pieces that generate organic traffic, authority, and leads.
In other words: you already did the hard part. Now do the easy part which will reap benefits long after you’ve forgotten about this campaign…
How to adapt product launch content into organic search content
All (good) content marketing is built on a foundation of product marketing. This is particularly true of SEO content.
In order to bring the new product to market, your product marketing team had to research and answer the big questions: audience, pain points, categorization…
Organic search content is simply a way to make that same information more accessible to your audience via search. It’s an elegant abstraction of your product marketing.
The task now is to restructure all of that product marketing knowledge into blog format so that your ideal customer will stumble upon it when searching for answers in Google.
Another way to think of it: your product content is bottom-funnel content. As such, it’s rich in information and insight. It’s as complex as your funnel content is going to get. The job now is to reverse-engineer some simplified learning materials for readers in the top and middle sections of the funnel.
Exercise: SEO content strategy for a product release
Basically, you’re going to turn your product release materials into a mini-roadmap for the next organic content sprint.
This is something you can do with an upcoming product release or a product that was released a while back. It might even be more necessary for a product that has already hit the market because you’ll spot gaps in the content funnel that are long overdue for filling.
- Choose a product release page. For example: the page that’s unveiling your latest keyword research product.
- Write down all of the concepts that underlie the new product. These might include concepts like search volume, competition metrics, content strategy, etc.
- Search your library for existing content on those topics. The quickest way is to filter your CMS for specific phrases. (You can do this in the ércule app.)
- Assign that archived content to specific funnel stages. This will give you a quick sense for any gaps in the funnel leading to your product release at the bottom.
- Inventory the archived content by topic. Get out that list you made in step #2 and see where all of the archived content fits. This will show you any learning gaps.
- Combine the funnel gaps and topic gaps into one list. This is your latest list of content to create.
Most importantly, everything on that final to-do list will be strategic content. (The more technical the product, the more opportunities for generating content.)
Bonus step: once you’ve published the new organic content, link the URLs to the product release pages, and vice versa.
Extra-bonus step: build a pillar page for all of the published content – organic and branded – related to the product you’re rolling out. This will help build authority in search. (More on this in the example below.)
Example: 1password’s feature rollout for passkeys
Here’s an example of what it can look like when product marketing and content marketing work together for a launch.
1password did a great job of synching up organic content with the product content for the release of their full passkey support features.
The product-focused content
The product-focused content included a big announcement post at the beginning of their product rollout, plus a solutions page to go with it.
Months later, when the fully supported product arrived, they announced it in their release notes. As part of the rollout, they also created a mini-site where users could size up compatibility with their new passkey product.
The SEO companion pieces
If the publish dates on their organic content are accurate then the content team was rolling out relevant organic content long before the product rollout. This is ideal but not at all necessary.
“Passkeys” constituted a new product category. For non-technical buyers, the more familiar concept is “passwords”. So the company blog has a passkeys vs passwords blog. There’s also a “What are passkeys?” post and an FAQ post on the blog.
More tech-minded leads will want to understand the underlying tech, so the blog has a top-funnel piece explaining public key cryptography. Farther down the journey, they can read about passkeys and quantum computers. And for the late conversion-stage there are posts comparing passkey technology with SSO, magic links, 2FA and TOTP.
1pass went the extra mile for evergreen organic search by creating a product page that links to the core blog content mentioned above. (It basically functions as a pillar page.)
For reference, we’ve sorted all of the passkeys blog content (and more) by funnel:
Upper funnel:
- What Are Passkeys and How Do They Work? | 1Password
- Passkeys FAQs: What they are, and other frequently asked questions
- What is Public-Key Cryptography? | 1Password
- Hardware security keys: What are they, and should you use one?
- Passkeys vs. Passwords: What are the Differences? | 1Password
Mid funnel:
- Will Quantum Computers Break Your Passkeys? | 1Password
- 7 Common Misunderstandings about Passkeys | 1Password
- AI Can Crack Your Passwords (And Other Very Old News) | 1Password
- What is a Password Manager? How It Works & Other FAQs | 1Password
- Secret Key - What Is It And How Does It Protect Users? | 1Password
Lower funnel:
- Passkeys vs. SSO: What Are the Differences? | 1Password
- Passkeys vs. 2FA & TOTP: What Are the Differences? | 1Password
- Passkeys vs. magic links: What are the differences?
- Introducing Passage by 1Password – the simple way to add passkey support to your app or website
Next steps for your product launch content
Remember: whoever wrote your beautiful launch pages had to do a ton of research and deep thinking about the product. If you can chat with them, or get your hands on their marketing and research materials, then the writing process for this SEO material will go a lot faster.
Did you find any existing blog content in your library that can be used in this campaign? (Hopefully the answer is yes, as that will reduce your production budget in a big way.) Give that existing content a little love, too.
Review it, make sure that the narrative is still relevant, the product mentions are current, the hyperlinks are active, and the entire page is optimized for your target keywords. You can use our SEO checklist to make quick work of those tasks.
