Late to the SEO game, but never too late
jasonleow • 22 Jan 2025 •
I’ve been doing a bunch of SEO, keyword research for my new SaaS idea.
And the more SEO research I do, the more I ask: Why tf did I not do this for my past products!?
Maybe some would have had a better chance if I did.
For example, maybe Lifelog would have got off to a better start if I knew that the keywords “daily writing” has keyword difficulty (KD) of 27 and only gets 170 searches per month, but “writing prompts” has KD 47 and search of 40.5k/month! I could have optimized more for “writing prompts” to get more traffic. No wonder I don’t get much direct traffic, and people who signed up were mostly from my Twitter exchanges… And I now also know it’s possible to get to a decent MRR for daily writing because of competitors’ revenue:
- Typeshare - $60k MRR (2022), probably way more now
- 750words.com - $20k MRR (2019), 4600 paying customers (2025)
But these realisations now beg the question: What’s stopping me from going back to my products and start doing SEO?
Nothing.
I’m late to the SEO game, but never too late!
Comments
@haideralmosawi most good SEO tools have a thing called Search Intent, which let’s you know if people searching for the keywords have informational, navigational, or commercial intent, i.e. they are looking to pay. Also, combining the keywords with the search intent and other factors, it gives you a pretty good idea of whether people are willing to pay. If you see a certain keyword is interesting, then you can do a bit of competitor research, like Jason explained, and that’s a good indicator of whether people are already paying or not.
It’s really cool to see you get into SEO Jason!
I still say 200WAD is the sweet spot. Looking at the screenshot in the Product Hunt page brings back memories https://www.producthunt.com/products/200-words-a-day
@drodol Thank you for the explanation! 🙏🏻
@haideralmosawi Exactly what @drodol said. High search volume + competitors ranking at top for those keywords + them earning good revenue = a good chance people are paying for it already. Did you know Ben recently went fulltime on 750words? That’s why the growth
@drodol Thanks buddy! It’s so fun and enlightening!
@therealbrandonwilson Yeah, the exact match domain for keywords “200 words a day” is so good. Good ol days
WOW! I didn’t think 750words made this much money! I’m happy for the creator. I used to use v1 from 2013 (I think?). Wrote almost 2 million words on that site.
Question: how can you determine whether the traffic would pay for a product vs seeking free stuff? Is there a way to determine that? Nathan Barry once had an app on the App Store that was priced at $200. It was for a niche community (children with autism, if my memory serves me right) and the app was replacing a ~$1,500 device. Very niche, but willing to pay.
What if people searching daily writing are more keen on finding a solution to their problems than writing prompts seekers (although the difference is so vast that 1% of the writing prompts traffic is still more than the traffic for daily writing!