How Bright Cellars Has Focused on Product Users to Reach 52,000 Monthly Visitors

In this Growth Through Content case study, I break down Bright Cellars.

Inside you’ll learn how they have reached an estimated 52,000 monthly organic visitors.

In particular, you’ll see:

• The unique pairing technique that could generate explosive traffic for your business.
• How a beginners guide is generating over $70,000 in equivalent PPC traffic (and why you might want to create one for your site).
• And a keyword variation that can generate niche relevant links for years to come.

Let’s dive in.

What is Bright Cellars?

Bright Cellars is an online wine subscription service founded by Richard Yau and Joe Laurendi.

The platform allows customers to take a quiz to find the perfect wine for their taste buds and then they receive bottles of wine via delivery.

It’s a unique mix of AI and wine.

According to Crunchbase, they have received $24 million in funding over eight rounds.

So what’s their content and SEO approach?

How Bright Cellars are Growing Their Traffic

According to Ahrefs, Bright Cellars has a DR of 57 and UR of 55.

It ranks for 29,000 keywords and generates around 52,000 monthly visitors. 

This traffic is worth a decent $426,000 in equivalent PPC spend every year.

So how are they generating this traffic?

Well first off, they have a very cool pairing technique.

How Pairing Products Leads to Content Success

I like wine, but I’ll be honest.

I know nothing about it.

As long as it’s red, I’ll drink it.

But every now and again, I’ll be cooking something special and I’ll search for the best wine to go with my meal.

I believe experts call this pairing.

Bright Cellars knows that an educated audience who cares about wine asks these types of questions on Google.

And so, around May 2021 they set about making pages that demonstrate which wines go with which foods.

And the payoff has started to happen.

The pages they create are quite broad. Like this fast food and wine article (who knew champagne works with French fries?).

While a lot of the content is in list format.

They have also used ‘How To’ style posts, such as this one about pairing wine with a charcuterie board.

The thing is, this is user-focused content.

And while it might only be generating a few thousand visitors a month right now, it is certainly highly relevant to their ideal customer/target audience.

So how might you be able to pair content for your site?

Well, pretty easily.

All you need to do is look at what goes with your product or where it is used.

For example, let’s say you are an online running shoe store.

You need to ask yourself, ‘what goes with running?’

The list is quite large; clothes, hats, equipment, GPS devices, running locations and more.

Take this page by Runners World.

It generates a nice 2000 organic visitors a month.

So ask yourself what goes with your products or services and see whether you can pair them.

But remember, it’s not always about traffic.

Wine pairing works because it’s for customers who care about the wine that goes with their food.

It is a great customer match.

But it trunks out that there is another way to generate relevant traffic.

Beginners.

The Beginners Guide That is Generating over $70,000 in Equivalent Annual PPC Traffic

No one likes to feel stupid.

And as a business, your job is all about educating people.

Why? Because educated people make educated decisions. And by educating your prospect, you show that you have nothing to hide.

And so, almost every business and field can use beginner guides on their site.

Accountants can create a beginners guide to tax.

Dog trainers can create a beginners guide to owning a puppy.

That’s the great thing with beginners guides. They don’t need to rank online, because this type of content travels.

The beginner’s guide to owning a puppy can be shared by friends and families with loved ones who have just purchased a dog.

It can be shared on social media several times a year and even used as a lead magnet.

But if you end up ranking as well, you can drive great traffic to your site.

Sure, it’s bottom of the funnel, but it’s still user-focused.

And Bright Cellars do just this.

Their page dedicated to red wine for beginners generates a great deal of traffic to their site and is again user-focused.

This single page ranks online for over 3400 keywords alone.

And yes, in every market there are beginners. 

Head over to Ahrefs and use their keywords explorer tool to check out your beginners market.

Creating content for beginners makes sense.

So why not give it a go?

Bright Cellars also use another cool technique that you can apply to generate traffic and links.

And it’s certainly not trivial.

How Trivia Can Generate Traffic (and Links)

Everyone loves a bit of trivia.

And when Bright Cellars created the above page, I doubt they thought it would do so well.

This is what SEO legend Glen Alsopp calls a ‘snowball link building page’.

It’s a page that ranks over time and generates links because people like to link to pages with facts and stats.

Trivia is a different angle.

Because, unlike facts and stats, trivia requires involvement.

And that’s what this post is.

It’s a quiz for wine lovers.

Quizmasters will be using this page for years, wine lovers hosting wine tasting evenings will search for trivia questions and find this page.

Wine bloggers will link to it without asking.

It’s smart SEO because, once again, it’s user-focused.

And if you want to see the power of quiz and trivia style content, check out Buzzfeed.

Their quiz content generates massive traffic for them.

So, why not try and build your own niche relevant quiz or trivia page?

Final Thoughts

There is a lot I like about the Bright Cellars site and approach.

And whilst I have no idea whether they’ve deliberately grown their content because of SEO, or accidentally grown it by focusing on the user, it’s clearly working.

Like anything, they are growing their brand which will, of course, increase their traffic.

Brand growth is often missing from most SEO campaigns these days.

But by focusing on user search and then developing pages that match the search intent, you’ll generate a lot more traffic and conversions. 

One thing that Bright Cellars need is a lead magnet.

They have made no effort as far as I can tell to get my email address in return for some content.

This seems like a big mistake for a business like this one that is generating such traffic.

Anyway, if you liked this Growth Through Content case study, make sure you click the box below and subscribe to ensure you never miss one again.

Thanks

Andrew Holland