You know how everyone talks about SEO, but it’s hard to know what actually works? I went down the rabbit hole and found 7 super interesting examples of companies that seriously leveled up their traffic in smart, very different ways.
Like, Oxford English Dictionary switched from paywall to freemium and exploded their traffic. Later created a simple glossary that now brings in a third of their traffic. And ClickUp? They went all in on listicles and ended up driving millions in organic value.
Each one used a different play—some focused on content, others on backlinks, or even user-generated pages. Super cool to see the variety. Let me walk you through what each of them did.
1. Oxford English Dictionary
Transitioned from a paywall model to a freemium model, going from 2.4K indexable pages to 214K pages, growing their traffic by 100%.
2. Later
Created a social media glossary with over 250 pages that now accounts for 1/3 of Later’s total traffic.
3. Wirecutter
Enhanced its SEO by building strong E-E-A-T signals through expert-driven content, in-depth product testing, author credentials, and clearly stating their research methodology.
4. ClickUp
Grew rapidly by producing 1,000+ articles (2018-2020), focusing on listicles to position ClickUp as a top solution, driving over $12 million worth of organic clicks.
5. Webflow
User-generated content for programmatic SEO. Their template library, created by users, helped them rank for long-tail keywords related to website building.
6. Remove.bg
Leveraged an aggressive PR and backlink strategy, gaining 19K do-follow backlinks. This approach helped drive significant traffic and achieve a Domain Rating of 81.
7. Digital Project Manager
Focused on topical authority by building a topic cluster with 200+ interlinked pages. It now ranks for the highly competitive keyword “project management software.”
