Deel’s “Traffic Light” SEO Strategy for Scaling to $3M ARR in Just 3 Years

Deel is one of the fastest-growing companies in history. The platform that simplifies payroll & compliance for remote and international companies went from $0 to $300m in ARR in only three years.

As you may assume after seeing this kind of growth, nothing at Deel is left to luck.

During a one-hour-long interview with THE Lenny Rachitsky (author of the #1 business newsletter now-turned podcaster), Meltem Kuran Berkowitz, Head of Growth at Deel, shared some of her growth strategies.

The early stages

For the early stages, companies should focus on building the basics, by making sure their website is good, runs fast and people can find it. As obvious as it may seem, there are a lot of businesses that simply miss this point.

Creating effective SEO content is the next big step. And you should never try to cut corners here (the creation of incredible content takes A LOT of work, and you should not be scared of putting it out).

Their SEO framework, for example, goes way beyond just stuffing keywords in, which is one of the biggest mistakes people make along with poorly written content.

So, what is Deels’ “traffic light system” SEO strategy all about?

Lets dig in.

The Traffic Light System in action

It all starts with the team deciding on a content series and then working on finding up to 700 keywords related to what Deel does. These keywords, which can be either closely or distantly related, are then ranked by highest to lowest volume on an Excel sheet.

Next, the team goes through them one by one (remember, 700 keywords!) to assess the search intent so they can later rank them in green, yellow, or red, depending on how close they are to using Deel’s solutions.

• Green Light: Very high intent; this person is likely to use Deel.
• Yellow light: There is a 50:50 chance. Maybe they’re looking to buy Deel’s solution, but it might be too soon.
• Red light: This person is not looking to buy the solution; they’re just doing research for any other reason.

The goal, evidently, is to avoid the red light keywords.

But this is only the beginning. When they finally start writing the article, Meltem points out, they always ask “what is the next question that this person is likely to make?”. In this way, they can make sure they can deliver a thorough piece of content that will keep the person from bouncing off the page.

Another interesting part of their strategy (and one of the reasons Meltem was hired in the first place) is her focus on growing in “cheaper” channels. Deel relies a lot on Reddit & Quora (network communities and forums curated by their own users). In this way, they can tap into different communities by trying to solve their questions rather than directly pitching their products or services (which is obviously not what they are looking for).

In one sentence: add value.

No wonder 80% of their early growth was from non-paid channels like SEO, Reddit, and partnerships.

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