Optimizing Developer Content for Success

Published on Nov 15, 2024 in webinars by Annika Puura
10 minute read

Optimizing your developer content is a powerful way to drive organic traffic and generate leads for your product. If you’re creating content to serve specific keywords, organic search can become a fantastic distribution channel over time. But you’ll want to take steps to optimize your content for its best chances of ranking. 

In this blog post, I’ll recap our recent webinar, “Optimizing Developer Content for Success,” where product marketing expert Ashley McClelland and our CEO Karl Hughes shared their insights on how to optimize developer content creation efforts, and how to effectively distribute and promote that content to reach a wider audience.

Understanding The Developer Audience

Developers aren’t typical consumers. They’re highly technical, solution-oriented, and often averse to traditional marketing tactics. They use ad blockers, are tech-savvy, and can spot marketing ploys a mile away. So, it’s not surprising that content aimed at developers needs to be different. It must focus on providing practical solutions to their problems rather than simply promoting a product. Ashley explained this well:

“I try to think of developers as very solution-focused. They’re problem solvers. They’re looking for solutions.” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

Karl agreed, adding that developers frequently use search engines to find answers to their coding questions:

“As a software developer, my day-to-day involved constantly using Google to find solutions. Whether it was a high-level question or a complex, long-tail query, it was always about solving the problem in front of me.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

This solution-focused mindset has significant implications for your content strategy. Instead of pushing product features, your content should address the specific challenges developers face and demonstrate how your product can help them overcome those challenges.

Challenges in Developer Content Optimization

When you begin optimizing your developer content, you’ll likely encounter some specific challenges. Knowing these in advance will help you overcome them.

Product Differentiation

One common hurdle is differentiating your product from the competition. As Karl pointed out, developers already have solutions to their problems, even if they are outdated or less efficient. Your content needs to clearly demonstrate why your product is the better choice.

“You’re almost always in today’s environment of development marketing…trying to offset an existing solution.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Keyword Research

Another challenge can be keyword research. Traditional keyword tools often fall short when it comes to emerging technologies. Ashley highlighted this difficulty:

“Keyword research for emerging technologies, especially in the developer, DevOps, and AI spaces, often lags behind and isn’t well-represented in standard keyword tools.” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

This makes it essential to supplement keyword research with direct communication with your target audience. Engage with developers in relevant communities and forums to understand their language and the specific terms they use when searching for solutions.

Stakeholder Buy-in

Lastly, getting buy-in from technical stakeholders like CTOs is another potential obstacle. Technical stakeholders may not fully understand marketing strategies, leading to disagreements about content direction. Karl emphasized the importance of involving technical stakeholders early in the planning and strategy process to avoid conflicts later on.

Effective Strategies for Content Optimization

If you already have a body of developer content, optimizing it can yield significant returns. Here are some key areas to focus on:

Unique and Compelling Metadata

Ensure that every page has unique and descriptive title tags and meta descriptions. These are important for attracting clicks in search results. Think of them as your content’s headline and subheading in search engine results pages (SERPs). Ashley emphasized this often-overlooked aspect of optimization:

“Remind yourself that when you search you get a list of articles, and it does matter what those things are titled in terms of how compelling it is to actually click through.” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

Content Freshness and Relevance

Regularly review and update your existing content. Outdated information can damage your credibility and negatively impact your search rankings. Prioritize updating content that covers rapidly changing technologies or content that was once high-performing but has seen a decline in traffic.

“Do you have pages that haven’t been updated since 2021? And, do you have content that used to get a lot of clicks and impressions, and now it’s slowly declining?’” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

Another smart strategy for content refreshes is to look at your older competitors. Find their blog posts that are outdated but cover topics relevant to your audience. These older articles may have attracted significant search traffic in the past. By creating a fresh, updated version of that content, you can capitalize on existing search demand and potentially outrank your competitors. As Karl suggested:

“Look at your competitors, who have been around for 10 years or more, and see their list of articles that are 5 years old and figure out if there is a way you could do a better or more up to date version.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Appropriate CTAs

Aligning your CTAs with the reader’s stage in the buyer’s journey is another great way of optimizing your blog content. A top-of-funnel blog post explaining a basic concept shouldn’t have the same CTA as a bottom-of-funnel case study. Karl recommended offering valuable resources, such as downloadable assets or webinars, rather than simply pushing product trials:

“A better CTA would be having some kind of asset that either is a downloadable–a webinar, a newsletter–that actually tells people how to get better. There’s a million things you could do there that are better than just ‘try our product.’” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Ashley added that CTAs should guide the reader to the next logical step in their learning process:

“The blog post CTA, as you’re done finishing that piece of content, should be the next most logical step.” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

Sales Enablement

Lastly, don’t overlook the power of sales enablement content. Sometimes companies forget that  marketing isn’t just about TOFU. Creating bottom-funnel content that directly supports your sales team is often times the easiest win. Address common sales objections, provide in-depth product information, and showcase specific use cases. This type of content can be invaluable for closing deals.

“What content would help your sales team actually close deals in the next 3 months?” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Content Promotion and Distribution

Once you’ve put in all the effort to create valuable content, you also need to actively promote and distribute it to reach and grow your target audience. And this ties back to getting to know your target audience. 

Targeted Distribution

Identify the online communities and platforms where your target developers hang out. This might include specialized forums, subreddits, Slack channels, or social media groups. Don’t just drop links but engage authentically in these communities and share your content when it’s relevant to the conversation.

“You want to kind of merge your distribution strategy with your engagement strategy. You’re not just dropping links in communities but authentically engaging in those spaces.” - Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

Leverage Existing Platforms

Promote your content through various channels, including:

• Newsletters: Share your latest articles in your own newsletter and consider sponsoring relevant industry newsletters.
• Social Media: Promote your content on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and relevant developer communities.
• Content Syndication: Republish your content on platforms like Dev.to, Medium, and Hacker News to reach a wider audience. 
• Guest Posting: Contribute high-quality articles to other relevant blogs and publications.

Karl suggested a hybrid approach for newsletters:

“Sponsor a newsletter every 6 months, and then send them just organic content every month or two, and see if they accept and push it out for free for you.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Re-promotion

Don’t just promote your content once and forget about it. Evergreen content can and should be re-promoted regularly. Share it on different platforms, update the messaging, and find new angles to keep the conversation going. Both speakers stressed the value of re-promotion and getting your word out there.

Measuring and Auditing Content Performance

To optimize your content effectively, you need to understand what’s working and what’s not. That means, regularly measuring and auditing your content performance to identify areas for improvement.

Key Metrics

Start by focusing on organic search data: clicks, impressions, and engagement (time on page, bounce rate). These metrics provide insights into how your content is performing in search and how users are interacting with it.

Replicating Success

Secondly, identify your top-performing content and analyze what makes it successful. Are there common themes, formats, or topics? Can you replicate those elements in other pieces of content? Karl suggested looking for these patterns:

“When we’re coming into a new relationship with a client we look for articles that have either spiked or are still the top 5% and think how we can replicate what those articles do well.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Organic Search Data

Thirdly, use organic search data to inform your content strategy. Analyze the keywords that are driving traffic to your site and identify opportunities to create new content around those topics. For example, long-tail keywords and specific questions that users are searching for are a great source for that. 

“How you can unravel some of those really long tail keywords and things that people are searching for, that are bringing them to your content.” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

Karl added that you should also consider what content did well on a specific platform and use that for a whole series of similar topics, assuming it’s the audience type you want to attract.

“Did certain article or type of article do well on the Reddit? Why not do a whole series like that?” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Technical Performance and Site Optimization

Although technical performance of a blog is becoming less of an issue with modern CMSs catchnig up to the latest requirements and best practices, it’s still an important aspect of your website that can significantly impact both user experience and search engine rankings. Here are some best practices to keep in mind for technical optimization:

• Site Speed: Developers are particularly sensitive to slow loading times, so ptimize your site for speed. An interesting point Ashley McClelland brought up regarding site speed was the impact of video embeds. She suggested using a placeholder or thumbnail image that loads first instead of the full YouTube player, which can significantly slow down page load times.

“We often tell people to load a facade instead of loading the YouTube videos just straight out when you load a page.” –Ashley McClelland, Partner at ércule

• Site Navigation: Ensure your site is easy to navigate. Developers should be able to quickly find the information they need, including guides, docs, and quick start guides. A well-organized site structure and clear navigation menu are essential.
• Formatting and Readability: Make sure your content is well-formatted and easy to read. Use clear headings, subheadings, bullet points, and code snippets to break up large blocks of text. 

Ultimately, prioritize user experience. Optimize for humans, and you’ll naturally optimize for search engines. As Karl put it: 

“Make your site fast. Make it easy to read. If it’s readable and navigable for humans, then likely Google knows how to crawl it.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Content Strategy for New Organizations

If you’re just starting out with developer content, prioritize the essentials.

• Step 1: Begin with documentation and easy-to-follow quick-start guides. Developers need to quickly understand how to use your product or integrate it into their workflows.
• Step 2: Focus on clear product marketing. Explain what your product does, who it’s for, and why it’s valuable. 
• Step 3: Once your documentation and product marketing are in place, you can start creating and scaling technical content that addresses specific developer needs and challenges. 

Another important consideration that many companies struggle with is figuring out you target audience and product-market fit before scaling your content efforts.

“Defining and figuring out who your target market is and how to reach them is a big problem. Make sure you feel pretty confident about the direction you’re facing before you go spend $100,000 on marketing hires and content.” - Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Final Thoughts

While the core principles of creating high-quality, relevant content remain constant, the methods developers use to discover and consume that content are in constant flux. The rise of AI-generated content and search tools like PerplexityAI is transforming the research landscape, creating an interesting challenge: how to distinguish high-quality content from the flood of low-quality, AI-generated material. As Karl Hughes pointed out:

“We’re in this really interesting point in time where search engines are gonna have to figure out how to index the best quality content. And at the end of the day, the super low quality, high volume content, is just going to get devalued.” –Karl Hughes, CEO at Draft.dev

Both speakers agreed on the growing popularity of video content, particularly among younger developers. Similarly, incorporating visual elements like diagrams, screenshots, and interactive components can significantly enhance the learning experience.

Ultimately, regardless of platform, format, or medium, successful developer content boils down to helping developers solve their problems. Focus on optimizing your web and content with that in mind, and you’ll build trust and establish a strong foundation for your developer audience.

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I hope this blog post has given you some insights into optimizing your developer content. If you want to learn more about DevRel and Developer Marketing, join our upcoming live webinars with Q&A sessions, where we explore similar topics and feature insights from industry leaders.

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