Ever wondered how Canva skyrocketed to become a household name in the design world? Two words: Programmatic SEO…
Founded in 2012 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, Canva set out to do the impossible: make design accessible to everyone, regardless of experience.
It worked. Big time.
By 2024 Canva was nailing 100 million monthly organic visitors, securing itself a $40 billion valuation in the process.
Not bad for a startup that’s less than 10 years old.
Here’s a complete breakdown of how Canva went from an unknown Australian startup to one of the fastest growing and most profitable privately-owned companies in the world…
I’ve also included some choice insights from Canva’s lead SEO, Sasha Gusain, for more details from the horse’s mouth so to speak. Also: do yourself a favor, follow her on LinkedIn.
Canva’s Programmatic SEO Strategy
So, how did Canva manage to attract such a massive audience? The secret sauce is their brilliant use of programmatic SEO.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The true genius behind what Canva has pulled off during the past decade all comes down to one thing:
Focus – it has an obsessive focus on its core mission values.
Every decision the company makes on its product is lead and inspired by user feedback and user demands.
“It’s been 10 years since these early days of how Canva’s SEO strategy took shape. The team’s work back then, as it continues to be now, is deeply rooted in studying and empowering everyday folks to find the best solution for their jobs to be done.”
— Sasha Gusain, Lead SEO at Canva
Creating a tool is great. But millions of new ones are launched every day, and most disappear like a fart in the wind.
Making a tool that eats-up a sizable chunk of Figma and Adobe’s market share? That’s a whole other kettle of fish.
It takes grit, cash, and a razor-sharp focus on product, innovation, and SEO.
And even if you have ALL of these things, you could still fail.
The winners – like Canva – are the ones that get all of these things working together, as a single, well-oiled machine.
Let’s now move onto what make Canva’s programmatic approach to SEO so successful…
Targeting Low Competition Keywords at Scale
On any scale, pSEO can be complex. Doing it at Canva’s level?
Trickier than a bag of spiders.
But the basics of ALL programmatic campaigns, large and small, often remain the same.
You need low-competition keywords, templates, and a clear understanding of search intent.
Nail these things down.
They’re the foundation on which you can build an empire-like business.
Canva’s Approach To Keyword Research
Canva identified a multitude of high-traffic, low-competition keywords related to design tools and templates.
These are what’s known as low-hanging fruit; keywords and phrases that get decent amounts of regular search but aren’t actively targeted by any, one big site or publisher.
This means competition is low. And when competition is low and the commercial intent is high, baby, you got yourself a stew.
“We use keyword research at the very beginning of any new rollout – for us our future customer’s search intent is a goldmine of signals that help us improve user journeys and experiences.”
Think of phrases like “free business card maker” or “Instagram story templates.”
By targeting these long-tail keywords, Canva was able to target highly relevant traffic with lower competition which meant less spent on ads and marketing and more glorious, free, organic traffic.
But the reason it was so successful with its pSEO campaign was because it actually had a useful tool that satisfied the user’s search intent.
Think about it:
If you Google “free business card maker” and the top result is a blog that explains ALL the benefits of using a free business card maker and where to get access to one online, that’s not really what you were looking for, is it?
Be honest. It isn’t!
The blog will make you scroll through display ads, read some nonsense about how the blogger used the service to get free business cards for his sunglasses-for-cats side hustle… and, yep! You bounced back to the SERPs.
Canva knew this back in 2012.
And the same rules applies now: search intent is king. If you want to be king, you need to deliver the goods for every single keyword you’re targeting.
Canva KNEW it had a tool that satisfied the search intent and it knew when people landed on its page and actually used its tool, they’d be blown away by how easy it was to use.
Impressed people are easier to convert, and this – applied on a macro scale, across tens of thousands of keywords – is Canva’s pSEO campaign in a nutshell.
So, let’s now look at Canva’s approach to scaling its pSEO campaigns
Automating Content Creation At Scale
But the real magic happened when Canva took their low-competition keyword strategy and automated content creation at scale.
Here’s how they did it:
“Using programmatic methods, we generated thousands of landing pages tailored to these specific keywords. Each page is designed to meet the exact needs of the searcher, providing immediate value and a seamless user experience.”
Imagine knowing exactly what your users are searching for and then effortlessly creating pages that answer those queries.
This is SEO 101, but it is something that so many people simply forget to take into account when preparing a programmatic SEO campaign.
Canva did not forget this, and it’s focus on this is the #1 reason why it was so damn successful.
Canva took this model and applied it to every feature inside its service. Here’s how it breaks down:
- Programmatic Generation: Canva didn’t handcraft each landing page. Instead, they automated the creation of thousands of pages based on their target keywords, enabling rapid scaling and precise optimization for every search query.
- Tailored User Experience: Every page goes beyond a simple template. Canva designed each one to address specific user needs, whether it’s a free business card maker or Instagram story templates, ensuring immediate value and a smooth experience.
- Seamless Integration with Canva’s Tools: When users land on these pages, they’re greeted with Canva’s intuitive tools ready to use. Thanks to the free tier, there’s no barrier to entry—users can start designing instantly, boosting engagement and satisfaction.
- High Conversion Rates: Offering a free tier removes friction for new users, making it easy to try out Canva’s tools. This strategy drives impressive conversion rates, estimated to be in the high 20% range. Impressive, right?
Each page is meticulously crafted to address specific user intents, ensuring that visitors find exactly what they’re looking for.
It’s definitely NOT a case of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Google and hoping some of it sticks.
This is why pSEO gets a bad rep.
Instead, it is about focus: knowing what you’ve got (product / service-wise) and building out from that.
But the main point here is KNOWING WHAT YOU’VE GOT; if your product and/or service is sub-par, no amount of pSEO is going to help you in the long-run.
User Experience and High Conversion Rates
In order to make everything work, however, your pages and templates need to be quality – like A+ quality.
There can be no weak parts, no typos, no misaligned sections or info boxes.
Nothing can be left to chance. Perfection is the name of the game, or getting as close to it as humanly possible.
Canva’s landing pages are pitch perfect. I know this because one of them converted me back in the day.
I landed on it, I liked it, I signed up and a few weeks later I was paying for it (I still am today).
Canva’s free tier is its hook, the thing that does ALL the work. The templates and keyword research get the traffic, obvs, but it is the free tier that does all the converting.
By offering a free tier, Canva removes any obstacles, making it easy for anyone to try out their tools.
“And each page, in turn, was designed to get the user to sign-up and start using the platform. The best part? Canva offers a free tier, so there’s literally NO BARRIER to entry, nothing stopping you from trying it out.”
This approach drives incredibly high conversion rates. Industry standard conversion rates are around 1% to 10% on the high-end. Canva’s? They’re up above 20% on average.
Consistent and Scalable Page Design
Maintaining consistency across thousands of pages is crucial for both user experience and SEO performance.
And you’re brand too.
You want people to remember your company, so branding is key – Canva’s is great too.
Nice and simple. But very memorable at the same time as well.
Simplicity is hard to do as well.
You need a designer with an eye for detail and nuance that isn’t obsessed with flexing their skills.
As Steve Jobs was fond of saying, “good design gets the fuck outta the way.”
“All these pages follow a consistent layout: Catchy Headlines, Engaging Descriptions, Strong CTAs, Visual Elements, and Helpful Resources.”
Canva ensures each page follows a standardized layout to keep things not only manageable at scale, but also easy on the eyes (and memorable).
Users don’t like having to think; the less you make them think, the more they will convert.
Here’s how nearly all of Canva’s landing pages breakdown:
- Catchy headlines addressing the user’s search query;
- Engaging descriptions highlighting tool benefits;
- Strong CTAs encouraging immediate action,
- Visual elements showcasing templates;
- And, finally, a helpful resource section like a FAQ and / or tutorial.
This uniformity makes every page not only user-friendly but also perfectly SEO-optimized for modern search engines.
And why’s that? Simple: USER EXPERIENCE is a major ranking factor.
Focusing on User Intent
To be successful in ANY type of SEO campaign, you need to understand user intent.
What is user intent?
It’s the ideal outcome / thing a user has in mind when they enter their search into Google or another search engine like Bing.
If someone types, best noodles near me, they’re not going to be interested in your blog about the history of noodles in San Francisco and how it impacted the counter-counter fenchu shi art scene.
They want a place, nearby, where they can buy some damn noodles.
And this is the core principle that Canva built its entire business around.
Instead of just stuffing pages with keywords, Canva provided genuine solutions that addressed the search intent of every keyword it targeted.
“We focus entirely on what our users need; how best Canva can show up for them at their time of search – and less on traffic fluctuations because of a new update or seasonalities.”
This user-centric approach makes the content hyper-relevant and valuable to the searcher.
Google picks up on this when it starts to notice that these pages have high CTRs and dwell time.
Then its bots and trackers start to notice that once people click through to Canva’s landing pages they seldom come back to the results page.
And that means the search intent has been SATISFIED.
What Happens Now?
Imagine you’re the CEO of Canva. You’re heading a meeting; it’s the year 2015. Things are going well. You’re expecting a report back from your SEO department but you’ve seen the figures; they look daaaaaamn good.
You understand the broadstokes of what happened, what the SEO department did but you’re still a little unclear about how it all worked so well.
The pSEO campaign that was initiated, the campaign we’ve just covered in detail above, hit all the marks and scaled rapidly. It was carefully planned and tracked, no aspect was left to chance.
It’s now in the compounding phase, your SEO lead tells you, whereby new pages are indexing faster and ranking higher, and these pages, in turn, are now boosting the performance of older pages.
The reason it all worked so well is threefold:
- The keyword research was on point.
- The templates were well designed and converted like gangbusters.
- Massive spikes in CTRs and low-ass bounce rates send a positive signal to Google which, in turn, adjusts its algorithm accordingly, and boosts all of your other pages (tens of thousands of them) meaning more and more organic traffic.
But there’s MORE, the SEO department tells you – way more.
And this is the reason for the rapidly compounding growth. It’s backlinks, its social mentions, its people online talking about your product and services on Facebook and WhatsApp, its people tweeting and making TikToks about it.
You’re happy as a pig in shit.
As a CEO, this is exactly what you want to hear. Everything is growing. Everything is tracking upwards. Your brand has never been stronger and you’re converting free users into paid subscribers hand over foot.
Feels nice, doesn’t it? This is the power of programmatic SEO done well.
