The Power of Second-Order Questions

Masterclass has built a $2.5B business on the back of one SEO tactic.

They use the power of "second-order questions" to drive free traffic to their site.

Here is how they do it 🧵 pic.twitter.com/KxrVvJtlo3

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

1/ The Masterclass website got ~12m visits in March w/ 65% of traffic coming via organic search. pic.twitter.com/WyWksKPSPE

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

2/ The key to this organic search traffic?

Masterclass’ hundreds of high-quality articles, including pieces on:

• Food
• Design
• Music
• Business
• Writing pic.twitter.com/BtrAQRGggp

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

3/ Masterclass appears at the top of Google searches for:

🥨“”
🖊 “types of poems”
🥄“how many teaspoons in a tablespoon”
🎶“song structure”
📙“how to write an autobiography”

These five key search terms combine for 500k+ monthly Google searches. pic.twitter.com/6BngpPkEUz

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

4/ Let’s dig into one example:

“how many teaspoons in a tablespoon”

This one has 130k+ monthly searches. https://t.co/miJ7xEe4MN pic.twitter.com/K06P1gZSJg

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

5/ This “teaspoon” article definitely answers the search query.

BUT, it is also riddled with calls-to-action for Masterclass courses related to cooking (eg Gordon Ramsay, Madison Bottura). pic.twitter.com/PrGLWqKMQL

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

6/ This is where "second-order questions" come into play.

Example:

Let’s say you sell washable rugs online.

A typical FIRST ORDER question you might rank for is “best pet friendly rug”.

A SECOND ORDER question you should target is “best rug shampooer for pets”. pic.twitter.com/Lolx6RinNR

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023

7/ Why do SECOND ORDER questions work?

Because you’re targeting a similar audience who is one step away from wanting your product.

And Masterclass is brilliantly building a content library around these audience-related searches!

— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) April 19, 2023