How Descript Consistently Hits #1 On Google with Letterdrop

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Descript is an AI-powered media editor that helps you write, record, transcribe, edit, and share videos and podcasts.

Founded: 2017

Website: descript.com

Industry: Software

The Problems Faced Before Letterdrop

They Had a Complex, Multi-Step Workflow

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Descript's Content Marketing Manager Braveen Kumar, their Managing Editor, Ashley Hamer, and their freelancers collaborated across five different tools to create content to drive traffic to Descript's blog on Webflow. They had ambitious traffic and lead gen goals, but their process was holding them back.

The team struggled with a time-consuming and tedious process of manually entering content into Webflow and tracking it afterwards.

This lack of centralization meant more effort for content upkeep, more decision fatigue, and more content falling through the cracks

More specifically:

• Ashley would have to enter each content doc into Webflow, which would include mapping several different fields
• The team used Google Sheets to manage projects, but those projects were hard to find
• It was tough getting freelance writers to upload directly to the CMS, making it an extra task for their internal team
• The team struggled with checklist tasks in the upload process, such as image compression for their assets to fit within site bandwidth limits and keep pages snappy for SEO

In-House Writers Were Not SEO Writers

Initially, Ashley had little SEO knowledge. This had to be outsourced to an agency, which was expensive.

"When we started with Letterdrop, I didn't have a ton of confidence in my abilities, SEO-wise." — Ashley Hamer

How Did Letterdrop Help?

Letterdrop Centralized Content Operations

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Letterdrop acts as a codeless, headless CMS for Webflow, which meant is was easier for Descript to centralize their operations and scale effectively.

• The team no longer needs to switch between tools — SEO, collaboration, content planning, production, and analysis happens in one place
• You can automatically implement fixes and updates (for example, feature re-naming, internal links, and broken links) in bulk — keeping everything consistent and up-to-date with minimal manual work

"It feels like a content management system that was designed by writers, not by, like, just engineers or anyone else. It feels like it has all the tools that I need as a writer." — Ashley Hamer

Letterdrop Helps Adapt to SEO Best Practices

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Letterdrop empowered the team to handle SEO in-house, reducing dependency on external agencies.

Ashley, who wasn't an SEO writer before, learned a lot using Letterdrop. Its built-in SEO optimization features helps her optimize for what's out there on the SERPs today and for information gain — writers are now able to self-edit and optimize for best practices.

"Letterdrop is a CMS that's actually set up for content marketing at scale, unlike your traditional CMS.

And it feels like even if [SEO] tactics were to change, Letterdrop would also change and adapt." — Braveen Kumar

This beat out other tools like Clearscope, which focuses more on hitting keyword goals.

"The tools in Letterdrop are specifically designed for SEO, not for shoehorning in keywords. It's designed for making sure that you're covering all of the topics that need to be covered in an article that's going to be competitive in Google." — Ashley Hamer

What was the Business Impact of Letterdrop?

Improved SEO Performance

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The team saw significant improvements in their SEO performance. Namely:

• 29% increase in organic traffic for high-conversion tool pages after auto-building internal links
• Multiple pages hitting the first page of Google in a matter of days

Cost Savings

Ashley reports that Letterdrop has helped Descript save upwards of $10,000 on other tooling and on agency fees.

"I think Letterdrop is a good option that can get you similar results [to an agency] for a lot less money. I would say it's in the, like, 10,000 or more range that we're saving." — Ashley Hamer

Advice From Braveen: Avoid CMS Solutions that Silo Your Tools

Braveen acknowledges that a CMS is at the heart of most content marketing efforts — but they often silo your other tools.

He encourages people to look to tools like Letterdrop, which bridges that gap and solves for tool disparity.