LDB #017: 70k in Search Traffic & 4.5 Million Total Visitors a Month

AWeber is an email marketing automation tool that helps small businesses maintain & grow their email list. No fancy stuff, a pure email marketing tool every small business can use. The 27-year-old domain is a powerhouse of organic traffic and a fantastic case study to learn from.

Most businesses I’ve decoded have a correlation between search traffic and total visitors. But AWber is different.

Semrush data shows that AWeber gets around 70k visitors from Google search organically. But total visitors are whooping 4.5 million.

This includes social traffic, paid traffic, direct traffic, and backlinks.

Let’s explore this together.

Business Model

AWeber is a subscription-based email marketing SaaS targeting small businesses and entrepreneurs. Their core revenue comes from tiered monthly pricing based on contact list size, starting at $15/month for up to 500 subscribers and scaling to $899/month for unlimited lists & subscribers.

AWeber charges for all contacts, including inactive ones, creating sticky recurring revenue since switching costs are high once businesses build their email workflows.

Additional revenue streams include transaction fees from their e-commerce integration (0.6% per sale) & API.

Founded in 1998, AWeber serves 100,000+ clients across all major countries with a freemium model that converts free users to paid subscribers as businesses grow.

AWeber offers a massive library of integrations to make them an essential infrastructure rather than optional software.

SEO Lessons To Learn From AWeber:

#1 On-Page SEO:

AWeber owns the search results for their brand like nobody's business. They rank #1 for "aweber," "aweber communications," "aweber login," "aweber aweber," and even the misspelled "awebber". This isn't luck - it's systematic brand protection.

Here's what most businesses miss: AWeber captures 33.22% of their organic traffic from just their top 5 branded keywords. Talk about branding 🤩

They understand that people search for brands in different ways, so they optimize separate pages for each variation.

The actionable insight? Create dedicated landing pages for every way people might search your brand name.

Include common misspellings, partial matches, and company name variations. Most businesses leave this traffic on the table.

AWeber's session duration of 7 minutes and 05 seconds destroys the industry average of 4.6 minutes.

That's nearly 2x longer engagement, which tells Google their content satisfies search intent.

They achieve this through their content marketing approach - creating hundreds of workflow-related blogs & comparison pages like "AWeber vs Mailchimp" that answer complete user questions.

The smart move here is to create content that keeps users engaged past the initial click. AWeber does this by structuring their pages to answer follow-up questions before users think to ask them.

Take a look at this blog post for example.

This blog contains:

1. What to do

2. How to do it

3. Examples & case studies

The structure and flow are enough to create immense value for the reader to stay on the page and not bounce off.

The more users stay on the site, the higher the chances of conversion, or at least remembering the brand.

#2 Off-Page SEO:

AWeber's backlink profile is insane, 66.16 million backlinks from 88.61k referring domains.

That averages 747 backlinks per referring domain, showing they get multiple links from quality sources rather than spamming low-quality sites.

Most businesses chase backlink quantity, but AWeber proves that quality matters more. Their Authority Score of 46 comes from diverse, relevant link sources across the email marketing ecosystem.

They get links from industry blogs, software comparison sites, affiliate reviews, and educational content.

The breakthrough strategy? AWeber uses its email platform to build relationships that naturally generate backlinks. They send valuable content to industry influencers, bloggers, and customers who then link back organically.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where their product helps build their SEO authority.

Smart businesses should focus on earning links from fewer, higher-quality domains rather than pursuing link farms.

AWeber's approach of building genuine relationships in their industry pays long-term dividends that algorithm updates can't touch.

#3 Technical SEO:

AWeber nailed mobile optimization before most companies realized it mattered.

This isn't just about responsive design - they built their entire user experience around mobile-first principles.

The technical foundation includes 27 years of domain age (since 1998), HTTPS implementation, and page speeds optimized for mobile devices.

Here's the overlooked insight.

AWeber's geographic traffic distribution shows smart international SEO. They capture 60.61% US traffic while building a meaningful presence in the UK (5.68%), Italy (3.2%), Germany (2.41%), Canada (2.39%), and emerging markets.

Most businesses either focus only on their home market or spread too thin globally.

AWeber's traffic sources reveal a mature SEO strategy: 67.05% direct traffic, 6.65% Gmail, and 2.44% from Google search.

The high direct traffic percentage shows strong brand recognition, while the email traffic creates a compound effect where their product drives their SEO growth.

Most businesses overlook this connection between product and SEO.

AWeber uses its email platform to drive traffic to optimized landing pages, which improves engagement signals and search rankings.

The traffic journey data shows visitors come from direct sources and Gmail, then explore multiple pages before converting. This behavior pattern helps AWeber rank for informational keywords that feed into commercial intent searches.

Noticed something? Google search sends only 2.55% of all the traffic, yet AWeber had over 4 million total visitors. Wild right?

That’s the beauty of SEO. Asymmetrical results in SEO are common.

What can you do now?

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