A Neglected Side Project in 2007, Now Has 4M+ users & $20M MRR

In this issue, I’ve covered the growth of Todoist, the quietly powerful productivity app that’s helped millions-from busy parents to film crews-bring order to chaos.

Founded by Amir Salihefendić and built without venture capital, Todoist’s growth story is packed with lessons for solopreneurs and bootstrapped founders.

We’ll explore the goods & bads in Todoist’s SEO growth story. The fact that Todoist does $20M ARR without any VC money tells me there’s a lot to learn from, especially from an SEO standpoint.

Business Model

Todoist uses a freemium business model:

Users get a powerful free app for organizing tasks and projects, while optional Pro and Business plans unlock advanced features like reminders, integrations, and team collaboration.

Subscriptions are affordable (around $2–$6/mo). This approach means anyone can boost their productivity at no cost, with the freedom to pay for extra tools as their needs grow.

SEO Lessons To Learn From Todoist:

#1 On-Page SEO:

With a monthly traffic of nearly 725k and ranking for over 211k keywords is a massive win for a simple app like Todoist.

One thing I love (& you should learn from) about Todoist is the content marketing around the target audience’s needs.

Covering categories like “Remote work“ & “Time Management “ shows a product-led-customer-facing content marketing approach, subtly positioning Todoist as a prominent solution for that search intent.

Consider this blog post, for example.

Look how subtly the template is promoted. The visitors discovering Todoist for the first time would love the template, and a considerable number of visitors might even convert into paying customers.

This page ranks in the top 3 high-intent keywords like “organizing your home ideas“ & “space organizing“ with a search volume of around 1100 per month.

Even a 3% conversion from this page alone will get 33 customers every month.

Around 16900 pages are indexed on Google search, and considering that 90%-95% of these indexed pages are optimized for conversions, that’s a lot of customers being acquired at no extra charge for years to come.

Making $20M MRR for a product closing $2-$6 per month tells a lot about content marketing prowess.

#2 Off-Page SEO:

I love this part. Todoist has around 1 million backlinks with an authority score of 62.

Backlinks from The Guardian, NY Times, & Dropbox, and Todoist have gained the trust of both search engines and users.

The thing about building backlinks naturally is to create link-worthy assets.

Here’s an example of a high-intent blog post on the Pomodoro technique that has 824 do-follow backlinks, gets ~4000 visitors organically & ranks for a whopping 3700+ keywords.

Talk about traffic potential, sustainable SEO growth 🔥

One blog post, generating this level of brand value is insane 🙌🏼

To build this level of authority via paid ads would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Alternatively, Todoist spent one time cost on this epic blog post and will reap benefits for years to come.

#3 Technical SEO:

Despite being a mobile-first product, Todoist has done a remarkable job at technical SEO.

I randomly checked the schema markups used for blog posts, and I loved what I saw.

They’ve used BlogPosting & ListItem schema for several blog posts.

However, I checked the downloads page. I didn’t find any schema.

It’s always good to have schema markups in place to help search engines recognize pages without any confusion.

Here are a few schema markups I’d suggest using:

• SoftwareApplication for the main web app & desktop downloads page

• MobileApplication for the mobile downloads page

• Product schema on the home page

Areas Of Improvement & Business Lessons:

1. Start Small, Iterate Quickly

Amir built Todoist’s first version in weeks, using early user feedback to prioritize features like due dates and project folders. Solopreneurs should embrace MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) to validate ideas before scaling.

2. Utilize SEO from day one.

Todoist’s focus on keyword-rich content and mobile optimization in 2007 laid the groundwork for organic growth.

Tools like Semrush can help solopreneurs identify low-competition keywords early.

3. Foster a Community-Driven Culture

Todoist’s template library encourages user-generated content, turning customers into brand advocates.

What can you do now?

• Follow me on LinkedIn to get better at content marketing

• Find your first set of customers by promoting your SaaS here

• Book a call for a 1-on-1 for a personalized content marketing strategy

• Share your thoughts on what your biggest challenge is with growing SEO?