Glassdoor (HR Marketplace)

Glassdoor built an enormous SEO moat by turning user review data into link-worthy content. They template job-salary pages by title and location, and each year auto-generate report pages like “Best Places to Work” and “Top CEOs” from review data. These data-driven reports (gender pay gap studies, culture vs. cash research, etc.) are distributed via press and social, earning massive press coverage and backlinks.

For example, Glassdoor has amassed over 520 million backlinks from ~109k referring domains. This authority allows Glassdoor to rank for almost every workplace query.

Strategy

Data-rich evergreen assets. By publishing annual lists and studies from their employee-review dataset (e.g. Best Places to Work, Gender Pay Gap reports), Glassdoor creates fresh news hooks that media and companies link to eagerly. They also template individual company pages (salaries, reviews, interview questions) for every role/location.

Execution

Automated report generation. Glassdoor’s system pulls real review data to auto-build pages annually (salary Q&A by title/location, top company rankings, etc.). Each year, featured companies and CEOs amplify the content, sharing and linking back to Glassdoor.

Results

Huge organic traffic. Glassdoor now gets 17.2M visits per month on .com alone (70% from organic search). Its data reports generate consistent PR pickup; annually dozens of big outlets reference Glassdoor’s findings.

Impact

Industry leadership & valuation. This content fortress protected Glassdoor’s SEO dominance in jobs. The resulting traffic and brand authority helped drive its $1.2B acquisition by Recruit in 2018. The backlinked, data-driven content essentially secured Glassdoor’s position as the go-to career site.