Grammarly is an American cloud-based writing assistant software that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes. It uses AI to identify and search for an appropriate replacement for each error it identifies in a piece of text.
Grammarly recently reached a whopping $13 000 000 000 valuation after raising $200 000 000 in an investment round. This made it rise to become one of the top 10 tech startups in the USA, according to Yahoo Finance.
It helps over 30 000 000 students, digital professionals, and writers to fix their text to meet their desired expectations fast.
Grammarly has built an impressive content moat based on spelling and grammar searches that people make on search engines. It attracts over 30 000 000 visitors per month who aim to fix mistakes and typos in their text.
This is an extremely competitive space but currently, Grammarly is outpacing veteran companies in the niche like Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com.
In this article, we are analyzing how the content side of the Grammarly website attracts over 30 000 000 visitors per month.
The Main Problem that Grammarly Targets
These days, developing technology has made people forget how to spell some words because of the core dependence of auto-correct features on mobile devices.
However, most PCs do not have that feature which leaves the people with the option to check on Google for correct spellings.
That is exactly why we see 70 000 people searching each month for the correct way to spell the word "traveling."
Traffic Statistics
Right now, Grammarly is driving around 9 000 000 organic searches from 1 100 000 keywords per month to their blog content. That bucket of traffic is worth about $2 800 000 per month to them.
And most of it’s driven by people searching for spelling and grammar tips.
Grammarly’s content can be broken down into 3 different categories:
- Common Typos Content
- Grammar Questions Content
- Social Driven Content
The Common Typos and Grammar Questions content is built for search from its core but the other content is mainly created to share on social media.
Common Typos Content
As you probably could have guessed, the Common Typos content targets people searching for common misspellings, such as:
- Happy New Year — 830 000 monthly searches
- Affect Vs Effect — 414 000 monthly searches
- Traveling — 156 000 monthly searches
- Separate — 70 000 monthly searches
- Bare with me — 40 000 monthly searches
Right now, Grammarly ranks on the first or second spot for almost all of those keywords above, as well as millions more like that. If there is a random long-tail keyword related to the misspelling of “definitely,” you can bet Grammarly is ranking for it.
You could build an incredible content moat just by targeting a few of these keywords. And Grammarly has done a great job of doing just that.
For example, the page that teaches you how to spell traveling drives about 87 000 sessions per month on an extremely difficult keyword.
The page on Grammarly that clarifies the right way to say Happy New Year drives around 20 000 sessions per month. For those who are curious, “Happy New Year” is commonly misspelled as "Happy New Years."
Here are a few of the other top Typo Content pages:
- Affect vs. Effect
- Wether vs. Weather vs Whether
- Traveling
- Whos vs. Whose
- To vs. Too
Most of these concepts were taught in elementary school but still get 10 000 searches per month.
Grammar Questions Content
The second category of content, Grammar Questions, follows a very similar pattern. But instead of searching for a common misspelling, people are searching for more complex grammatical concepts, such as:
- Metaphor — 318 000 searches
- Oxford Comma — 106 000 searches
- Passive voice — 46 000 searches
- Possessive noun — 23 000 searches
- Present perfect — 17 000 searches
With this approach, Grammarly has been able to dominate some important featured snippets on Google search.
Some of their other Grammar Question pages cover:
- What is the Oxford Comma
- Active vs Passive Voice
- Adverb
- Simple present
- Nouns
The page about the Oxford Comma receives nearly 90 000 visitors per month, and the page that defines nouns receives over 100 000 visitors to Grammarly as well.
As you can see, they have built a very impressive content moat based on common typos and grammatical errors.
Now, a lot of these searches are going to be no-click searches, and this is a problem across the whole industry so it’s not like Merriam-Webster is going to drive more traffic on similar terms.
But Grammarly understands exactly who is searching for these terms and how to position their product as a solution, and their competitors can’t match that. That is a key reason why they are worth $13 000 000!
Editor Tools and Extensions
Grammarly has found its product-market fit with all its incredible editor tools and extensions. There’s an incredible amount of demand for a tool that helps people communicate effectively, especially as the professional world shifted remotely over the past few years.
You can see this in their messaging across their entire site and social media shares.
Powerful Landing Pages
Grammarly understands its customers and market that’s why it applies a unique landing page tactic that way better than its competitors. Once you see this tactic, you will understand exactly why Grammarly targets all those keywords from the previous section.
And why it doesn’t matter that most of these keywords drive no-click searches. Let’s take a look at one of their most valuable pieces of content, the landing page that shows how to use "effect" and "affect" correctly.
When you get to this page, this is the first thing you see:
Not the answer you were looking for, but something better. A solution.
Grammarly knows that the people searching for typos and grammatical questions don’t really want to learn anything, but these users just want to avoid making a mistake in their blog post, email, social media post, school work, or other written content.
Without saying much, this shows a new user the immediate impact of using Grammarly.
Once they start using the extension, a user would never have to think about using the right word or how "definitely" is spelled correctly.
That is massive, especially for people who aren’t confident writers or who don’t want to remember every grammar rule.
It’s like this on nearly all of the other Common Typo and Grammar Questions landing pages too:
Popups like this impact the users negatively in most cases but this is one of the few instances where a popup is tailored exactly to their ideal user.
Grammarly is built for those people who need a large helping hand when it comes to spelling or grammar, not just professional writers.
That’s why this popup is such a killer when it comes to conversions because it hits on those pain points before the user really even reads the content.
Unlike most content marketing efforts, Grammarly is hoping you don’t actually read the content. It’s just a tool that they are using to get that popup in front of more people!
Do you really want to learn how to use an oxford comma, or would you rather have Grammarly just do it for you?
Of course, even professional writers would like to put all of that on an automated tool.
This simple tactic that likely drives a ton of conversion has probably solved the no-click problem that has been rising over the past few years.
Otherwise, why would Grammarly be investing in all this content? Or running ads on extremely competitive terms? Exactly, they wouldn’t be.
Conclusion
Grammarly has been able to find product-market fit and product content fit at the same time, and this is what enables them to reach over 30 000 000 monthly visitors. They truly understand who is searching for these Common Typos and Grammar Questions, unlike any of their main competitors. The content moat they have built around those keywords is an incredible testament to that idea as well.
Grammarly knows that their users don’t really want to learn all of these concepts, they just want to sound competent. Most people would say that Grammarly’s main user is a writer or someone who wants to improve their craft. But in reality, it’s mainly someone who doesn’t want to sound dumb in an email or document.
