Thought leadership SEO: How a one-person business outranks major consulting firms
Last year, I was researching OKR processes. Later on, the Dilts Pyramid. No matter the exact topic: if it was related to digital consulting or leadership, digitaleneuordnung.de ranked for it.
Being the SEO nerd I am, I was curious how they did it and just had to take a look under the hood. And I found out that Digitale Neuordnung (DNO) clearly knows what they're doing.
Here are some of their top rankings in Germany:
What surprised me most wasn’t the rankings, though.
It was the realization that there's just a single person behind it all: Andreas Diehl.
So I wondered: How does a single consultant run a high-performing website that outperforms big consulting agencies with ten or even a hundred times the headcount?
Luckily, I got an hour of Andreas’ precious time, and we deep-dived together into the DNO universe. The following SEO example is split up into three sections, which outline Andreas’ unconventional approach to creating content and running the website: Educating, Studying, and Marketing.
1. Educating
One of his primary motivations for creating content is educating clients.
As a one-person business, he has limited time. Therefore, he wants to use it wisely, and answering the same questions over and over again was not something that fit into that vision.
To address this, he leverages his written content to create alignment and define a common language in order to make face-to-face sessions even more productive.
Therefore, his articles need to do more than just make sense to him—they have to answer clients' most pressing questions in a clear, concise, and easily digestible manner.
The published content became a powerful tool—not only to explain concepts to existing clients but also to give prospective customers a glimpse of what it might be like to work with him.
Why is this relevant for SEO?
Talking to customers helps him find relevant topics and keywords
What Andreas got right, without having to invest time into market segmentation, customer personas, or keyword research, was creating the right content for the right audience. His day to day consulting work creates a steady stream of new, relevant ideas.
The mistake many junior SEO experts make is to spend too much time in tools, and too little interacting with the actual audience. Keyword tools will tell you how often a certain phrase is searched for in Google, but not who is actually entering it. And they unknowingly assume that all traffic is equal.
If you’re running a consulting business, having a couple of CEOs or managers read your article will definitely create more opportunities than having hundreds of students do the same.
Andreas' commitment to educating clients drives him to only create content that delivers real value. There is simply no point in creating carbon copies of what’s already out there.
This means going beyond simple definitions and answering the hard questions. Andreas has learned over the years what these questions are and has found ways to answer them.
How exactly? This is what we look at next.
2. Studying
In order to answer the hard questions, Andreas told us, that he first had to better understand what he knows and doesn’t know. To him, writing is thinking.
One of his favorite quotes stems from Bertrand Russell:
“Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”
Being a very structured thinker is, according to him, one of his biggest assets as a consultant and the reason why he is able to deliver so much value to clients in the first place.
To really understand and then explain things, he likes to break them down into their fundamental parts and rearrange them. This is also where the name of his company stems from. Initially coined by a good friend of Andreas, “Digitale Neuordnung” loosely translates to “Digital Reorganization” and describes exactly what Andreas likes to do most.
Why is this relevant for SEO?
Taking topics apart helps him nail keyword targeting
Breaking things down into their most elementary parts helps Andreas nail keyword targeting without needing to spend time in keyword tools.
When researching and writing, he might start with a topic, just to discover that there are actually two ideas hidden inside it. This discovery inevitably leads him to write two separate articles instead of just one.
Therefore, no two articles are covering the same topic. All of them aim to be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (also known as “MECE” in the consulting world): instead of competing for the same keyword, they actually complement each other.
Going down the rabbit hole helps him build topical authority
While content around a certain topic can never be truly exhaustive, as there is always one more article to write, going down the rabbit hole and writing down everything that he knows helps Andreas stand out.
He might have started with writing a single article first, but he didn’t stop there.
So far, he has written 21 content pieces around OKRs. The introduction article explains the OKR method, while all the following content pieces highlight specific aspects that readers find interesting or might be struggling with as they try to apply the framework to their business.
Thus, he has built what SEO experts call topical authority: a website showcasing a high level of expertise around a certain topic that is rewarded by Google with better rankings for all related content.
3. Marketing
Usually, it's a problem when marketing comes last. Not for DNO. Andreas has decided who to write for, what to write about, what's in and out of scope, and which questions need to be answered—all without thinking about marketing specifically.
Contrary to the opinions of many marketers, he doesn't believe in forcing prospects down an artificial marketing funnel and is convinced that prospects convert when they're ready.
Why is this relevant for SEO?
Using content to guide customers toward the right solution
Rather than trying to turn as many people into an MQL via e-book downloads as quickly as possible and bombarding them with sales calls and drip campaigns, Andreas offers a universe of high-quality content that anyone can access, at any time.
(He actually lets you download the OKR e-book without having to enter your e-mail. Crazy!)
A closer look at Andreas' OKR content reveals that he has covered the entire customer journey, from unaware to most aware, offering help whenever someone needs it. Moreover, he offers content for various levels, from beginner to expert.
This ensures that regardless of where you are on your journey, DNO has the right content to help you make the next step.
Once someone is interested in working with him, he again intuitively follows current best practices (that, for example, are echoed in April Dunford’s new book Sales Pitch). Andreas’ content does the selling for him and guides customers to the right solution by helping them make sense of their options (e.g., OKR consulting vs OKR coaching, see below) and showcasing which services might be suited to their individual needs.
While his approach to marketing might be counterintuitive at first, we should not forget that he also invests a lot in web design, development, and UX. Matter of fact, he just relaunched his website a couple of weeks ago, constantly improving the user experience and making it as easy as possible for readers to find new content and take the next steps.
How I’d replicate this
Stay close to your customers
Instead of brainstorming and coming up with fictional personas, we encourage you to talk directly to your customers. I still work on customer projects to this day and additionally run multiple customer interviews every year. If you currently lack direct client contact, interview client-facing colleagues to collect insights or ask them to make an introduction. If you pay close attention, you’ll find out exactly what kind of questions keep customers up at night and what content formats they prefer.
Apply critical thinking
Once you know what to write about, start by getting to know your audience’s language, the hard questions and pain points. Think about what message you want to convey with each content piece and how you intend to structure your story or argument. Again, reach out to subject-matter experts in your company if you’re unsure how to go about this. Too often, marketers find a relevant topic but resort to letting AI write the content. This is lazy thinking and if you’re in the professional service industry like Andreas, your ability to think critically, develop your own point of view and solve hard problems is exactly what clients pay you for.
Help people move along the customer journey
Many customers might initially be interested in solving just a single problem. This is your foot in the door. Andreas has written 21 articles about OKRs. The more finely woven the net of subtopics you cover, the better your chances of being visible with your content and attracting, engaging and converting them. When investing in content, we always advise starting at the end of the customer journey or bottom of the funnel. Even the biggest content hub will not generate any leads if your prospects can’t make sense of the products or services you are offering and how they compare to similar offerings or alternatives.
Special thanks go out to Andreas Diehl, who transparently shared his thinking and processes with me, and Joeline Fruchi, who helped me write and edit this example.