How I build Pxl's SEO Strategy with Mini Tools and Directories

The first couple of months after I acquired Pxl in May, I spent most of my time talking to existing customers understanding how happy they are with the product and what they are still missing.

I'm happy to say that Pxl is growing and has been growing steadily especially after the acquisition, although I haven't fully figured out the 1~2 key channels that deliver consistent growth yet.

My hypothesis is that SEO will become an important growth driver, as I consider Pxl a search-driven product rather than a discovery-driven product. And most importantly, SEO can be seen as a moat, since it's hard to replicate and takes time to materialize.

For my long-term SEO strategy, I'm focusing on two core pillars, mini tools and directories.

Let's see why they are important, but first let's talk about the elephant in the room.

What will the future of search be in the context of LLMs?

I don't think Google as we know it will disappear, but many users will start their multimodal searches with LLMs for more specific queries like "What TV should I buy?" or "How do I fix this issue?" and attach a photo to it.

LLMs are great at retrieving and summarizing information quickly, so SEO will need to adapt. Simple information retrieval will be handled more easily by LLMs, which means content needs to be structured in a way they can access and synthesize efficiently, if you want to be found.

However, for more complex tasks – like using interactive tools to get something done — LLMs won’t always offer the best user experience, because chat interfaces offer a limited user experience and halucination is still a relevant problem.

As SEO evolves, balancing optimization for LLM-based searches with maintaining traditional tools for complex tasks will be key, especially optimizing further down the funnel:

Contrary to popular belief, AI and large language models (LLMs) have transformed SEO, not rendered it obsolete. AI now dominates the start of the search process—top-of-funnel—but SEO remains vital in mid-funnel search, where users seek various options.

– Eli Schwartz on Lenny's Podcast

Mini tools are the future of SEO

Have you ever searched online for a quick way to count words or to convert an image from one format to another?

Bingo, you searched for mini tools. Those tools are immensly useful for one specific task, are free to use and deliver value with little friction.

To me, they are ideal to attract potential customers, way better than a 20 minutes blog article on how to increase your LinkedIn following (btw are we connected yet?)

My approach to creating mini tools is

1. Understanding what my ideal customer is searching for online
2. Creating something of immense value for them
3. Getting them interested in Pxl, the main product behind the mini tool

Before I start creating a tool, I check how hard it will be to rank for the keywords I aim for and how much monthly traffic they will attract.

Once I identified an interesting oportunity, I start building, but... what you have to know is that I'm not a software engineer.

I actually let Claude and ChatGPT do the coding for me and this has been working exceptionally well, as you can see below:

Some of the tools I created are simple LLM wrappers, which oftentimes is the very point of it: LLMs make it easy to deliver value with less effort.

You can find an overview of all free Pxl mini tools at www.pxl.to/tools (more to come)

A directory of the best 49 URL shorteners

Besides mini tools, you should know that I have a thing for directories. They are relatively easy to create and maintain, serve one purpose very well and, if done right, are indexed by Google within just a few weeks.

A couple of years ago I started working on a Ruby script which, at the time, was already 3~4 years old and not maintained anymore. I think by now it must be close to 8 years old, but I managed to continuosly improve it:

• It generates generate static HTML sites and interlinks them (perfect for SEO)
• It only uses a simple CSV file as database (easy to work with)
• It's user interface is based on Bootstrap (basic design works best)

When I was doing domain research, I discovered that URL-Shortener.io was available again. I checked archive.org and while it seems that previously an actual URL shortener was built on top of it, it was now for sale.

That was perfect, since it already had backlinks and some reputation in the space.

I quickly bought it and with the help of LLMs and freelancers from Fiverr, it took me about two weeks to get the new directory live:

Today, it has over 2,300 automatically generated pages and it attracted about 200 clicks from Google in the first four weeks alone just by putting the directory online – nothing else.

The total cost to date was $200, including domain, Fiverr freelancers and LLM subscriptions. There are no ongoing costs, as the hosting is covered by Netlify's free plan and the database is simply a Google Sheet.

Edit

(24.09.24) Added Free Url Unshortener

(01.10.24) Added Free Open Graph Debugger

(08.10.24) Added Free PDF Hosting with Analytics