Collaborative API platform Stoplight helps companies across industries with quality API design and documentation. When it came to its marketing content, Stoplight didn’t just want quantity, they wanted quality. This meant content that connected with their developer audience and established them as a thought leader in the API-design-first space.

Challenge: Attract and Engage a Technical Audience

Like many hard-working and fast-paced companies, Stoplight struggled to produce impactful marketing content consistently.

The reason will sound familiar to many tech companies—even thriving ones: the marketing team lacked the technical expertise to produce the content that developers crave, while the technical teams were unable to translate intricate developer insights into interesting, well-written articles.

As a result, Stoplight produced developer-facing content infrequently, and their existing articles ranked low on search engine results pages (SERP). Articles that did rank had high bounce rates, a sign they weren’t resonating with Stoplight’s technical audience. Even hiring a variety of content marketers and strategists failed to deliver improved results.

Things changed in 2019 when EveryDeveloper came on board to dig deep into the root causes of Stoplight’s underperformance in content marketing. Introduced through a referral, we started a collaboration to support the company’s online visibility and growth. Our content strategy partnership created engaging, impactful content for Stoplight’s developer audience.

Here’s how we did it.

Solution: Tailored Content Strategy & Steady Content Production

We hit the ground running with some initial research for Stoplight:

• What keywords were developers searching most when it came to API design and documentation?
• What was Stoplight’s competition doing?
• What topics were likely to resonate most with API-focused developers?

We used a two-pronged approach: We cranked up our technical content engine to produce content more consistently and we expanded our research to identify the topics relevant to Stoplight’s audience.

What did our process look like?

1. First, we conducted a content gap assessment. We uncovered the content opportunities Stoplight (and its competitors!) had overlooked. This included topics they hadn’t explored well, or at all.
2. Next, we produced a concept catalog. This is a research-based list of potential themes and clusters of article topics. It also includes the various formats in which we could deliver the content, for example, in-depth guides or think pieces.
3. Finally, we incorporated Stoplight’s feedback to finalize their technical content strategy, which included a prioritized action plan for the next quarter.

Early content pieces were starting to climb SERP rankings and receive attention from the community of developers Stoplight wanted to reach. Bolstered by this additional data, we were able to deliver a steady flow of authentic and engaging technical content.

When working with EveryDeveloper, we have confidence the team will produce high-quality, detailed content for us.

Scott Faust
Head of Growth, Stoplight

We also conducted monthly meetings with Stoplight to incorporate new product features or other changes at the company into our strategic planning and upcoming content execution. This included quarterly refreshes of both the concept catalog and action plan.

Result: 250,000+ Visitors and Thousands of Trial Signups

Stoplight started to see results within the first quarter of our relationship. Not only was their content ranking better, but the visitors remained engaged—many spent multiple minutes reading, visited more Stoplight pages, and signed up for trial accounts to test out Stoplight for themselves!

The content is solid and the partnership is seamless. We’ve seen improved SEO, read time, and a technical developer perspective our marketing team was lacking.

Bailey DeCamillis
Marketing Manager, Stoplight

We produced a mix of content types, from deep educational guides to thought leadership to quick tutorials. Our team contributed to the Stoplight blog, its learning resources, and even the occasional product documentation page. The steady production of strategic content, plus a strong feedback loop with the Stoplight team, allowed us to adjust at least quarterly.

The top-performing piece—API Documentation Best Practices Guide—sees about 100,000 visits per year.

Seven of the top ten Stoplight pages are EveryDeveloper-written articles and almost every top post on the Stoplight blog has an EveryDeveloper staff byline. Many posts, including API Authentication Methods & Examples, attract nearly 10,000 annual visitors, based on traffic estimates by rank-tracking website ahrefs.

Just our top ten pieces of content bring Stoplight 250,000+ visitors every year, representing 30x growth since the start of our partnership five years ago. We’ve published over 100 blog posts, many of which continue to connect with developer audiences.

Stoplight didn’t wait five years to see results in their content marketing. Following our recommendations, the collaboration bore fruit early on—two top 10 guides were produced during the first two quarters of work. These results kept Stoplight going and continued through their successful acquisition by SmartBear in 2023.

Need a tech content strategy partner that can help you connect with your developer audience? You can get results like Stoplight when you collaborate with EveryDeveloper.