The Best SEO Masterclass You’ll See This Week:
How Canva Gets 270M Monthly Visitors Without Paying for Ads
TLDR / Key Summary:
- Canva gets 270M monthly organic visits and drives $100M+ revenue from SEO.
- They dominate Google using 7 powerful strategies anyone can copy.
- This isn’t theory. It’s a $26B playbook that prints traffic and converts users.
Want to grow traffic like Canva? Steal this.
They built an SEO machine that:
- Ranks for everything from “resume templates” to “color meanings”
- Converts users on the first click
- Pulls in over 270 million visitors a month
- Generates 35 million backlinks
- Works in 190 countries
- And does it with a freemium product that gets users hooked
Here’s how you copy their exact strategy:
1. Programmatic SEO: 100M+ Visitors From Pages Built at Scale
Canva didn’t build one good SEO page. They built thousands.
3 main types:
- Builder pages (e.g. Resume Builder, Logo Maker)
- Template pages (e.g. YouTube Banner Template)
- Create pages (e.g. Create CV, Create Poster)
These pages are optimized for keywords with clear intent.
Someone searching “create logo” wants a tool, not a blog post.
Canva gives them that tool right on the page.
Even at a 1% conversion rate, they’re adding over 1 million new users a month.
2. Product-Led Conversions: Traffic That Instantly Converts
Most websites rank, then redirect traffic somewhere else.
Canva doesn’t.
They give people exactly what they searched for on the page—with a working version of the product.
- You searched “business card template”? You’re now editing one.
- You searched “resume builder”? You’re building it now.
That’s how you turn SEO traffic into users—without asking them to sign up first.
3. Content Clusters: Authority Through Organization
This is textbook topical authority—but on steroids.
Example:
- Main folder: /colors
- Core page: /colors/color-meanings
- Subpage: /colors/color-meanings/blue
They’ve built out 3,800+ pages just in the “color” cluster.
That section alone drives 2 million monthly visits.
Grouped, linked, and ranked. That’s how you own a topic.
4. Internal Linking: High-Authority Pages Feed the Rest
High-ranking pages don’t just exist—they give power to others.
Canva links from strong pages (like “Flyer Templates”) to more specific subpages (like “Restaurant Flyers”).
This passes link equity and relevance.
One link is often enough to get a subpage to page one.
The takeaway: If you’re not linking internally, you’re wasting your own authority.
How To Video:
5. Backlinks: 35M Strong. Built, Not Begged.
Canva has 35 million backlinks from 338,000 websites.
Sure, they did outreach and PR—but they also engineered backlinks by:
A. Creating link-worthy content
- Example: “Ultimate Guide to Font Combinations”
- Earned 2.8K backlinks organically
B. App integrations
New apps integrate with Canva → Write about it → Link back to Canva.
C. Acquisitions
They bought:
- Pexels (DR 92)
- Pixabay (DR 92)
- Flourish (DR 84)
- Remove.bg (DR 81)
- and many more!
Each of those sites now links back to Canva. Instantly boosts authority.
Got other sites? Link them to your main brand. It’s free SEO juice.
6. Localized & Multilingual SEO: Go Global, Not Just Local
Canva isn’t just ranking in the U.S.
They localized content and built versions of their site in dozens of languages.
Results:
- 34M visits/month from Latin America
- 15M from Brazil
- 12M from Indonesia
Most businesses never do this. Canva did, and now they dominate markets others forgot.
7. Trending Content: Real-Time Relevance
During the pandemic, people searched “Zoom backgrounds” like crazy.
Canva launched a page: Free Zoom Background Templates
They started ranking within days—and pulled in over 100K monthly visits from that one trend.
They still do this today. If there’s a spike in demand, they create a page instantly.
Find the trend, own the search result.
Final Thought
270 million visitors a month didn’t happen by luck.
Canva:
- Created scalable content
- Let the product sell itself
- Built backlinks like a media empire
- Covered global markets
- Rode every trend
You can copy all of it.
Don’t just read this. Do something with it.
If you need help creating this type of organic strategy, review our SEO Agency Services and we'll help!
