Content Strategy

At BACtrack, I drove organic traffic, free trials, and brand credibility for BACtrack View: the company’s remote alcohol monitoring service. I accomplished this largely via the ONtrack Blog.

Since most people only know about alcohol monitoring because they need it, here’s the explanation: It’s a system - connected breathalyzer + app - people use to prove they’re sober, when they need to be sober. Thousands rely on BACtrack View for child custody purposes, accountability in addiction recovery, and post-DUI proceedings.

Background: When I joined the team, BACtrack View’s blog consisted of a few outdated, under-researched posts. No SEO strategy. No editorial standards. No defined tone of voice. As my Long Island-hailing mother would say: No nothin’. 

So, the VP of Marketing and CEO tasked me with revamping the blog. Revamp I did.

 

 3 GOALS 

1. Become a go-to, genuinely useful resource for customers.

I wanted customers (current and prospective) to see BACtrack View not only as a great service they could subscribe to, but also as a great company they could turn to for advice. A brand they feel understands them and the issues circling their need for alcohol monitoring. One that - in being a fount of actually helpful information and tools - provides value beyond the service for sale.

2. Build credibility.

BACtrack View was locked in a head-to-head battle with a legacy competitor in the alcohol monitoring space. I needed to show that customers could trust our brand, too  - and I saw the blog as a great way to do that. So, I figured: Let’s demonstrate credibility by creating content that's backed by experts, reliable research, and high editorial standards.

3. Make our content YMYL-friendly to capture organic traffic. 

Yes, I wanted to make this blog more than a bid for traffic or SERP real estate. But if a blog starts in the woods, and no one’s there to read it… you get the idea.

 

So, to capture visitors, I needed to cater to the Google and LLM overlords. And to do that, we needed to acknowledge the seriousness of the topics we address - and thus make our content YMYL-friendly. Because our overlords scrutinize YMYL content (anything pertaining to Your Money or Your Life) far more closely, I explored ways to emit “we’re reputable” signals to the algorithms.

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 WHAT I DID 

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1. Branded the BACtrack View blog and gave it a mission.

To make the blog feel like a real destination, I gave it a name and tagline: “ONtrack - Advice to keep your sobriety & alcohol monitoring goals on track.” I created a featured image template, with a winding path to symbolize our users’ complicated journeys, that all posts follow. More importantly, I established a tone and voice: relatable but not casual, positive but not saccharine, and deeply empathetic. 

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2. Created the Expert Board.

 

I chose not to commission your general SEO freelancers to write articles. Instead, I enlisted qualified experts: family law attorneys, addiction specialists, and therapists. Then, to signal their trustworthiness to readers and algorithms alike, we:
 

• Included a “verified expert” check mark and the author’s qualifications (i.e. “MD”) in each byline

• Avoided uncited generalizations (i.e. “Many people struggle with alcohol addiction”) like the plague

• Often mentioned the author’s expertise in the title (i.e. “How to Get Supervised Visitation Removed: A Lawyer Explains”)

• Sometimes had the writer refer to things they’ve seen in their professional experience, in the first person

• Began to add in summaries designed for an LLM to parse

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3. Keyword research, customer interviews. 

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I conducted keyword research in Ahrefs to build up a solid list. I started by compiling keywords in categories we were obvious experts in (i.e. remote alcohol monitoring) - those closest to the “core” of what we do - and worked my way out from there.

 

At the same time, I interviewed dozens of customers. These meetings were invaluable and killed two birds with one stone. The first purpose was to really get inside our customers’ heads - learn their thought process, their use cases, the circumstances surrounding their need for alcohol monitoring, and even how they speak (the terms/phrases they use to describe their situation). And the second was to actually vet candidates for BACtrack View video testimonials and see if they’d be a good fit. 

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4. Created the Resources page.

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Amidst my keyword research, I made an important discovery: While exploring the topics we cover, people search for templates and PDFs. A lot.

 

So, to optimize for these keywords, we gave the people what they wanted: downloadable, expert-created resources alongside posts/guidelines explaining how to use each one. For example, we published a sample alcohol monitoring agreement specifically for child custody, designed to work with BACtrack View. All the resources went on a dedicated Resource page. Each item features an attention-grabbing video reel.

And through all these efforts, we delivered real value to our customers; giving our readers access to valuable advice - advice for which you might owe an expert $$$ per hour - for free. 

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5. Gave the blog a UX makeover.

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Before, the blog was in disarray: a list of unorganized posts, fonts that weren’t particularly readable… not a great reading experience, overall. Our web developer and I worked closely to change that. We changed how articles were laid out, so they looked good on mobile view. We organized all posts into categories, with the categories listed for readers to explore. Furthermore, we added FAQs and a sticky Table of Contents to articles. 

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