Mimecast Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You rank for 37k organic keywords and drive about 90k monthly organic visits (≈ $554k in equivalent ad spend value).
- Your Authority Score is 54, supported by 3.1m backlinks from 70k referring domains—strong trust, but not translating into outsized non-brand traffic yet.
- Organic traffic is heavily navigational/brand-led: top keywords include “mimecast” (33k vol) and “mimecast login” (15k vol), and top pages are the homepage (~31k visits) plus multiple login/admin portals (~21k+ combined).
Growth Opportunity
- You have clear room to close the gap vs Proofpoint (~167k visits; 70k keywords) by expanding your non-brand footprint beyond a handful of winners like /content/malware-protection/ (~3% of traffic) and security explainers (e.g., zip bomb, tailgating, DKIM/SPF/DMARC).
- Build more product-led and comparison-driven acquisition (e.g., email security, secure email gateway, pricing, competitor replace/compare pages) to capture higher-intent searches, not just “what is” queries.
- Scale a repeatable content system around the themes already working (phishing, malware, insider risk, compliance, DMARC tooling) and localize it across your large international site structure (e.g., /fr, /de, /it, /es) to multiply coverage.
Assessment
You have strong brand demand and solid authority, but too much organic traffic is concentrated in login/navigation pages. The main upside is systematically growing non-brand, high-intent security and product keywords to compete more directly with Proofpoint. AirOps can help you operationalize this expansion at scale with a consistent content engine.
Competition at a Glance
Analysis of 3 competitors (Proofpoint, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and Barracuda Networks) shows Mimecast competing in a landscape where one player operates at outlier scale and one direct peer leads the mid-market pack.
Across the full set of domains, mimecast.com ranks #3 in monthly organic search traffic with 90,250 visits, and #3 in ranking keywords with 37,132 keywords (behind Microsoft and Proofpoint, ahead of Barracuda).
The top-performing competitor is microsoft.com with 57,709,138 monthly organic visits and 15,822,210 ranking keywords, representing a very large visibility gap versus all others. Within the closer peer group, Mimecast holds a clear lead over Barracuda but trails Proofpoint (167,086 visits; 70,017 keywords), indicating Mimecast’s market position is strongest as a solid mid-tier contender with the primary gap being overall search footprint versus the leading specialist competitor—while Microsoft sets a broad-reach benchmark beyond the specialist set.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
A programmatic library of landing pages detailing how Mimecast integrates with specific SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and ITSM tools to automate threat response. This play captures high-intent technical evaluators looking for ecosystem compatibility.
Example Keywords
- "{SIEM Name} email security integration"
- "{SOAR Name} email incident automation"
- "{IdP Name} conditional access for email threats"
- "{EDR Name} email telemetry correlation"
Rationale
Security teams prioritize tools that play well with their existing stack. By providing detailed integration guides, Mimecast can capture traffic from engineers in the middle of the evaluation process.
Topical Authority
Mimecast's existing developer documentation and API references provide a strong foundation for ranking in technical integration queries.
Internal Data Sources
Use Mimecast API documentation, existing integration packages, and support KB patterns to generate differentiated, technically accurate content.
Estimated Number of Pages
1,500+ (Covering hundreds of tools across multiple use cases and deployment patterns)
A collection of comparison and migration pages targeting users of competing security products. These pages provide step-by-step migration checklists and feature-by-feature comparisons to facilitate the switching process.
Example Keywords
- "replace {Competitor} email security"
- "migrate from {Competitor} to Mimecast"
- "{Competitor} vs Mimecast for enterprise"
- "{Competitor} migration checklist"
Rationale
Capturing users who are dissatisfied with their current vendor is a high-conversion strategy. Providing a clear path to migration reduces the perceived friction of switching platforms.
Topical Authority
As a recognized leader in the Secure Email Gateway space, Mimecast is a natural destination for users looking for more robust alternatives.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage internal win/loss notes, competitive feature matrices, and customer success stories from users who have successfully migrated.
Estimated Number of Pages
800+ (Targeting a wide range of legacy and cloud-native competitors)
A programmatic library of "how-to" configuration guides for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace administrators. These pages solve specific security and governance tasks while positioning Mimecast as the necessary enhancement layer.
Example Keywords
- "configure {Control} in Microsoft 365"
- "PowerShell command to {Mail Task}"
- "audit {Event} in Google Workspace"
- "email security alert for {Scenario} in M365"
Rationale
IT admins frequently search for specific configuration steps and scripts. Providing these solutions builds trust and places Mimecast in front of the primary users of the platform.
Topical Authority
Mimecast's deep integration with cloud mail providers and existing blog content on Microsoft governance establishes strong topical relevance.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize product deployment guides, reference architectures, and support "known-good" configuration baselines.
Estimated Number of Pages
2,500+ (Covering hundreds of controls across GUI and CLI methods)
A massive directory of SMTP error codes and Non-Delivery Report (NDR) explanations. These pages provide immediate value to admins troubleshooting mail flow issues, a high-volume and urgent search category.
Example Keywords
- "550 5.7.26 fix"
- "451 4.7.650 Office 365"
- "Gmail 421 4.7.0 temporary rate limit"
- "Exchange Online NDR {Code} meaning"
Rationale
When mail flow stops, admins search for error codes immediately. This play drives massive traffic from the core target audience during a critical moment of need.
Topical Authority
Mimecast's position as a global email gateway gives it the technical credibility to be the definitive source for mail flow troubleshooting.
Internal Data Sources
Use anonymized support ticket data, NDR log taxonomies, and internal mail-flow runbooks to provide accurate fixes.
Estimated Number of Pages
5,000+ (Covering codes across all major mail providers and gateway vendors)
A programmatic library documenting how attackers impersonate trusted brands and suppliers. This play targets the long-tail of specific brand-related phishing queries that employees and admins search for.
Example Keywords
- "{Brand} invoice email scam signs"
- "{Brand} shared document phishing lookalike"
- "fake {Brand} email how to verify"
- "supplier impersonation prevention for accounts payable"
Rationale
Phishing lures often revolve around specific, trusted brands. Documenting these patterns at scale allows Mimecast to capture traffic from users questioning the legitimacy of an email.
Topical Authority
Mimecast's Threat Intelligence Hub and focus on Human Risk Management make it a highly credible source for identifying scam patterns.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage telemetry from the Mimecast threat network, including common lure themes, subject lines, and redirect patterns.
Estimated Number of Pages
10,000+ (Covering thousands of global enterprise brands and common lure types)
Improvements Summary
Rewrite the DMARC, DKIM, and SPF educational pages into definitive guides with snippet-ready definitions, step-by-step publishing instructions, troubleshooting sections, and 8–12 PAA-mapped FAQs. Add FAQPage/HowTo schema, concrete record examples, and stronger internal links/CTAs that bridge to the DMARC Analyzer product page, supported by a new “Email Authentication” hub and 4–6 long-tail articles.
Improvements Details
Prioritize page-level keyword alignment: /content/dmarc-policy/ for “dmarc policy” + “what is a dmarc policy,” /content/dkim/ for “what is dkim in email” + “what is a dkim key,” and /content/how-to-create-an-spf-txt-record/ for “dns txt record spf” + “how to create an spf record.” Add copy-and-paste templates and examples (DMARC p=none/quarantine/reject, DKIM selector/key length, SPF lookup limits), plus an “SPF vs DKIM vs DMARC” comparison table; include author/reviewer bios, RFC/vendor citations, and a visible “Last updated.” Build a hub-and-spoke internal linking model (hub → pillars → /products/dmarc-analyzer/) and add contextual in-body links from related threat/security pages; verify indexability/canonicals and improve LCP on guide templates.
Improvements Rationale
The payload shows strong demand (notably “dmarc policy” at 1,900 SV) but low traffic capture across the cluster, suggesting pages are under-performing vs competing guides and may be stuck near positions 11–20. Expanding depth, adding schema and PAA-driven FAQs, and improving snippet formatting increases SERP feature coverage and CTR, while tighter internal linking passes authority and creates a clearer path from education to DMARC Analyzer conversions.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
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