Recurly Organic Growth Opportunities

Create country and payment-method specific scorecards showing authorization rates, fraud risk, and local consumer preference. This play establishes Recurly as the global authority on payment performance, attracting businesses looking to expand internationally.

Example Keywords

• “payment method acceptance rate [country]”
• “[payment method] subscription success rate”
• “best recurring payment option in [country]”
• “fraud risk score [payment method] 2025”

Rationale

Businesses scaling globally are desperate for reliable data on which payment methods work best in new markets. By providing this proprietary data, Recurly can capture high-value traffic from decision-makers and become an indispensable resource for international commerce.

Topical Authority

Recurly processes billions in volume across 20+ payment methods, giving it unparalleled first-party success and failure data that no research firm can replicate. While the current site has a single generic payment options page, this play would build a deep moat of authority on global payment performance.

Internal Data Sources

Utilize anonymized gateway authorization and decline logs from Redshift, fraud-score outputs from the Recurly Risk engine, and data from consumer preference surveys to create a uniquely defensible content asset.

Estimated Number of Pages

4,100+ (Covering 205 countries and 20 payment methods)

Develop step-by-step migration guides for every major subscription platform, open-source tool, and home-grown system. This strategy directly targets high-intent customers who are actively looking to switch providers.

Example Keywords

• “migrate from [competitor] to Recurly”
• “[competitor] data migration guide”
• “switch from [competitor] cost”
• “replace [competitor] for [industry]”

Rationale

The moment a company decides to leave a competitor is the highest-intent moment in the sales cycle. These playbooks intercept that intent, providing immense value, building trust, and positioning Recurly as the logical next step, thereby shortening the sales cycle.

Topical Authority

Recurly's solutions and onboarding teams have deep, firsthand knowledge from running hundreds of migrations annually. This play codifies that internal expertise, creating authoritative content that competitors without similar migration experience cannot easily replicate. The domain currently has no indexed pages for these terms.

Internal Data Sources

Leverage internal Jira migration runbooks, API mapping spreadsheets from the Professional Services team, and customer testimonials tagged with “migration win” in Salesforce to create authentic, detailed guides.

Estimated Number of Pages

650+ (Covering 65 competitors and various industry verticals)

Publish jurisdiction-specific compliance summaries for auto-renewal laws, data retention policies, and new 'click-to-cancel' mandates. This play positions Recurly as a critical risk-management partner for subscription businesses.

Example Keywords

• “auto renewal law [state/country]”
• “[state] subscription cancellation rules 2026”
• “subscription compliance checklist [vertical]”
• “GDPR recurring payments obligations”

Rationale

Staying compliant with a patchwork of global subscription laws is a major, high-stakes pain point for businesses. By providing clear, up-to-date guidance, Recurly can attract organic traffic from legal, finance, and leadership personas and build immense trust.

Topical Authority

The site already has one successful post on the 'FTC click to cancel' rule, demonstrating an audience for this topic. This play expands that success by leveraging the internal expertise of Recurly's legal and security teams, who already curate these compliance matrices, creating a defensible content moat.

Internal Data Sources

Use the legal department's internal regulatory tracker from Confluence, PDF filings of enacted bills, and the RevRec tax and surcharge map for each jurisdiction to create content that is both accurate and difficult to replicate.

Estimated Number of Pages

550+ (Covering 275 jurisdictions and 2 vertical versions)

Generate static data pages dedicated to subscription churn rates for specific industries and regions. This provides invaluable, proprietary data that businesses can use to benchmark their own performance.

Example Keywords

• “average churn rate for [industry]”
• “[industry] churn benchmarks 2025”
• “subscription churn rate in [region]”
• “good churn rate for [industry] SaaS”

Rationale

Every subscription business is obsessed with churn and how they compare to their peers. By providing this proprietary benchmark data at a granular level, Recurly creates a powerful magnet for its ideal customers and establishes itself as the definitive source for subscription metrics.

Topical Authority

The domain already ranks for high-volume keywords like 'churn definition' and publishes a general 'Churn Rate Benchmarks' report, proving strong topical relevance. This play leverages that authority and expands it by using Recurly's unique dataset of over 64 million subscribers to create hundreds of specific, long-tail pages.

Internal Data Sources

Use anonymized Recurly billing logs to get actual churn rates by industry (NAICS code), ingest existing annual benchmark reports (CSV/PDF), and use region/currency mappings from the revenue recognition module.

Estimated Number of Pages

800+ (Covering 200 industries and 4 major regions)

Create a comprehensive library of lookup pages for every payment gateway and bank decline code. These pages will explain what each code means and provide actionable steps for resolution.

Example Keywords

• “visa decline code 05 meaning”
• “stripe error code [code] fix”
• “how to resolve mastercard decline 14”
• “subscription payment failed [code]”

Rationale

Payment declines are a frequent, high-pain, and poorly understood problem for online businesses. A library that demystifies these codes and offers solutions becomes an evergreen, indispensable resource, capturing a massive volume of long-tail, problem-aware search traffic.

Topical Authority

The site has a single blog post that ranks for generic 'credit card decline messages' but has no coverage for specific, long-tail codes. Recurly's platform handles millions of declines, giving it first-party data on decline frequency, causes, and recovery tactics that is far more valuable than generic financial blogs.Internal Data Sources

Use the internal gateway response code dictionary from the engineering wiki, aggregated decline frequency and recovery data from Payments Orchestration dashboards, and snippets from Zendesk support tickets to explain root causes.

Estimated Number of Pages

3,000+ (Covering 300 decline codes across 10 major gateways)

Improvements Summary

Revise high-intent product and solution pages targeting subscription management keywords to improve rankings from page 2 to page 1. Expand content depth, optimize on-page elements, and add comparison, FAQ, and industry-specific sections.

Improvements Details

Update page titles and H1s with primary keywords like 'subscription management software' and 'subscription billing platform.' Expand copy to 1,000–1,500 words, add FAQ accordions with schema, and integrate comparison tables against competitors such as Chargebee and Stripe Billing. Launch supporting blog guides, create a comparison hub, and strengthen internal linking with keyword-rich anchors. Add product videos, downloadable resources, and implement technical improvements like schema markup and improved page speed.

Improvements Rationale

These actions address thin content and low keyword coverage, aiming to capture more high-intent search traffic and improve organic visibility for valuable terms. Comparison content and internal linking help capture competitor-related queries and guide users through the funnel. Technical and CRO updates support better user experience, higher engagement, and improved search performance, driving more qualified leads and pipeline growth.