Growing OTTplay from 386K to 9.86M organic users, and turning search into a subscription channel

Sr. SEO Manager · HT Media Group · Mar 2024 – Mar 2026

386K

BASELINE

→

24 months

9.86M

RESULT

Organic users, OTTplay

41.8K

Discover sessions

12,000

Subscriptions from organic

113K

AI answer appearances

~2,000

Pieces published monthly

ROLE

Sr. SEO Manager, in-house

DURATION

24 months

SCOPE

Full organic ownership: technical, content, Discover, and the search-to-subscription funnel

TEAM

Editorial and SEO analysts

The starting point

OTTplay had 386,000 organic users and a content strategy that wasn’t one. The technical foundation was broken — crawl issues, indexation gaps, site architecture that scattered authority instead of concentrating it. Publishing more content into that environment would have been expensive and useless.

Recovery first, growth second

Crawlability. Indexation. Site architecture. Page speed. None of it is glamorous and none of it is optional. We fixed the foundation before publishing a single new piece. Most content-led growth projects skip this step and wonder why traffic doesn’t compound.

Ranking the terms that matter — "OTT" and beyond

We didn’t chase volume. We went after intent clusters that sat closest to a streaming decision — OTT availability pages, regional language content, release calendars — the queries where someone is actively choosing what to watch and where to watch it.

Scaling to roughly 2,000 pieces a month

The hard part of volume isn’t producing it — it’s holding quality while you do. We built content frameworks, editorial guidelines, and quality gates that kept E-E-A-T standards intact at scale. Most sites that try to publish at this volume degrade within three months. The gates are the only reason this one didn’t.

Google Discover as a growth channel

Most SEO teams treat Discover as unpredictable. It isn’t — it’s a content format problem. We optimised for the right content format, imagery, and topical momentum, and produced 244,000 impressions as a result.

Search → subscription: the funnel that paid

Traffic was an input, not the goal. We built a funnel where organic users moved from discovery content to free-tier access to paid subscription. Free-tier content pages kept users engaged. Conversion pages closed. Editorial and product finally spoke the same language.

AI visibility as a by-product of good SEO

By the time AI Overviews launched in India, OTTplay was already the authoritative source for OTT queries. 113,000 AI answer appearances weren’t a separate strategy. They were a direct result of building content that answered questions better than anyone else.

Want the same playbook for your brand? I now work with growth teams directly as an AI SEO consultant, helping them rank on Google and get cited in AI answers.