How Canva's Templates are Successful in SEO

Canva’s success in SEO is largely due to its structured content strategy, especially its Template pages. These pages drive a significant portion of the platform’s organic traffic, helping Canva outperform competitors.

In this article, we’ll explore how Canva has structured its templates, the impact of its internal linking strategy, and how backlinks contribute to its SEO dominance.

What are Templates in Canva?

In Canva, Templates are pre-designed layouts that help users create various visual content like presentations, posters, social media posts, flyers, business cards, resumes, and more, without needing advanced design skills.

Structure of Templates

Canva's template pages are among the most successful content types on the platform. They follow a pillar-cluster structure, where parent templates serve as the central hub, and child templates target specific SEO searchers. For instance, one of Canva’s most successful template categories is the resume template:

Parent Template: https://www.canva.com/resumes/templates/

Child Template: https://www.canva.com/resumes/templates/simple/
Ranking for: "Simple resume template" (6.8k searches/mo)
Ranking position: #3

Child Template: https://www.canva.com/resumes/templates/modern/
Ranking for: "Modern resume template" (4.8k searches/mo)
Ranking position: #1

Child Template: http://www.canva.com/resumes/templates/teacher/
Ranking for: "Teacher resume template" (2.7k searches/mo)
Ranking position: #3

The resume template category alone has 219 child templates, driving 1.3M+ SEO traffic to Canva.
Template pages of Canva come as a pillar-cluster layout with proper on-page optimization and internal linking.
Each group contains a pillar page(parent template), and a handful of cluster pages(child templates). The internal link takes place in the form of-

-Pillar to other pillar pages
-Pillar to its own cluster pages
-Cluster to cluster of the same template group.

This way, they’re able to form a great silo-structure for their templates, giving them a solid boost in SEO.
Now if we look at one single child template page, the structure looks like this-

Hero Section: With page title and short, welcoming description
Template Collection: All templates, are split into pages, with options to filter from
Internal Link to Other Clusters: With button CTA
H2 Text Section: Contains some discussion on the essence of the templates.

A similar structure is found for the parent template pages as well, where it links to the child templates right after the hero section, and links to other parent templates under the template collection section.

Traffic and Keyword Performance of Canva’s Templates

Canva’s template pages generate immense SEO traffic and rank for many keywords. Below is a breakdown of the performance of different template categories:

Video Templates
Total Assessed: 31
Slug Prefix: /video-editor/
Total Traffic: 451,143
Avg. Total Keywords: 1,389
Avg. Total Traffic per Template: 14,553
Avg. Total Backlinks per Template: 348

Logo Templates
Total Assessed: 98
Slug Prefix: /logos/
Total Traffic: 824,768
Avg. Total Keywords: 983
Avg. Total Traffic per Template: 8,416
Avg. Total Backlinks per Template: 107

General Templates
Total Assessed: 1,461
Slug Prefix: /templates/
Total Traffic: 11,312,523
Avg. Total Keywords: 1,152
Avg. Total Traffic per Template: 7,743
Avg. Total Backlinks per Template: 137

Among all content types, templates generate the most organic traffic, accounting for over 11.3 million monthly visitors, which is about 8% of Canva’s total traffic.

Impact of Backlinks on Canva’s SEO Success

Canva’s backlink profile plays a crucial role in its SEO dominance. With 2,698 DR 50+ referring domains and a Domain Rating (DR) of 92, Canva is able to rank highly even for competitive keywords that don’t include the brand name itself, such as:

"AI image generator" (393k volume, 90 KD)
"Photo editor" (253k volume, 94 KD)
"Color palette generator" (78k volume, 93 KD)
"Free QR code generator" (99k volume, 93 KD)

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the backlink metrics for Canva’s template pages:

Total Assessed: 1,528
Slug Prefix: /templates/
Total Dofollow Links: 45,840
Average URL Rating: 20
Referring Domains per Page: 23
Dofollow Links per Page: 30

These backlinks contribute to Canva’s ability to dominate search rankings across various design-related keywords and template categories.

Conclusion

Canva’s template pages are a major driver of its SEO success due to their structured layout, internal linking strategy, and strong backlink profile. By creating a pillar-cluster structure with child templates optimized for specific searches, Canva is able to target a broad range of keywords while maintaining high relevance and authority.

Summary

The key elements contributing to Canva’s SEO success are:

-A well-organized pillar-cluster model for template pages.
-Strategic on-page SEO optimization.
-Comprehensive internal linking that strengthens the overall site structure.
-A powerful backlink profile, enabling Canva to rank for competitive, high-volume keywords.

This combination of factors allows Canva to capture every SEO opportunity in the design space, outpacing its competitors in organic search results.

This is a portion of our main blog post which you can find here: https://rankwizards.co/canva-seo-content-strategy/