Why Sensonio’s Most Visited Page Isn’t About Their Product

Most B2B marketers chase product keywords. “Best fill-level sensors.” “Smart waste management software.” “IoT solutions for municipalities.” Keywords that signal buying intent, that promise to capture demand, that convert visitors to leads.

Sensonio’s second-most visited page has nothing to do with their product. And that’s exactly the point.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Martin Kosak, CMO at Sensonio, shared how investing in research content that doesn’t directly sell has become their most powerful SEO weapon. It’s a strategy that challenges how most B2B companies think about content ROI.

The Page That Doesn’t Convert

Every three years, Sensonio publishes the Global Waste Index—a comprehensive ranking of OECD countries on their waste management practices. It analyzes recycling rates, waste generation per capita, infrastructure quality, and policy effectiveness across dozens of countries.

“This is actually the most visited page on our website after the homepage,” Martin explains.

Think about what this means. Thousands of visitors land on Sensonio’s website not to research sensors, not to evaluate waste management software, not to compare IoT solutions. They come to understand which countries manage waste effectively. They’re researchers, students, policymakers, sustainability professionals, journalists.

The vast majority will never buy a sensor. They’re not waste collection companies or municipalities evaluating vendors. They’re not in Sensonio’s target market at all.

So why invest significant resources—including partnership with a professional PR agency—in content that doesn’t generate leads?

The Domain Authority Play

Here’s what most B2B marketers miss about SEO: Google doesn’t evaluate pages in isolation. It evaluates domains. A high-authority domain lifts all its pages—including product pages that actually convert.

When Sensonio’s Global Waste Index earns backlinks from government agencies, universities, environmental organizations, and media outlets, those links don’t just benefit that single page. They signal to Google that sensonio.com is an authoritative source on waste management topics broadly.

“I mean, of course people who are clicking on this article, they will probably not buy a sensor or be interested in the field level monitoring, but it really helps us to reach high positions on Google,” Martin notes. “So later when people who are looking for sensors can easily find us thanks to that.”

This is the adjacent content strategy: create content on topics related to—but not directly about—your product. Content that attracts a broader audience, earns genuine backlinks, and builds domain authority that benefits your entire site.

The Research Advantage

Why does research content work so well for this strategy? Because original research is inherently linkable.

Blog posts about “5 Benefits of Smart Waste Management” get ignored. Everyone publishes generic benefits content. There’s no reason to link to it.

But original research—comprehensive rankings backed by data, analysis that reveals new insights, reports that quantify industry trends—gets cited. Journalists reference it in articles. Researchers include it in papers. Industry organizations share it in newsletters. Government agencies link to it from resource pages.

Each link passes authority to your domain. Each citation strengthens Google’s assessment that your site merits high rankings. Each share expands your brand’s visibility beyond your immediate target market.

Sensonio partnered with a professional PR agency to ensure their Global Waste Index met the quality bar for this kind of earned media. “We have done it in cooperation with professional PR agency from Germany. So this is not, let’s say in house research anymore,” Martin explains.

This elevated the research beyond typical marketing content. It became a legitimate industry resource that stakeholders actually want to reference and share.

The Content Cluster Strategy

The Global Waste Index isn’t Sensonio’s only play in adjacent content. They’ve built an entire content ecosystem around deposit refund systems (DRS)—the infrastructure for bottle and can deposits.

“We basically cover the whole DRS topic. We took it as a cluster and we wrote articles from very explanatory basic articles, but up to very in house research articles where we gathered, for example the numbers of the collection rates in european countries,” Martin explains.

This cluster approach serves multiple purposes. The educational articles capture people early in their research journey—before they know they need a vendor, before they’ve defined requirements, sometimes before they even understand the problem.

The research articles earn backlinks and establish authority. “When you right now searching Google for deposit refund system or you put in deposit refund system in european countries, you will probably find our bulk article,” Martin notes.

And the entire cluster signals to Google that Sensonio is deeply knowledgeable about this topic. When someone eventually searches for DRS IT systems—an actual buying-intent keyword—Sensonio’s domain authority helps them rank despite potentially having less product-specific content than pure-play competitors.

Why Most Companies Won’t Do This

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most B2B companies won’t invest in adjacent content because the ROI is indirect and delayed.

Your content marketer proposes creating an industry research report. Leadership asks: “How many leads will this generate?” The honest answer: “Probably very few directly.” That’s usually where the conversation ends.

The leads that matter come months or years later, when your domain authority lifts your product pages to first-page rankings. When journalists who saw your research later cover your company announcements. When prospects researching solutions encounter your brand multiple times through various content touchpoints and enter your sales cycle already familiar with your name.

But connecting those dots requires patience and a sophisticated understanding of how SEO actually works. Most companies lack one or both.

There’s also the resource question. Creating legitimate research content isn’t cheap. Sensonio partnered with a professional PR agency for their Global Waste Index. Their DRS content cluster includes original data collection on collection rates across European countries.

This is significantly more expensive than blog posts written by junior marketers or AI-generated SEO content. The temptation is always to do more cheaper content rather than less expensive, high-authority content.

But the economics favor quality. One research report that earns 50 backlinks from high-authority domains delivers more SEO value than 50 blog posts that earn zero backlinks.

The Value Creation Principle

Martin’s approach to this strategy reveals a broader principle about B2B content: “I still think it’s about creating a value, especially nowadays when I think good marketers should stop creating content that just doesn’t create value.”

This sounds obvious but proves radical in practice. Most B2B content exists primarily to capture keywords or nurture leads. It “creates value” only in the sense that it serves the company’s funnel.

Adjacent research content creates value for readers who will never become customers. The student writing a paper on circular economy finds genuine value in the Global Waste Index. The journalist covering waste policy in European countries finds genuine value in DRS collection rate data.

This authentic value creation—content that makes readers smarter regardless of whether they buy—is what earns the backlinks, shares, and authority that traditional marketing content never achieves.

“Take a look what Google’s ee 80 principles are and adjust to them,” Martin advises, referencing Google’s E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Original research demonstrates all four in ways that product marketing content rarely can.

The Measurement Challenge

How do you measure success for content like the Global Waste Index? Traditional content metrics fail.

Conversion rate? Terrible—visitors aren’t in-market buyers. Lead generation? Minimal—researchers don’t fill out demo request forms. Pipeline influence? Impossible to track directly.

Instead, measure:

Domain authority growth over time. Are high-quality sites linking to your content?

Keyword ranking improvements across your entire site. Are product pages ranking higher as domain authority increases?

Branded search volume. Are more people searching for your company name, suggesting broader brand awareness?

Share of voice in industry conversations. Do journalists and analysts reference your research?

“This is not, let’s say in house research anymore,” Martin notes about their partnership approach. The professional PR agency helped ensure the Global Waste Index would generate real industry impact, not just internal metrics.

The Strategic Patient Capital

Creating content that won’t directly generate leads requires what might be called strategic patient capital—investing resources where payback is measured in years, not quarters.

Most B2B marketing operates on short cycles. Quarterly pipeline goals. Monthly MQL targets. Weekly content production quotas. This environment naturally favors content that might convert immediately over content that builds long-term authority.

But SEO doesn’t work on quarterly cycles. Domain authority compounds slowly. A backlink earned today might take six months to fully impact rankings. The ranking improvements might take another six months to drive meaningful traffic. That traffic might research for months before converting.

Sensonio’s willingness to create the Global Waste Index every three years—a major recurring investment—shows commitment to this long-term play. “Every three years we create, I think global waste index is a comprehensive ranking of OECD countries regarding how good or bad they manage waste,” Martin explains.

Three-year cycles. Research partnerships. Content that serves non-buyers. This is as far from “quick win” marketing as you can get.

But for B2B companies serious about SEO, it might be the only sustainable path to domain authority that actually lifts product pages to competitive rankings.

The Replicable Framework

Other B2B companies can adopt this strategy. The framework is straightforward:

Identify a topic adjacent to your product where you can create authoritative research. It should be broad enough to attract a significant audience but related enough that backlinks pass relevant authority.

Invest in making the research genuinely valuable to non-buyers. Partner with credible research organizations if needed. Gather original data. Provide real insights, not marketing disguised as research.

Promote the research to earn backlinks from high-authority domains in your industry. Media coverage, citations from organizations, links from educational institutions all pass authority.

Track domain-level metrics, not page-level conversions. Watch your overall domain authority, your product page rankings, your branded search volume.

Refresh the research periodically to maintain relevance and continue earning links over time.

The visitors arriving at Sensonio’s Global Waste Index will mostly never buy sensors. But they’re lifting the entire domain’s SEO performance. When waste collection companies do search for IoT solutions, Sensonio ranks higher than competitors who only optimized product pages.

That’s the power of the page that doesn’t convert.