Non-ranking small business earns Top 3 spots and now competes with corporations like Home Depot
Chiqui Pangan
By the numbers:
- 500+ new referring domains
- 36K monthly search traffic
- Top 3 spot for keywords with 5- and 6-figure monthly searches
Our customer specializes in quality garden tools and decor, helping customers transform their outdoor spaces into personalized retreats. Being in a highly competitive niche, the company needed a way to stand out against larger companies like The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and other big-name garden centers.
To do this, the brand needed to overcome several Google core updates that declined their organic traffic to 2K per month and sliced their keywords in half.
One of our greatest success stories, we started working with our customer to develop an aggressive keyword and backlink strategy. Combined, these tactics helped to increase organic traffic with noticeable results month over month, steadily increased the number of referring domains for a natural look and feel, and achieved rankings for a total of 7,663 keywords.
The brand is now entertaining over 40,000 unique visitors per month and ranks in the Top 3 positions of Google for 423 keywords.
The Strategy
When we began working with this brand, the site did not show up in search results for their desired keywords. Once it did start ranking, their positions were often very low – 50 and beyond. We felt confident we could improve their rankings by building well-crafted backlinks, focusing more heavily on websites with a domain authority of 21 or higher.
Keyword optimization also became a strong push. Their niche gave us plenty of food for thought, with an expansive product variety spanning everything from wall decor to decorative trellises. We saw ample opportunity to enrich product pages and descriptions with keywords and capture clicks from customers who were ready to buy.
The Results
Authority Builders helped our customer who runs a garden tools and decor online store achieve Top 3 positions for 423 keywords – many of which are the same keywords that Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart, and Amazon also rank for. Companies that were once thought to be too big to compete with are now some of H Potter’s search engine competition, which helps the brand build instant online credibility by appearing close to popular and trusted stores.
Many of the keywords they ranks for receive 5- and 6-figure traffic each month. Between November 2023 and March 2024, organic traffic jumped from 6,961 to 40,979 visits.
Backlinks continue to contribute to organic traffic as well as a solid domain authority and higher rankings for strategic terms. The brand has received a total of 9K backlinks, 90% of which are Do-Follow links.
Last Word
The large scope of this niche gave us a unique challenge, especially since competitors can range from small businesses like our customer to large sell-everything companies like Amazon, Home Depot, and Walmart. However, we understand that company size doesn’t determine search rankings, especially when you prioritize content quality and follow proven SEO practices.