David versus Goliath

The tale of a giant warrior that was slain by a well-slung stone.

A true underdog. A true hero.

Today, I’m going to show you how to sling stones, slay giants, and become a hero.

Metaphorically, of course.

Goliath was the Philistine’s champion, a true giant.

And after a 40-day standoff, David stepped forward to slay the giant with a slingshot and a stone.

By all accounts, an incredible upset…

You likely have a few competitors that you consider Goliaths. You might even think that you’ll never get the chance to beat them.

Time to think again.

I work with a brand that ended 2023 with a total revenue of almost $6 million. They’re a successful brand, and I’ve quite enjoyed working with them.

But compared to their main competitor, they’re more akin to David than Goliath.

This competitor had their first $100m+ year in 2023 and aren’t showing any signs of slowing down.

Compared to our brand, they’re a Goliath. They’re roughly 17x as big by revenue — a literal DTC behemoth…

You could say that I grew up with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, I’d chalk it up to my competitive nature.

So when I found out I’d get to compete with a $100 million brand, I was pretty stoked.

Our brand will never be able to outspend them on paid search, paid social, creative, influencer advertising… You name it.

We’re several years away from a $100 million year.

However, I am in 100% control of how they perform in organic search.

I’ve been in a bit of a David v. Goliath battle myself over these last few months, competing against a brand that has 17x the resources that I currently have.

Unlike David, I can’t slay a DTC Goliath with a single stone. But I’ve been slinging them for the last 7 months, slowly chipping away at their armor.

And here’s how it’s going:

• The month prior to working with us, the brand made $12k in organic search revenue. In January, they did over $40k.

• We rank for 283 money keywords in the top 3 spots, after previously only ranking for 16 keywords.

• Their organic traffic has nearly 4x’d, from 6.5k to 24.1k.

These numbers are a direct reflection of our smart, tactical strategy. We can’t brute force our way to the #1 spot, because there’s a giant in the way.

So I had to get creative by:

• Targeting less competitive keywords, which are much easier to win and enabled the brand to start making money sooner.
  
  Example: Instead of competing for a top-level keyword like “espresso machines,” we targeted less competitive, more specific keywords like “espresso machines for apartments” and “espresso machines for offices.”) 
  

• Building backlinks from niche-specific sites early on, rather than trying to replicate our competitor’s profile (a common tactic). Our client sells leather products, so we created a prospect list that consisted of every single website on the internet that talked about leather, with some basic filters set (DR > 30, monthly traffic > 10,000). Then, we reached out to them and paid for a variety of guest posts & niche edits.
  
  This amplified our topical authority strategy because we showed Google that 1) we’re knowledgeable about leather goods with our blog content AND more importantly, 2) other sites that cover leather goods also trust us because they link to us. The competitor ignored all of these types of links — I guarantee your competitors are doing the same because “guest posts are dead.” Fine, more for me.
  

• Engaging with UGC content on Reddit & Quora. Though these aren’t dofollow links, they’re a positive ranking signal in the scheme of things, especially with Google’s recent bias towards them. Not to mention, they drove a solid amount of referral traffic & revenue.
  
  Again, our competitor ignored this tactic.

There were other things we did, of course, but these were the most unique levers we pulled that varied from other strategies.

Too many people approach SEO the same way: write n blogs and build n links each month. And while these may get you on page 1, the type & quality blogs you write and the links you build will determine whether you’re first or last on page 1.

And ultimately, whether or not you make money.

Even the order & cadence at which you do execute your strategy can have a massive impact on results.

Start thinking about how to slay giants, instead of giving up. Think death by 1000 cuts, not delivering a knockout blow.

If you stick at it, you will win.

If you’re curious about that case study, here’s a link to the video.

Note: The title says $30k/month, but I recorded this in December 2023. January 2024 was their first month EVER above $40k, excluding November (BFCM heavily skews that month). Our sites are set on $50k/mo next.

Catch you on Friday.

Kai