Kai: Wait… that’s it?

Client: Yeah.

Kai: How?

Client: Just kept things simple.

===

Here’s a bizarre story that will blow your sandals off:

Recently, we started working with a brand who’s dropshipping. 

The founder is in his mid-to-late twenties and is a fucking killer.

He makes more money than a lot of reputable DTC brands and scales brands to the moon in just a few months.

Most of all…

He doesn’t even have a full team behind him.

Just a one-man assassin.  

Unlike seemingly everyone else in eCommerce, he chooses NOT to overcomplicate things.

And clearly, it’s working. 

He spends plenty of time researching products, trends, and manufacturers, then gets to work. 

Runs paid social ads & sets up basic email flows, no daily or weekly campaigns. 

And I know what you’re thinking: he’s just a dropshipper.

Let me reiterate – he makes a ton of money. 

He doesn’t overcomplicate his brand language or spend hours building the “perfect” logo. 

And I think a lot of beginners can learn something from him. 

Which is this: sales are more important than your brand image. 

If you don’t have sales, you don’t have a brand. 

Your customers will help you craft a brand; you can’t tell them what your brand is going to be. 

Instead, all he did was find a good product, run a shit ton of ads, and make a ton of money.

That’s the recipe. 

Now…

How does this relate to SEO? 

Good question. 

I tend to avoid working with drop shippers because they tend to run a product for 6 months and then move to the next. 

So… SEO isn’t the right channel for them. 

This was a unique case (no I won’t share the brand name or product details). 

And after speaking with him, I realized we have a lot in common. 

I just spoke to my friend Marco yesterday, who’s also an SEO. 

And we chatted about all of the complex things that can be done to rank your site higher. 

We both agreed that “simple works.” 

There are hundreds of tactics and even more ranking factors, but it really comes down to a few things in the eCommerce world. 

1. Solid technical foundation (simple site structure, proper canonical tags, no 404s, and a few others)
   

2. Basic on-page optimization for product & category/collection pages
   

3. Write relevant blogs to build topical authority
   

4. Build internal links to connect the dots
   

5. Power it all up with a few backlinks a month

There is a lot that goes on in the background of our agency to make these things happen, but the output really is this simple. 

It’s like a college kid cooking dinner on a budget: only a few basic ingredients. 

This will put you ahead of 99% of your competitors. 

The lesson here is:

Skip college and start an eCom brand.

Sometimes keeping things simple is the way to go.

If you want to be ahead of 100% of your competition, check out this video to rank your Shopify store in the #1 spot: 

Until next time,

Kai Cromwell