Case study · Personal project
Outdoor recreation review site
A product review and buying-guide site for paddle boarding gear, built from scratch on a brand-new domain.
- Content strategy
- Buying guides
- On-page SEO
- Site build
0 → 1.5K
estimated monthly organic visits in under a year
Estimated monthly organic visits (Semrush, US) · Apr 2021 – Feb 2022
+6,021%
Estimated monthly organic traffic
20 → 1.5K
Keywords the site ranks for in Google
$1.7K/mo
Organic traffic value: what the same visits would cost in Google Ads
11 mo
Timeframe
The challenge
A brand-new domain with no traffic, no links and no rankings, competing against established publishers.
My role
A side project from 2021 to 2022, built from an empty domain. I used it as a testing ground for the content and SEO playbooks I was running for clients at the same time.
The result
From zero to about 1.5K estimated monthly organic visits in under a year. Google Analytics shows the site passing 2K monthly sessions at its peak.
Milestones
- Apr 202124/moStart
- Jul 202160/moUp 50% and held
- Jul 202160/moDoubled and held
- Aug 2021169/mo5× and held
- Sep 2021375/mo10× and held
- Feb 20221.5K/moEnd
What I did
- 01
Keyword research
Found the questions buyers ask that big publishers answered poorly.
- 02
Content plan
Planned topic clusters so every article supported the others.
- 03
On-page SEO
Titles, headings, internal links and schema on every page.
- 04
Publish & iterate
Published steadily and doubled down on what started to rank.
Traffic figures are Semrush estimates of US organic traffic.
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