Case Study: From $12K to $22K+/Month with Smarter SEO & Brand Positioning

This DTC wellness ecommerce brand was stuck at around $12,000/month in revenue.

They had a breakthrough product, but growth stalled—and they weren’t sure why.

Here’s what I found:

  • Targeting was too narrow – They were speaking to a very small group, missing a larger audience with clear buying motivations.

  • Product & category pages were thin – Not enough content to rank high or convert visitors.

  • Missing keyword opportunities – They weren’t showing up for enough “ready-to-buy” search terms.

  • No clear brand identity – The site didn’t tell a story or build trust.

  • No community connection – Their audience wanted a lifestyle brand, not just a product.

They brought me in to help them get more visibility and break the $20K/month mark.

I focused on expanding their reach, improving on-page SEO, filling keyword gaps, and building a brand people could connect with.

Here are some strategies that worked for me that can help you grow your ecomm store.

Set Up Your Website With Buyers in Mind

Here’s where I see many online store owners go wrong: they don’t set up their websites based on how people search for their products.

Google is just a match-making system. It matches pages to the phrases people search.

Here’s why this is important: as a small DTC ecommerce brand, the people you’re targeting don’t know your name – or that you sell a solution they need. 

They’ll find you’re products by typing phrases closely related to what they’re looking for. 

We focused on finding those phrases. Then, we built pages that let Google and searchers know that these pages match their specific search phrase.

This is called building pages around search intent and topical relevancy.

Here’s what made the difference – and why we were able to scale revenue from organic search by 60.7% in 6 months:

We targeted “ready-to-buy” phrases (commercial and transactional keywords). Phrases like “handmade leather wallets for men” or “where to buy Italian leather handbags for men”. 

I found similar phrases that lead to quick wins by using some of my advanced keyword research strategies that their competitors weren’t using. Here’s the post I wrote showing you exactly how to use them. 

Whether you’re making sales or not, one thing that’s always true is people are looking for your products – even if they don’t know it.

For this client, my goal was to find the specific customer that needed what they offer the most and find the motivations behind why.

This step allowed me to get into the mind of the searcher and find search phrases their target customer was using to find solutions, not just products.

Examples:

“___ [product] for ____.”

“Where to buy authentic ____.”

“Trusted brands that sell ____.”

“Non-toxic facial moisturizer for women.”

By understanding why our target audience wanted these products/solutions we were able to find hidden modifiers they use  to find what they’re looking for. 

Many of these phrases aren’t obvious using traditional keyword research methods.

Once we found these phrases that motivated buyers were using, the objective was to create more pages that matched these searches. 

Your potential customers are searching with a goal in mind—and they’re looking for products that solve a problem. The pages they land on should help them accomplish that goal and guide them smoothly through the buying process.

But to get those customers on your site, you need to signal to Google that your page is the best answer to that search. If your page doesn’t clearly help users achieve what they’re searching for, Google simply won’t rank it.

I did this by strategically selecting purchase-intent keywords for their product and category pages. What made the difference was creating multiple categories for the same products.

Why this works: Google doesn’t rank products in the organic results, it ranks pages that match the user’s search.

I was able to rank multiple category pages that included similar products. As long as each has unique content that matches the intent of the search, Google will show it for the search you intend.

One strategy that helped us get faster results was strategic keyword placement. 

I recently analyzed 103 #1 ranking ecommerce category pages and found that 100% had the target search phrase in the meta title.

Over 95% had it in the H1, meta description, URL, and in the first sentence. Using this strategy got 124,000 impressions to a new page in 3 months. 

Our goal was to strengthen their product and category pages by integrating strategically placed, relevant phrases.

We used these phrases to reassure visitors that they’d landed in the right place and that the product in front of them could actually solve their problem.

We focused on adding semantically related keywords to help Google better understand each page and improve its chances of ranking for relevant searches.

We also used this as an opportunity to highlight product benefits clearly and introduce trust signals that increase conversions.

Those trust signals included things like secure checkout badges, satisfaction guarantees, responsive customer support, customer reviews, and product-specific FAQs—all designed to reduce hesitation and make the purchase decision easier.

I was able to land a guest post on a high authority website that gets nearly 200,000 monthly visitors. But guest posting usually isn’t the most effective link building strategy for ecommerce websites. It’s usually strategically buying links from highly-vetted websites. This client didn’t want to go the route so I proposed my “Founder-Led Outreach” framework.

It’s built on one core idea: people want to work with people, not faceless brands or products. Whether it’s a journalist, podcaster, or newsletter curator—they’re far more likely to care about your story.

To get backlinks, we focused on telling the founder’s story: why the brand was started, who it helps, and the mission behind it.

I used that to pitch collaborations, podcast interviews, and brand features. This led to organic mentions, authority-building links, and brand exposure in front of the right communities. This helped us increase direct traffic revenue by 184%.

These are just a few of the strategies I used to help this ecommerce brand nearly double revenue in 6 months.

If you’re looking to grow your brand with data-backed SEO strategies, let’s hop on a call. 

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