0 to 400K visits/month [Case study]

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While your LinkedIn feed was being flooded with folks declaring SEO is dead…

Better Trail was quietly growing from 0 to 400k+ monthly visits in just 7 months 🚀

And now they’re outranking The New York Times, The Guardian, and Reddit for ultra-competitive terms like:

• 'Best hiking boots' 

• 'Best ski goggles'

• 'Best camping tent’

All with just 305 backlinks 👀

How?

Here's my take…

When people search ‘best hiking boots’, they’re not looking to read a 2,000 word essay.

Better Trail gets that.

One scroll into their round-up of the best hiking boots and you hit a carousel with their pick of the best boots:

The individual reviews of each of their top picks frontload the good stuff, too.

All the need-to-know info – including a nifty lil’ image carousel – is presented up top:

This UX helps folks quickly find the boots that sound like the best fit for them (which is how people actually engage with content like this, right?).

Then when readers have narrowed down a shortlist, there’s an in-depth review of each pair for them to dig into:

Okay, wanna see something really cool?

Check out this ‘Reading Length’ option in the sidebar of the page that lets you toggle to ‘Skim’:

And ‘All in’:

That helps cater to two different kinds of readers – skimmers and deep divers – with one page. 

Of course, there’s the content itself, which is jam-packed with product stunning images (that showcase the testers actually got hands-on with these boots):

And phrases like:

• “Our tester personally had never experienced a boot so comfortable under such conditions”

• “Another tester developed hot spots and pinky-toe blisters during early wear-in and noted that she prefers lighter, more flexible footwear.”

• “While our tester found that cinching up the collar gave a nice boost in ankle support, this is not a particularly stiff or supportive boot”

It’s plain as day this guide has been put together by people who seriously know their stuff.

Check it out:

Oh, and this guide is long, too. 

14,455 words long 🤯

That puts it at nearly twice the length as the next longest page in the top five results for ‘best hiking boots’.

And it covers everything from the anatomy of a hiking boot to how you should size them.

Which explains how it’s ranking for nearly 3,000 keywords (which are driving nearly 35k visits):

So much for super long content being dead then 🤷

These ridiculously good ‘best product’ round-ups drive the majority of Better Trail’s traffic. 

But they’re also creati

ng stuff that clearly isn’t optimised for search. 

The kind of stuff that’s going to build a brand, not get slurped up by the LLMs and spat out as an AI Overview.

Check out the intro to their piece on why merino wool base layers ain’t all that:

And this section in their ode to ski bibs:

This content oozes personality and expertise.

And as some of the H2s might suggest…

This deffo isn’t “SEO content”.

Instead, it’s the kind of stuff that’s going to get their readers adding “Better Trail” to the end of searches rather than “reddit” when they’re researching their next bit of hiking gear.

So, what’s the secret to Better Trail’s success?

As far as I can tell, it’s:

• An obsession with matching search intent

• Incredible UX

• Writing that’s packed with personality and expertise

• Mega long guides that gobble up thousands of keywords

And if anyone has any other theories about why these folks’s stuff is performing so well I’d love to hear ‘em over in TOFU 👀

In the meantime, if you’d like to see one of the best pieces of content I’ve stumbled across in a long time, check out…

👉 Better Trail’s Best Hiking Boots of 2025 page