How Fat Llama Reached 45,000 Monthly Visitors

In today's post, we'll be exploring how Fat Llama achieved SEO success and grew their website to 45,000 monthly visitors.

We'll examine.

• The backlink strategy that you could copy.
• The page first authority second approach you can use.
• Potential website ideas you could launch.

Let's dive in.

Fat Llama, it's the eBay For Renting

Fat Llama is an innovative company with a mission to revolutionise the sharing economy.

So, how does it work?

In essence, Fat Llama is like eBay, except you don't buy you rent.

Imagine you have a bike that you never use. You can list your bike on Fat Llama and get paid for renting it out by the day.

Fat Llama is the 'middle llama' (sorry bad pun).

They provide an insurance policy for the equipment owners in case it gets broken and handle the transactions.

Also, they have a nice app that you can do this through.

Now, before we go on, there's a twist to this tale.

They have now been acquired for $41.5 Million.

So it's an SEO story with a twist.

I'll show you how they grew their traffic, but this is a great example of basic SEO scaling.

It's something I always tell business owners. Be the site you want to be 4 years from now...in the next 12 months.

Scale your SEO quickly, and you'll reap the benefits sooner.

Anyway, let's dive in.

How to Grow Your Authority (by helping others)

First and foremost, the authority of Fat Llama is pretty large.

Sitting at a DR of 71 and a UR of 75, you can see that they have some fuel in their SEO engine.

But how?

Fat Llama sits in the very nice category of 'helping others to make money', and as such, there is an abundance of list posts out there that generate traffic that they could easily be part of.

This is what I call 'listicle link building', and it happens like this.

Step 1- define what your business/ product does.

Step 2- look for list posts that feature businesses/ services like yours.

Step 3- reach out to the site owner.

For example, Fat Llama helps people to;

• save money
• make money
• save the environment

This gives a lot of lists to go after.

It's not rocket science, but most list posts have been around for some time and, as such, bring traffic in.

A good SEO will always be looking to update their list posts, so it's a no-brainer for them to add your business if it fits.

Sprinkle in a fair amount of DPR, and you have a high domain authority on the way.

OK, so that's the links sorted, but what about their content?

Pages First Authority Second

If Ahrefs is correct, you can see that the website built out its pages pretty fast, and the authority building took far longer.

Of course, this makes sense.

Given that they are a rental site that works on locations, it means that the site has an abundance of keywords to go after.

• Drum hire
• Drum hire London
• Drum hire Manchester
• Drum hire...(you get the idea).

With a site like this, scaling the number of pages to generate traffic is key to success.

A quick look at the site reveals thin pages, the majority of which do not rank position 1 for the top phrase they are targeting.

This isn't a major issue.

They rank (which is great).

They just don't rank high enough for their target terms.

Take this example of bike hire in Brighton.

They sit at the bottom of page 1 for the search term with a page that has just 200 words on it (and just 2 bikes to rent).

It's a sign that if they continue this approach, they're going to need to add either content or products.

In contrast, they rank position 2 for camera hire London, and they have an abundance of products.

If you're faced with a similar problem, there are generally 2 ways to fix your issue.

1. Add more content to a page.
2. Add more products to a page.

Simply due to the nature of the business, it's possible that many of their pages have little to zero products that you can rent.

Making them pretty useless and probably giving them awful UX signals.

It's just one of those things.

My advice to any start-up in this field is that when you build out your site, ensure that each page has as much useful content as possible.

Build it into your product-led SEO process.

Conversion still matters, as does useful content.

High domain or not, businesses sell to people.

I recommend Eli Schwartz's Product Led SEO book for any start-up that covers this in more depth.

OK, so how can you use what we've covered here?

Publish, Rent, Sell: A Scalable SEO Approach

There are a few tips that any business owner can take away here.

The first is publishing.

I have a saying..."if it's not written, it can't rank".

And yet, so many businesses are distressed when it comes to creating content.

I get why. Creating content is expensive.

And sure, even using a scalable product-led approach with web developers is going to cost a fair penny along with the time to build.

But every day, you don't publish the number of pages you need to. You miss the opportunities that come with being a big site.

If you want an interesting read about growth, check out the blog of Pat Walls, you can read how a successful website was built and grown.

Another good breakdown I did was on Veed.

Ok, onto the next part.

Rent.

What Else Can Be Rented?

The circular economy fascinates me just as much as a story of a business being acquired for several million.

And I do believe there is potential in this sector.

Fat Llama focus on renting almost everything, but what about niching down?

Netflix is an example that changed the rental economy.

No one expected Blockbuster to be dethroned, and we are already seeing toy rentals grow in popularity.

But what about other items?

Could you create the Fat Llama of...

• Mobile phones
• Wedding dresses
• Laptops
• Home brew kits
• Books
• Furniture
• Handbags
• Hot tubs

The list could be endless, and yes, I know you can mostly rent all on that list, but that's not the point.

It's how you can adapt, modify and alter the model.

Because if you can niche down, there's a good chance you'll be able to dominate from an SEO perspective through scale.

Ok, my final tip.

Sell.

The Great E-commerce Secret (failure to plan, is planning to fail)

Shopify was once described to me as 'the site of dreams'.

And I have to admit, I've seen plenty of failed Shopify sites.

But that failure generally came down to a few factors.

• Poor marketing
• Poor products
• Poor budgets

I truly wish I could get passionate enough about a single thing, so I could settle down and grow an e-commerce empire.

But alas, I get bored easily.

However, I'm assuming that you do have something you love with passion, and as such, you'll be able to have that singular focus I lack.

Creating your own products and website has never been easier.

Finding a market you can dominate or a category you can start has never been more possible.

But, my final tip for this week's newsletter is this.

Start with the end in mind

I've met too many would-be e-commerce entrepreneurs that have failed because they failed to plan their SEO and growth strategy.

Indeed, before you even build a website or start your business, I honestly believe that you should seek out an SEO to look at the best way to start.

An experienced SEO will tell you the best way to grow your website and also tell you the likely costs.

Too often, I've seen websites get stuck on the PPC hamster wheel that they are unable to get off because they lack the right budget to grow organically.

And that's a tough place to be.

Instead, starting with the right SEO strategy before you build is a better plan.

That way, you'll be able to use your budgets more effectively from the beginning

Final Thoughts

Fat Llama is an interesting website to study, but the key points are clear.

• Building authority matters.
• Scaling your website matters.
• Site structure matters
• Offering a useful service matters.

All of the above make SEO easier.

Even the best SEO will struggle to generate results for poor-quality businesses with inferior positioning, products and or services.

If you're finding growth difficult, it's worth taking a look at your online growth strategy and your business model.

A shift can lead to unexpected success.

OK, folks, that's all for this week.

See you soon.

Andy