The tents market across the US and Canada is brutally competitive. Global brands like REI and Coleman, marketplaces like Amazon, and a wall of influential review sites make it genuinely hard for a small e-commerce store to gain a foothold. RBM Trading was committed to the long game, and so were we. The goal wasn’t a quick spike — it was durable rankings that drive product sales.
The challenge
Beyond the competitive landscape, the store carried real headwinds:
- High competition for every targeted keyword.
- Premium price points that challenged typical consumer expectations.
- Technical shortcomings across the site’s optimization.
- Under-optimized main landing pages.
- A weak backlink profile with little domain authority.
Our approach
We ran the program in three stages, moving from research and fundamentals to content and ongoing authority growth.
Stage 1 — Research & foundation
Competitor and niche analysis to shape the strategy, a thorough technical audit, keyword research and clustering to build a solid semantic core, and a relevance map aligning keywords to specific landing pages.
Stage 2 — On-page & authority
On-page optimization of the main landing pages, unique SEO-friendly content for both commercial and informational queries, a robust link-building strategy with a detailed anchor plan, and a clean-up of the existing backlink profile — disavowing harmful links.
Stage 3 — Expansion & maintenance
We expanded the semantic core toward informational queries, built and promoted expert blog content, improved internal cross-linking, and kept the homepage and key pages under continuous optimization — acquiring quality backlinks, refining evergreen content, and running periodic technical audits.
Content & backlink strategy
Buyers of premium outdoor gear research extensively before they purchase, so every target keyword carried both commercial and informational intent. We produced in-depth expert guides on choosing different types of tents — content built to support the buyer’s journey and hold its own against established travel and review sites.
On authority, we analyzed competitors’ backlink profiles and designed a safe, results-oriented strategy focused on domain authority and referral traffic — earning high-quality links from trusted, authoritative sites through carefully vetted guest posting.
The results
Against global brands and marketplaces, a small store posted outsized organic gains:
- Ranking keywords increased by 1,185.71% (roughly 350 to 4,500 terms).
- Organic traffic increased by 2,757.14%.
It’s the clearest proof of our thesis: in a hard niche, disciplined research, genuinely useful content, and clean authority building beat shortcuts every time.