How Daily Harvest Grew to 140,000 Monthly Visitors (and a $1 Billion valuation)

In this article , we look at The Daily Harvest.

You'll discover.

• How the Daily Harvest target the buyer journey.
• The importance of list post links.
• The 3 areas every SEO strategy must cover.

Let's dive in.

What's The Daily Harvest?

Daily Harvest is a DTC website that provides convenient, healthy meal options for busy individuals.

They offer a variety of nutrient-packed smoothies, soups, and bowls that are made with organic and whole ingredients. Each item is pre-portioned and ready to heat or blend, making it easy to enjoy a nutritious meal without spending time in the kitchen.

The business was started by a former marketing exec named Rachel Drori and is now estimated to be worth $ 1billion.

What are their SEO Metrics?

The Daily Harvest has a UR of 82 and a DR of 73, with 39,000 backlinks from 5400 referring domains.

They rank for 36,000 keywords which generate a healthy 144,000 monthly unique visitors, which would cost $48,000 if you were to buy that traffic with ads.

So, let's dive into the site.

The DTC Traffic Recipe for Success

When we look at the traffic for the site, we can see that 43% of their traffic is branded keywords, while 56% is non-brand.

This tells me that they have invested in their brand marketing.

And a dive into their keywords confirms this.

People are searching for them online, asking questions about them and researching.

This is a sign of good marketing.

Brands that create their own 'messy middle of search'.

But beyond the brand keywords, what else are they targeting?

Reaching Customers Unaware

If you've followed me for a while, you'll know that I'm quite unromantic about SEO.

I see it more as a marketing channel that has limitations and advantages. It's important that a brand understands this.

However, SEO reaches consumers in specific ways that other channels cannot.

• SEO reaches those looking to buy today on the internet.
• SEO reaches those researching the product category.
• SEO reaches those unaware of the product/ not in the market but are searching for information online.

And it does all 3 of the above at no incremental media spend.

This is why SEO is so powerful. It's extremely cost-effective and should be seen as a business investing in its own website.

So, how do the Daily Harvest leverage this?

They create content that answers questions that potential consumers type into Google.

And they have web pages that target people that are in the market or researching the category right now.

For example, they have 110 pages that rank for search terms that have the word 'smoothie' in them.

This makes sense because they sell smoothie ingredients, and therefore, people searching for smoothie recipes could be open to buying from them.

Another example is their home page ranking position 4 for the term smoothie delivery.

The SEO on this website is both sensible and tactical.

But what else is going on?

List Post Backlinks

An interesting thing happens when you have a good product or service and use brand marketing. You gain backlinks.

But these aren't just any old backlinks. These are backlinks from list posts that rank and gain traffic.

So, how does this happen?

Publicity and advertising.

Yes, good old-fashioned real-world marketing gains a mental foothold with journalists and writers, which leads to being featured and mentioned.

This is something that we see often.

Brands that don't use advertising or PR tend not to be well known.

And this makes SEO a lot harder.

The result is that brands tend to only spend on PPC and simply don't grow enough.

But what should an SEO do if they see lists they want to be part of?

Outreach.

Yes. Good old-fashioned, highly targeted, yet creative outreach to site owners to see if they'll add your site to the list.

Sure, this is manual graft but is worth it to be in a post that generates traffic.

Ok, so we know what the Daily Harvest does, but what can you borrow from this approach?

Developing an SEO Strategy to Fuel Growth

One of the big issues when it comes to SEO is its ROI.

But that's the wrong way to look at search.

SEO is a brand marketing activity and should not be measured as if it was a direct marketing channel.

Secondly, SEO is a competitive advantage for brands that activate it.

Because of the nature of search, if you rank organically for the keywords that matter, you win.

Ok, so how should you tackle SEO?

Every SEO strategy should focus on those 3 areas we discussed earlier and have a plan for each of them.

Reach Those Looking to Buy Today

Businesses that are spending on PPC know how effective it is to be ranked on Google, and yet those same businesses are reluctant to invest in SEO.

But it's here that you can win.

Your SEO strategy must have a plan to rank a site for its most commercially relevant search terms. This plan might have multiple elements, such as digital PR link building, topical content and on-page content improvements.

But an SEO plan that doesn't focus on this has issues.

Reach Those Researching the Product Category

The messy middle of search is where people ask questions, compare products and indeed research to see if buying into this category is right for them.

On the Daily Harvest site, we can see that some of the largest search terms are in the messy middle.

It's important that you understand this and create content to match this demand.

A great example is their smoothie page.

It generates 10,000 visitors a month and ranks for over 1000 keywords.

And it's a very clever page that provides not only the commercial opportunity but also education in terms of recipes.

Reach Those Unaware of the Product / Not in the Market But Are Searching for Information Online.

We know that brands grow by acquiring new customers.

And mass marketing is one way to reach more people. The issue, however, is budgets.

SEO reaches people who are searching online for information and allows you the ability to put your business in front of people not in the market.

Now, I get why people say that there are other, more effective ways to put your business in front of future potential buyers.

And that's true. There are.

But they tend to be far more expensive, and as content leads to email subscribers, it's a method that can lead to sales activation at no cost. Sure, this is more of a tactic to grow an email list. But it can work, you just need to understand that it will take time.

The key is to create useful information that matches the psychographics of your buyers.

For example, the Daily Harvest could start to create content on fitness, health, diet and lifestyle issues. Reaching ideal potential future customers who may be unaware they exist.

Now Develop Your Strategy

You must create an SEO strategy that doesn't only give information, it creates buyers.

And here's where most go wrong. They focus on top of funnel only, without a plan to reach those buying today.

Of course, you'll need to use a range of tactics, and this is where the skill of your SEO agency, freelancer or in-house team comes in.

But if you want to unlock the huge power of organic search, you'll need to invest money or time.

That's the only way.

See you next week.

Andrew Holland