Taking Modern Mammals from (Almost) Zero to 5K Visitors per Month
The Numbers:
#1 Google result for “men’s shampoo alternative”
1,900% increase in monthly organic traffic
1,641% increase in organic keywords
60,000+ guys quit shampoo
The Challenge
Modern Mammals makes a healthier, smarter shampoo alternative for guys—one that doesn’t leave your hair looking like a Troll doll after showering. We had a hunch that men were down to ditch the neon goop they’ve washed their hair with since high school. But most of them didn’t know Modern Mammals existed.
Our audience of 20-something dudes isn’t asking their dermatologist or girlfriend for hair tips. But they’re definitely asking Google.
That meant we had to “teach” Google that Modern Mammals was the best shampoo alternative for men.
The Strategy
Every day, thousands of guys are searching for answers to their hair care questions:
How often should men wash their hair?
Is shampoo bad for your hair?
Why is my hair frizzy after showering?
The obvious next step was answering those questions with blog content. But instead of simply confirming men’s suspicions about shampoo, we also wanted to pitch Modern Mammals as a shampoo alternative. Essentially, we’d fuse traditional SEO with conversion copywriting.
Consider this blog about how often men should wash their hair. We clarified that the standard recommendation is washing your hair 2-3 times per week with regular shampoo. But we followed that up by noting that guys can wash their hair every single day when they use Modern Mammals since it doesn’t contain sulfates that strip away natural oils.
By applying the same strategy across dozens of topics, we would accomplish two things:
Tap into valuable search traffic
Teach Google that Modern Mammals is a men’s shampoo alternative
The Content
The internet is flooded with so much garbage content when it comes to men’s grooming advice. Luckily for us, that meant the bar was super low for creating content that was valuable for dudes as well as the overlords at Google.
These are the three main standards I set for our content:
Reference peer-reviewed studies to prove we’re not blowing smoke
Position Modern Mammals as a shampoo alternative (not a “better shampoo”)
Keep the content feeling like a group chat—not an essay
From a technical standpoint, each blog contained at least 3 links to Modern Mammals’ product page and at least 3 links to related blog posts. Over time, these internal links would help Google understand the site, which in turn boosted our rankings.
The Results
After ~6 months, Modern Mammals claimed the #1 spot on Google for “men’s shampoo alternative” and “shampoo alternative for men.” Despite being a relatively new site, we jumped past Men’s Health, Esquire, and Men’s Journal as well as forums like Reddit and Quora, which are notoriously hard to outrank.
We also earned top-3 results for some of the brand’s most important top-of-funnel keywords, including “how to grow hair out for men” and “how often should men wash their hair.”
Before building out this library of content, Modern Mammals barely had any organic traffic. Today, they’re bringing in 5,000+ unique visitors every month on autopilot.
Here’s a breakdown of the total progress from 2021 to 2023:
60,000+ guys quit shampoo
1,900% increase in monthly organic traffic
1,641% increase in organic keywords
83% increase in backlinks
None of this required secret software or black hat tactics. In cases like this, SEO is more about understanding what’s going on inside your audience’s heads than what’s going on inside Google’s algorithms.