Month 8: I ran a mid-size site on home-printer reviews, stuck around 25k/mo. The category leader, a site twice my size, suddenly tanked. Their owner had clearly stopped updating; ink-cartridge guides were two years stale and half their reviews covered discontinued models.
The opportunity was sitting there. Their rankings were a house of cards waiting for someone to push.
Month 9: I pulled their top 50 pages, found every one that was outdated, and built fresher, more thorough versions. Current models, updated prices, new photos, actual 2024 firmware notes they'd never touched.
Month 11: Google started swapping them out for me on query after query. Their stale pages couldn't defend. My traffic went 25k → 44k.
The setback: I got cocky and rushed 20 thin pages to grab the rest of their keywords fast. Those thin ones never ranked and just diluted my site. Quality won; speed didn't.
Month 14: 51k/mo, $2,800.
The takeaway: your best growth opportunity is often a lazy competitor, not an empty market. Watch the leaders in your niche. When one goes stale, freshness is a battering ram. But beat them with better pages, not just faster ones.
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A competitor's site died and I ate their lunch in 90 days
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