60x Organic Traffic to a Client’s Website Using Linkbuilding Techniques in a Year

Linkbuilding is a powerful tool for growing and ranking any website.

This SaaS client we’ve worked with for the past year is evidence of this. They’re a technical SaaS that targets a highly niche market, and for that reason, they didn’t want to disclose the name of their website.

In this case study, we’ll show you how:

• Embarque leveraged white hat link building techniques to build authority and credibility for the client’s website.
• Used site auditing techniques to find high-priority pages to build links to.
• Prospected for technical link building partners.

Using nothing but link building techniques, we helped a client boost their monthly organic traffic flow by 60x in just one year!

The Problem — The Client Lacked Knowledge About SEO & Didn’t Have a Strategy in Place While Trying to Sell a Niche Product

When the client reached out to us, and we got the chance to discuss the situation with them for the first time, it was immediately clear what their problem was.

The client had a very limited working knowledge of SEO in general. They had no idea what sort of content or topic to target, and they didn’t use SEO practices in their content production pipeline. Needless to say, they didn’t have any idea about link building either.

It’s the biggest reason why, before Embarque’s intervention, the client’s organic traffic was bleak: at its highest point in June 2021, the site received only 126 visitors for the month.

Although Embarque has had experience working with clients who don’t have a solid SEO strategy in place, the situation was further complicated by the client’s business model: they sell a highly technical and niche product.

Our team assessed that while helping them was entirely within our ability, it’ll be a harder case than most. Particularly in terms of finding technical link building partners who would be a good fit for the type of product the client offers.

The Solution — Focus on Prioritizing High-Value Pages & Collaborating with Technical Linkbuilding Partners

The client contracted Embarque to provide our link building service, and we did. Our link building team immediately started outlining a comprehensive link building strategy for the client’s website.

As we mentioned earlier, this case was more complicated because the client's product is highly technical and niched. Compared to more mainline products and services, finding good link building partners for this client would be much harder. But our team persisted and pulled through, using three principles at the core of our approach:

• White hat link building only: White hat link building is an umbrella term that refers to link building techniques that are considered “proper” or officially sanctioned by Google. These techniques include guest-posting, participating in forums, and building relationships with popular influencers and link building partners. By using white hat link building, we can avoid penalties from Google’s algorithm while guaranteeing the client long-term, sustainable traffic, and ranking growth.
• Auditing and finding high-priority pages to build links around: Our team scoured through the client’s blog page to look for pages that have high potential for ranking. We compiled a list of these pages and then built links around them. That way, we could save time and resources while still achieving measurable growth for the client.
• Finding technical link building partners: This was the most difficult part. Because of the niche nature of the client’s product, it was hard for us to find relevant, high-performing partners that were relevant to the client’s niche. Embarque has an internal link quality measurement standard, and as a rule, we always look for potential link building partners that are rated “Medium” or “Good” on that scale. To be considered, the websites of potential partners need to have a Domain Rating (DR) of over 30 and more than 1,000 organic visitors per month from the US and UK. If these partners rank for relevant topics, all the better. On the off chance we can’t find a partner with content similar to the client, then the content and targeted topics should at least be slightly relevant to the client's content.

Using this strategy, our team managed to get in touch with a few technical link building partners who met our criteria and were willing to lend us a hand. We started the process of building links around priority pages over the course of a few months.

Later, the fruit of our labor blossomed spectacularly.

The Results — 60x Organic Traffic to the Client’s Website

Embarque started working on this client’s case on January 2022. At that point, the client’s website only received around 27 visitors per month.

Within the course of 3 months, we saw a marked improvement in organic traffic, with a nearly 10-fold improvement from 27 to 227 visitors every month.

Six months after we got to work in July 2022, the client hit the major milestone of getting over 1,000 organic searches for the month.

And the client’s organic traffic growth has grown steadily even to this day (February 2023). In fact, the traffic growth rate is speeding up. Monthly organic traffic currently sits at a cool 7,495 organic searches.

This represents a staggering 60x increase in organic traffic from June 2021, when the client's monthly traffic peaked with 126 visitors!

We received word from the client that the boost in traffic was a tailwind that helped them greatly improve their revenue.

Key Takeaways

• Link building is a serious SEO technique: It’s not talked about as often as content writing or keyword research, but as you can see above, link building not only works, it also works well. Optimizing links and searching for cooperative link builders is a lot of work (especially if you sell a niche product like our client). However, investing time, money, and effort into it will pay off in the long term.
• Have a clear link building strategy before you dive in: Link building is difficult. That’s why you’ll need a clear strategy heading in. From the beginning, we determined that the best course of action was optimizing and building links around high-priority pages, helping the client save money and resources. That way, we wouldn’t waste our time pushing links that wouldn’t rank well. Depending on the nature of your business, you can take different approaches, but you should always have a plan.
• A unified link quality standard is important: Not all backlinks are good. Some can harm your ranking if they use your links, such as pages with low Domain Rating (DR). The best way to avoid accidentally sending your backlinks to such websites is to have a link quality standard like the one we used at Embarque (DR of over 40, 1k+ of organic traffic from US/UK, etc.) That way, we can assure our clients that all links we build for them can bring them more traffic instead of pushing them further down the SERP.

Rev Up Your SEO Strategy with Embarque!

Embarque has worked with dozens of clients over the years, aiding them in all aspects of SEO, from content writing and keyword research to link building. And if you’re looking for a good agency to help you deal with your SEO: we’re here to help!

Send us an email (julian@embarque.io) and a member of our team will get back to you ASAP with a plan of action at the ready!

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