Last Updated on by Artem K.
Today I am going to show you how my link building service agency helped my client increase organic traffic to their website by 45.29%.
In fact, this is the same strategy that we use for exceptional results when building backlinks for SaaS and getting backlinks for E-commerce.
Here is what it looks like:
N.B. Please note that I don’t compare the site’s traffic to the previous year’s data because that’s dishonest. Instead, I look at a period right when I first intervened with the website (which was at the beginning of December 2017) comparing it to a similar length period before that.
Here is what you will find in this article:
- Start With the End Goal in Mind
- Linkable Assets are Your Everything
- Building Links Like There Is No Tomorrow
- From Page 3 to Page 1
- Here Is What I Would Do Next (if I was my client)
- The Success Formula
See More: Link Building Case Studies
Start With the End Goal in Mind
This one comes from Stephen Covey’s 7 habits…and it’s really important because “for every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned” (and this is attributed to Franklin).
So I had this client – Airbnb-like website that focused entirely on Iran – InnIran.com (here is the link building case study I did with them in the past).
And here is a set of questions that I asked myself subconsciously before starting the campaign:
- How can I build links to that website (s.t. a tiny budget)?
- How can I get them more traffic?
- How can I get them more clients?
- Can I do all that at once?
This is the type of questions, I presume, every white hat link builder should be asking themselves because it wouldn’t really work in isolation.
Imagine, for example, that someone has a shoulder pain and they go to a shoulder doctor. The doctor is really good, but their intervention doesn’t really help the shoulder in the long-run because the problem is actually in the hips (this is a classic imbalance example).
Honest white hat link building is just like that – building links in isolation won’t really work unless you have great content.
Back to InnIran.
So, how do I build links to their website while getting more traffic and getting them more clients at the same time?
This is how “Iran Travel Guide” was born.
Linkable Assets are Your Everything
A linkable asset is something that’s worth linking to.
Usually, it’s something remarkable, outstanding and valuable (e.g. unique research or an expert guide).
This is what InnIran’s “Iran Travel Guide” was supposed to become.
After the whole thing was done (I talked more about the creation process in the case study), it was time to build links to it.
Side Note
Maaaan, I was freaking out at the time because they were my first paying client (even though they paid peanuts).
Would I get those links? Would the whole thing work?
Now, approximately 4 months after the guide went live and I see it at the bottom of the first page when Googling for “Iran travel guide”, I am confident I did the right thing.
Building Links Like There Is No Tomorrow
At LinksHero we only build links using a 100% white hat technique – blogger outreach.
In other words, we send quite a few emails to the prospects that might be interested in the subject and then…it’s just a game of numbers!
Usually, we start with reaching out to those webmasters that linked to our competitors and those that have relevant resource pages.
This is a standard procedure.
Given that the budget was super low, I only sent a few emails but it was enough to get 3 beautiful links (only 2 point to the article because the 3rd one decided to link to the homepage which is also fine).
Nice DRs and nice anchor texts – beautiful!
All that effort was enough to get the guide to Google’s Page 3 of results, which is a nice place to hide a dead body because no one goes there.
Still, the guide started getting some longtail traffic and that’s what I hoped for given that the piece was around 6000 words of useful content.
Fast forward to the current situation and you could guess why the guide is killing it on the same page with LonelyPlanet, Wikitravel & National Geographic…people love it:
This is sending Google a signal – the thing is worth it, but I still didn’t answer the question you might have had – how did I get the guide from Page 3 to Page 1?
What did I do?
From Page 3 to Page 1
Here is how the guide has been (and still is) making it’s way to the top.
I know, I claim it to be on Page 1, but Search Console shows it #26, but the variability for this is huge.
Anyway, what did I do to make it improve SERPs?
N-o-t-h-i-n-g.
Those 2 quality links were enough to send Google the message.
As people started finding the article and staying on the page for, on average, 10 minutes, Google’s machine learning kicked in and it started slowly bringing up the article in rankings.
This is why purely isolated link building wouldn’t work – you need to build links to something.
Here Is What I Would Do Next (if I was my client)
Of course, I would build a few more links as we just scratched the surface with that initial blogger outreach. It would boost the guide more and positive spillovers will also be there for the website as a whole.
Now, given the site is sort of an e-commerce store, it needs to do remarketing.
This is obvious here – people read the guide, get value from the brand, but then leave the website.
We know for sure that they are, at least, considering visiting Iran at some stage (why would they read Iran travel guide otherwise?).
This is when they start seeing ads for Iran accommodation on Facebook or Google’s ad network.
Another no-brainer is collecting emails – offer the guide as a cute PDF ebook and get some emails in return (use Canva to beautify the entire thing and push interactions with your brand once more). This can bring great leads since a bulk of Iran travelers are actually going there for business more than once.
Do you think there is something that could be done further? Leave a comment below!
The Success Formula
To summarize, there are only two steps to increasing traffic to any website:
- Step 1: Create amazing content
- Step 2: Build links to it
Then you can (and should) push it further.
If you need help with creating amazing content that naturally increases your site’s traffic and attracts links, get in touch!
P.S. So, what’s the first thing you are going to work on in order to increase your site’s traffic?