Case Study 3: Doubling the Organic Traffic for an Affiliate Review Site

Thanks to the expert link-building strategy we devised, an affiliate website was able to build a healthy link profile and double its organic traffic. 

After working diligently for approximately 4 months, our hard work paid off in March of 2023, as the site’s organic traffic shot up from 60k to 120k nearly overnight. 

Additionally, their referring domains began to grow by a significant margin as soon as we kicked off our strategy in November of 2022. 

Ultimately, we were able to meet all the client’s goals while establishing them as an authoritative thought leader in their field. 

The Client: A Kitchen Appliance Review Site (Affiliate Marketing) 

Our initial conversations with the client gave us some valuable insights into their operation. 

They operate a comprehensive website that reviews various kitchen products and appliances designed for personal use. 

It’s a helpful resource for consumers eager to get their hands on the highest quality cooking and kitchen appliances for their homes. 

It’s also an affiliate site, meaning they receive commissions for promoting certain products. 

Their website was pretty massive, with a plethora of inner pages, including an archive of all past reviews. Due to the sheer size of the site, we knew that distributing link equity evenly throughout was going to be important. 

By meeting with the client, we were able to learn more about their target audience, the keywords they were currently targeting, and their primary business goals. 

Thanks to our expertise in digital marketing, we were able to develop a winning strategy to meet their goals and build up their credibility in their niche. 

Their Goals: Improving Keyword Rankings, Building Link Authority, Focusing on Relevant Backlinks 

The client had a clear set of goals that they wanted our team to achieve, which included the following:

• Improving their SERP rankings for existing keywords 

• Build domain and link authority 

• Focus on acquiring relevant, high-authority backlinks 

They were eager to boost their organic traffic to generate more leads & sales, and they knew the only way to do that was to improve their SEO strategy and strengthen their link profile. 

Our Strategy: Filling the Link Gap, Tweaking Anchor Text, Finding Top-Tier Backlinks 

Once we knew what the client wanted to see, our team didn’t waste any time getting to work. 

We kicked things off by conducting an in-depth analysis of how the site’s competitors were ranking for their target keywords. Additionally, we analyzed the anchor text profile of our client’s site and their top competitors to see what they were up against. 

It didn’t take long for us to discover that the client had quite a few pages that already had a sufficient number of links.

Over-optimization is never a good thing, so we decided to leave those pages alone. 

Instead, we focused on pages that had a link gap, meaning they lacked enough links to rank well on search engine results pages. 

For a link profile to be considered healthy, the link equity (or link juice) must be evenly spread throughout the entire website. In the case of our client’s site, certain pages were dense with link equity, while others were spread too thin. 

To even things out, we developed a 40/60 link-building strategy, where we allocated 40% of the links to the homepage and 60% of the links to inner pages. 

That strategy spread the link equity evenly through the website, which was the best way to avoid building an unhealthy link profile. 

Focusing on building links for the pages that had a gap proved to be successful, as we were able to develop a healthy & authoritative link profile for our client. As a result, they saw significant improvements in their performance on search engines. 

Trying something new for their anchor text profile 

A significant portion of our strategy involved strengthening the client’s anchor text profile. 

That’s because we uncovered an alarmingly high percentage of branded and generic anchors on the client’s website, which wasn’t boding well for their link profile. 

Generic anchor text can devalue a link, especially on Google (common phrases to avoid include ‘click here’ or ‘buy now’). 

While branded anchor text can work well for citing sources, too much of it can start to devalue your links. 

We decided to dilute the high percentage of branded & generic anchor text by using a combination of naked and topical anchors. 

Naked anchors simply use the URL as the anchor text, and while they’re not always the best option, they’re important for achieving a diverse link profile. 

Topical anchors describe the general subject of the page you’re linking to, and they’re helpful to both search engines and users – as they provide insight and context to the page in question. 

The tactic worked, as we were successful in building a diverse & balanced anchor text profile for the client’s website, in turn boosting their online visibility and SERP rankings. 

Also, we knew that we wanted to avoid penalties from search engines at all costs, which is why we closely analyzed each page to ensure we were building a healthy anchor profile. 

Improving keyword rankings and building reputable backlinks 

To fulfill the client’s goal of improving their keyword rankings, our strategy involved linking to informational pages that interlinked with their primary keyword pages. 

This directly resulted in a significant boost in the keyword rankings for the client’s informational and money keywords. 

Lastly, we only targeted backlinks from high-authority domains that had excellent metrics. 

Our team also created content for the client’s website that seamlessly integrated with the anchor text for each link, ensuring a logical fit between the anchor text and the content itself. 

The Results: 2x More Organic Traffic, All Client Goals Met, Boosted Domain Authority 

As soon as we initiated our strategy in November, the client saw a massive boost to their referring domains, skyrocketing from 60k to 100k before the end of the year. 

It didn’t take long for the client’s organic traffic to follow suit, as it doubled itself during the month of March (60k to 120k). 

The client saw an uptick in organic traffic, leads, and sales – and they became a dominant player in their industry. 

If you want to see stand-out results like these for your business, don’t wait to check out our link-building packages today.