Link Building Case Study: Linen & Uniform Service Provider Increased Traffic By 149% & Referring Domains (Links) by 217%

Client Background: International Linen + Uniform Services & Workplace Supplies

Our client is a linens and uniform rental company which also offers workplace supplies. Their vision was clear: they wanted to expand their quality backlink profile to boost their domain authority and ultimately search traffic. 

Seeking professional expertise, they partnered with us to design and execute a link building campaign across numerous high authority sites to bolster their search engine performance.

The Challenge: “Average” Link Building Is No Longer Good Enough

The client had an ok backlink profile when Why Stuff Sucks was brought on board, but even so, link building strategy is one of the most misunderstood parts of SEO by people outside the field. 

Here are some of the links we obtained for them during our first year working together:

Sometimes considered to be a form of black magic, link building efforts are known to be delicate, intricate, and sometimes an all-or-nothing affair. There are no half links, only weak or strong, relevant links, and you either get the links, or you don’t.

It’s not magic though; it’s a perfectly valid and significantly effective form of digital marketing which does wonders for both search traffic and referral traffic. For that reason, businesses looking to build links are wise to seek an agency to handle their link building strategy.

Content Editorial: Structuring a Link Building Campaign

Building a diverse link profile is key to being viewed “natural” by Google + AI search engines; you want to have a variety of links:

• .com, .edu, .gov, .net, .org
• dofollow vs. nofollow
• internal vs. external links
• anchor text vs. naked links
• domain authority (low, medium, high distribution)
• press/pr for brand mentions

These 8 link building tactics are the most effective types, and Google prefers to see different ones used over time.

1. skyscraper
2. internal links
3. scholarship (.edu)
4. local SEO (citation/directories)
5. guest post
6. broken links
7. these naturally attract links
   1. quizzes
   2. infographics
   3. statistics pages
8. unlinked brand mentions

And AI search engines have some different preferences for “link building” which is more about getting branded mentions, then actual links.

Building a 3rd party “mention” profile is key to being credible in AI:

• recent
• consistent
• reputable sites
• relevant placements

These 5 “mention” tactics are crucial to getting AI to notice and cite your pages in its results:

1. Forums/UGC Mentions (Reddit, Quora, etc.)
2. 3rd Party Listicles
3. 3rd Party Reviews (GBP, Trustpilot, G2, Yelp, etc.)
4. Key 3rd Party Social Mentions (YouTube + TikTok + LinkedIn)
5. Individual authors w/ 3rd party mentions favored over brands

Some services offer large sums of link insertions for a low cost promising higher referral traffic. Traffic gained this way is short term, if it appears at all, as a backlink is only as strong as the page it lives on.

A high authority site doesn’t respond to requests from poor quality sites, and the types of pages that do will do very little for lending your page authority. By creating topically quality content and building relationships with high authority publications relating to your content, you expand your link building opportunities and brand visibility from sites willing to organically support your content.

The relationship between your site and the site linking back to yours is symbiotic, as they gain additional credibility from your page and you gain authority from theirs.

The “Secret” To Our Link Building Case Study

We acquired a handful of links each month over many months to provide the client a consistent yield of high quality links and delivered with more value than they were paying for, 38% more to be precise.

The Payoff From Multiple Years of Securing Links To Top Ranking Pages

Over the course of our multi-year partnership, we increased their online traffic more than doubled. Through the acquisition of high quality backlinks, they achieved the following metrics:

• Referring domains increased from 543 to 1,720 over 4 years (217% growth rate)
• Delivered 38% more link value than paid for
• Built 205 quality, relevant links over 48 months
• 149% increase in organic traffic

Don’t Take Our Word for It; Hear Directly From Our Clients

We’ve helped many clients over the years and we stand by the results of each one. Don’t just listen to us though, here’s what our clients themselves have said about us: