Over 400% Growth Month-to-Month with Dedicated Outreach | Link Building for SaaS

It goes without saying that the current AI market is saturated with numerous companies, each seeking to outdo the others. There are multiple reasons for that, with the most prominent being easy access to technology and a growing understanding of artificial intelligence among businesses.

In order to stand out in this crowd, we needed to act fast and focus on generating results.

The Client

The AI app market is full of ambitious startups seeking to revolutionize different industries. Very often, those apps promise immensely spectacular results – and you only know whether they deliver after you pay the price for using them.

This is why developing a brand in this niche is especially difficult.

At first glance, our client’s app doesn’t stand out that much. It has some unique features, but for an uninformed observer, it may seem like yet another platform trying to carve out its space in the AI industry. 

So, this was our very first challenge: How can we get people to even notice us? 

Project Timeline: Two-Phased Approach for Immediate Results

This time, the client didn’t plan to work with us on a complete SEO campaign.

Instead, they asked us to support their in-house team in developing their outreach plan and providing ongoing consultations about SEO best practices.

It gave us more room to focus on what really mattered in this situation: generating website traffic and building authority, fast.

Phase I: SEO Consulting, Competitor and Market Analysis

We began our journey with this client on the consulting front. This involved helping the in-house team understand where their website stood from a SEO point of view, and providing suggestions for improvement.

Our initial research focused on the website’s pain points: weak on-page optimization, lack of high-quality backlinks, and low keyword rankings. 

We then provided the team with structured, actionable advice that they could use to improve the website’s SEO. This included technical suggestions, such as optimal internal linking structure, metadata enhancement, and keyword research.

The next step was to research the competition. We looked at competitors’ link profiles, other SEO-related metrics, and their market position and overall marketing strategy. We noticed that many of the client’s competitors put recent trends over long-term gains.

This approach worked, but the client was set on developing a strong brand in the long term. So, our recommendations also included more evergreen content and an emphasis on building relationships, not just links.

Studying the client’s direct competitors did not give us the full picture of the market. With our experience in growing brands in highly competitive niches, we knew that we needed to take a broader look at the industry as a whole.

This let us set realistic expectations when it came to the results of our link building, as well as the overall marketing strategy.

Phase II: Relationship Link Building

This is where the idea of relationship link building came into play. We understood that the client’s website needed to be associated with high-authority domains to gain credibility and improve search visibility.

We chose to reach out to SaaS websites that were already talking about GPT, AI, and chatbots:

These websites really liked the content ideas I shared with them. Even if they didn't want new articles, many agreed to add the client's link to articles they already had. I made sure to choose only the very relevant websites with high quality, with a Domain Rating (DR) over 50 and good traffic.

Andreea Saveluc
Outreach Team Leader

This approach worked very well. We started seeing amazing results quickly, with traffic jumping from 4,000 to 185,000 visitors. All this with just a few improvements on the website and some targeted outreach. 

Google Analytics confirm the results reported in Ahrefs above.

Link Requirement Plan – Our Retrospective Tool

We progressed through this project following our Link Requirement Plan, a simple document outlining the key requirements for our link building strategy that lets us focus on delivering results and track progress. Let’s take a look at an example LRP.

We start with an outline of the competitors’ link profiles. This includes the main metrics, such as DR (Domain Rating), RD (Referring Domains), backlinks, keywords, and estimated traffic volume.

Thanks to this, we can evaluate the position of the client in their niche – and see what still needs to be done.

Part 1 of LRP: competitor analysis.

Using the data we gather throughout the duration of the project (and historical data), we can forecast the changes to the client’s competitors. We don’t just plan to catch up to their current position, we plan ahead to overtake them!

Part 2 of LRP: competitor forecast.

We also forecast the changes in the key metrics of the client’s website. This serves as a roadmap – we need to at least reach the predicted results.

On top of that, it is an important retrospective tool. There, we can check what we achieved, what it took to achieve that, and whether the forecast we made was correct.

Part 3 of LRP: client’s website analysis. Note that our LRPs are usually much more expanded. The example above was prepared for educational purposes.

We often compare results from multiple clients (especially within similar niche) to assess the accuracy of our data – and this leaves us with a continuous improvement cycle that benefits all our projects and acts as a well-oiled feedback mechanism for future strategies.

Needless to say, this is an embodiment of the PDCA method. Although the tables above may seem rather minimalistic, they are everything we need to plan, execute, measure, and correct our strategies. They offer a clear, concise snapshot of our predictions versus actual outcomes, empowering us to be proactive and make timely adjustments to our strategies.

Numbers: The Measurable Impact

Amazing is the only word to describe the transformation our client experienced following our efforts. When we say it was a “measurable impact,” we mean it.

Google Analytics confirm the results reported in Ahrefs above.