So in this case study, we had a client in the dental health sector that sold a very high-end cosmetic dental procedure (which also has health benefits). Services for some clients would exceed $35,000+ due to the exclusive nature of the treatment, and they had clients flying in from abroad to get this specific procedure.
The clinic had been hit by the The Google E-A-T Algorithm Update back in 2018, and were trying to regain the rankings they had:
- In the period between 2019 – 2020 they hired an SEO/content marketing agency, and traffic had gone up. However, it was a bit of a false positive, as they ranked top of funnel content and brought in traffic that was not their intended audience and ranked for keywords which did not have great buying intent. In other words, traffic came in, that wasn’t their ideal audience.
- They simplified things much more, targeted keywords which matched the intent of their target audience (very crucial), and they realised backlinks were going to make the difference.
- They hired another well-known link building firm in early 2020, however, they struggled to build links (only managing 4 in total), and the links they did build, again, did not have much relevance to their intended audience.
This is where having a handle on link relevancy gives us an edge.
We managed to build 21 links in total, over a roughly, 3 month period, including an addition 2 links which only came with a nofollow links and a brand mention, which did not contribute to our KPIs, but still got the client some benefit.
Looking at the nature of the service, the intended clientele and the market, we reached out mainly to:
- Luxury lifestyle magazines.
- Regional lifestyle magazines (where there was a higher % of HNWIs)
- The anti-aging/longevity industry.
- Some dental business publications
The idea behind this was, with the right content, pointing links at the right pages and trying to impact rankings with subtle use of certain anchor text, we could affect rankings for some very specific terms.
Lets bear in mind, we built these links in the period between September to mid November, we compared the traffic in December 2020, to December 2019.
Traffic and Enquiries
So traffic went up by almost 30% – not huge, however, what’s important is that goal completions followed suit.
A 22% increase in revenue (additional 20 enquiries), bearing in mind that treatments can cost 5-figures, was a large increase in potential revenue. We are unsure of conversion rates at this point, as the conversion to sale can be a long process with such sales. However, even if we low-ball the figures and assume $15,000 per enquiry = $300,000 additional revenue in that month alone.
And if you want to look closer to when we started, here’s where it becomes VERY interesting.
Comparing January 2021 vs July 2020
Traffic went up by almost 14%, along with enquiries going up by 14%, indicating we were bringing in traffic that was actually relevant and had buying intent.
A sample of some keywords (with progress shown in Ahrefs):
- Started in position 4, and by December, had grabbed snippet for this very high intent keyword with 300 search volume per month
- High buying intent keyword, from position 4 to 1.
