SEO case study: Quality link building with high return on investment (ROI)

When you’re talking about link building, quality is a pretty hard metric to analyze.

But what most link building experts tend to agree on is the fact that for the past few years, quality has proven to be more important than quantity.

To give the campaign the best possible effect, I’d much rather get 10 quality links than 100 mediocre ones.

In this case study, I want to show the results of a link building campaign with a high return on investment (+780% ROI) that I used at Vzdusin to boost the site in organic search, along with its subsequent growth.

If you have a rough idea of what the costs of online marketing and individual advertising channels are, you might be surprised at the great returns that link building can offer.

Ultimately, this is only a fraction of the cost of the total marketing budget.

Project background and results

When Next Vision published a case study about Vzdusin on the topic “How to move an established e-shop by 80 % in one year”, Vzdusin was not currently doing well in organic search.

We did not fare well, recording a year-on-year decline of just over 20 % (Google -12.72 %, Seznam -42.71 %). 

Although in this case, the attendance was secondary for me, as sales were not down, I was still not happy with the result.

It made a lot of wrinkles on my forehead – and at my age, that’s definitely not something I’d settle for. I like a challenge, and this was precisely that.

Change of link building strategy

I knew that technically and content-wise, Vzdusin was not the worst – the marked difference from the competition was the backlinks. In short, Vzdusin had quantity, but not quality.

Using a data-driven approach, I set about building high-quality and highly relevant links for Vzdusin in a relatively small number (45).

Achieved results

Now, exactly one year to the date when the case study was first created – and when I actively began to solve the new link building strategy – I can say that I have managed to increase traffic year-on-year by more than 70%.

For Vzdusin, however, the interpretation of the year-on-year results is a bit challenging and misleading because the seasonality of mobile air conditioners significantly affects our results. 

That’s why I tend to follow the trend of monthly year-on-year results and there are usually average increases in traffic of more than 150%. In sales, this then makes an increase of more than 200%. 

Last year (2019), the weather was good for Vzdusin and the demand for mobile air conditioners increased rapidly, with roughly 90,000 people per month searched for mobile air conditioners during the summer months.

This year (2020), the summer months have been rainy, which has thus resulted in a drop in searches to around 15,000 people per month.

These are really marked differences, and you can see them beautifully laid out in the diagram below.

Vzdusin growth in 2020 is across the full spectrum of product lines, and so it is not affected by product seasonality or the coronavirus pandemic, as queried on Linkedin.

A case study in numbers

• I got a total of 45 quality links (an important diversification of the link portfolio).
• Total cost of link building $4,972.72 for 12 months, or $414.35 per month (including agency costs).
• Average monthly year-on-year increase in organic traffic of more than 150%
• Average monthly year-on-year increase in organic search revenue of more than 200%
• Overall return on investment (ROI) of over 780% (ROI = link building costs, gross profit (organic search revenue – cost of goods purchased)

What you should take away

Perhaps you were expecting a specific workflow in this case study, how I arrived at the results, and what the strategy looked like.

My intention and goal of this case study, however, is to show how much link building is an important part of SEO, as well as how effective it can be in terms of return.

While the results do not happen overnight, the investment will certainly begin to pay off over time. What’s more, these results will build important foundations for further business growth, and will gain enormous potential for further backlink development and strengthening the project in the market.