Tiered Link Building Case Study | Legal Services
Pushing 28 target keywords from positions 6-18 to top 5 (some to top 3) using DGM's Link Building campaign with 10 hours of Custom Signals.
A law firm engaged DGM's Link Building campaign with 10 hours of Custom Signals. Over 3 months, the campaign moved 28 keywords from positions 6-18 to top 5 (some into top 3 positions), produced 63.58% increase in organic traffic, 15.77% monthly new user increase, 77.45% quarterly new user increase, 1,820 more clicks vs. the previous 3 months, and 2,305 additional incoming users.
63.58%
Organic traffic increase (3 months)
28
Keywords moved to top 5
77.45%
Quarterly new user increase
15.77%
Monthly new user increase
2,305
Additional incoming users
1,820
More clicks vs. previous 3 months
The client is a law firm with existing rankings - target pages had keywords hovering at positions 6-18. These are not bad positions, but they sit below the click-through cliff. CTR for position 1 averages 31.7%, and the #1 result is 10x more likely to receive a click than #10. CTR for positions 7-10 is virtually identical, meaning moving from #8 to #6 produces no meaningful traffic. The breakthrough threshold is crossing into top 5, where CTR climbs rapidly.
Most law firms in this position assume they need more pages, more content, or a different keyword strategy. They do not. They need link signal targeted at the existing pages already close to the breakthrough threshold.
The challenge for this engagement was identifying which keywords were realistically pushable into top 5 vs. which were stuck due to deeper structural reasons (insufficient on-page, content gap, competitor authority gap). The audit identified 28 target keywords across 3 target pages that were strong candidates.
DGM's Link Building campaign deployed targeted authority links to the 3 priority pages. Custom Signals (10 hours allocated) included branded entity reinforcement, social citation building, and supporting links from contextually-relevant publications.
Anchor text profile was balanced across exact match, partial match, branded, and naked URL distributions. Over-optimized anchor profiles trigger algorithmic suppression; under-optimized profiles produce no ranking lift. The right balance for each target page was calibrated based on the competitor anchor profiles for the keywords being targeted.
Within 3 months, 28 keywords moved from positions 6-18 to top 5; several keywords broke into top 3. Organic traffic grew 63.58%. New users grew 15.77% monthly and 77.45% quarterly. Total clicks were 1,820 higher than the previous 3 months. Total incoming users grew by 2,305 (62.76% increase).
Critically, the campaign did not require new page creation, content rewrites, or technical migrations. It moved existing pages from below the click-through cliff into the top 5 by adding the link signal Google needed to justify a higher ranking.
Services used in this engagement
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No. Any service business with existing rankings stuck in positions 6-15 can use this approach. We have applied it to insurance, healthcare, real estate, and home services clients.
Initial ranking movement typically appears in weeks 4-8. Peak results usually land 3-6 months into the campaign. Sustained position holding requires continued investment after the initial campaign.
Done correctly with white-hat tactics (no PBNs, no link farms, no spammy directories), the only risk is wasted spend if anchor distribution is off. We calibrate every campaign against current competitor anchor profiles.
We rank-track the target keywords pre-campaign, during campaign, and post-campaign. We also monitor referring domain growth. The correlation is direct in this case because no other major SEO work was happening during the campaign window.
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