A prestigious university in Missouri was putting all its energy into on-page and technical SEO, but off-page SEO had been left behind entirely. With Google’s updates hitting the education sector hard and competition for rankings growing tougher, the university’s organic traffic and visibility were barely moving. They came to us needing 200+ high-quality backlinks built within 6 months — a demanding target in one of the trickier niches for link building.
The Dilemma
Despite being a well-established institution, the university’s website was struggling to gain meaningful organic traction. Resource constraints meant the team had little bandwidth to dedicate to off-page SEO alongside their existing workload. In the education niche, finding content-relevant websites willing to link back is particularly challenging — and Google’s evolving algorithm made every backlink choice critical. The gap between where the university’s rankings were and where they needed to be was clear, and closing it required a structured, authority-driven approach.
The Course of Action
With the defined vision, we established an expansive strategy that covered multiple facets of SEO to enhance the site’s online presence.
In-depth Analysis:
We built a targeted list of high-authority educational websites, academic publications, and research platforms relevant to the university's accredited courses. We also identified key educational directories where the institution needed to be listed to strengthen its domain authority.
Content Creation
Every guest post and placement was crafted with strict content relevance in mind — a non-negotiable in the education niche. We produced informative, well-researched content that aligned naturally with the host sites' academic audiences while incorporating strategic anchor text pointing to the university's key pages.
Strategic Outreach
We secured placements across authoritative educational websites through strategic outreach and relevant follow-ups. In addition to it, we also built a real-time analytics and reporting system to keep the university's upper management informed of progress at every stage.
In just 6 months, the university’s website traffic grew by 28.93% and visibility improved by 34.5%.
Our team acquired more than 200 backlinks within 6 months, with 60% of the links acquired from websites with DAs as high as 60.
Keywords in positions 1–3 had increased by 15.22%, whereas keywords in positions 4–10 also climbed by 12.61%, which is a considerable increment given the time period.
Number of Keywords Ranking on Google SERPs
February 2023
January 2024
Percent Increase
Percent Increase
1–3
46
53
15.22%
4–10
238
268
12.61%
11–100
4,525
5,492
21.37%
Key Wins At A Glance
28.93%
More Traffic
34.5%
More Impressions
28.9%
More Clicks
The Ball's In Your Court
Link building remains a core tool for effective search engine optimization.
And no one does it better than Link Building HQ.
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