Case File — Ref. agency-platform
B2B SaaS Link Building
AgencyPlatform
Earning links from the exact marketing-ops publications an agency buyer already trusts.
- Domain Rating
- 29 → 47
- Qualified Referring Domains
- +58
- Category Keyword Rankings
- Top 10
Part 01
Project Overview
AgencyPlatform's buyers are agency owners and operations leads, a narrow, well-defined audience with its own set of trusted publications. The campaign prioritized relevance over raw domain rating from day one.
Part 02
The Client Challenge
AgencyPlatform's previous link building vendor had built volume through generic SaaS directories that its actual buyers never visited, inflating link counts without moving qualified traffic or rankings for buyer-intent keywords.
Part 03
Campaign Objectives
- Shift link acquisition toward publications agency owners genuinely read
- Earn links to product and comparison pages, not just the blog
- Build relationships with 3-4 recurring agency-focused publications
- Improve rankings for 'agency management software' category terms
Part 04
Research
We mapped the media diet of agency owners directly — newsletters, Slack communities, and blogs frequently referenced in agency operator circles — rather than relying purely on backlink-tool overlap data, since much of this audience's media consumption sits outside typical SEO-tool indexes.
Part 05
The Solution
Outreach centered on guest contributions and expert-quote placements in agency-operations publications, paired with SaaS-specific link prospecting for 'best agency management tools' and 'best agency software' roundups.
Execution
How the Campaign Was Run
Audience-first prospecting
Prospect lists were built around where agency owners actually spend time, cross-referenced against traffic and domain metrics as a secondary filter.
Expert-quote outreach
Founder and product-team commentary was pitched into relevant roundups and Q&A-style articles on agency-ops blogs.
Category roundup targeting
Existing 'best agency software' listicles were pursued for niche edits, prioritizing pages that already ranked on page one.
Relationship follow-through
Editors who published a first placement were re-engaged quarterly with new angles to keep the relationship active.
Campaign Highlights
4 recurring publishing relationships established in agency-ops media
29 guest and expert-quote placements across 8 months
17 niche edits inside existing 'best agency software' roundups
Category keyword rankings moved from page 3 to top 10
Results
Performance, Before & After
Illustrative directional results from the engagement — a visual summary rather than raw analytics screenshots.
01Domain Rating
00
02Referring Domains
00
03Organic Signups (monthly)
00
04'Agency management software' Ranking
#0#0
Key Learnings
- Relevance-first prospecting outperformed metric-first prospecting for a narrow B2B audience
- Recurring relationships with a small set of publications compounded faster than one-off placements
- Expert-quote outreach had a materially higher acceptance rate than cold guest-post pitches
Client Outcome
AgencyPlatform replaced a directory-heavy link profile with a smaller number of highly relevant placements, and organic signups from category keywords nearly tripled over the engagement.
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