Link building

Getting other websites to link to a client’s site by earning the mention, not paying for it. Every link checked against a quality bar agreed upfront, every number counted once, and not a single paid placement in any of the work below.

The reporting standard

How these numbers are counted

Results like these are easy to make look bigger than they were — count one website twice, include sites you own yourself, pick the tool with the friendliest number. Here is what was done to stop that happening.

01 / COUNTING

Each website counts once

If the same website links to a client ten times, that is still one website, not ten. And when a client owns several sites, links those sites give each other are thrown out — otherwise a business could look popular just by pointing at itself.

02 / TIMING

Only the months I worked

The growth figures cover the exact months I was on the project, not a longer stretch that would sweep in results someone else earned. That period is boxed on every chart, so you can see precisely what is being claimed.

03 / QUALITY

A quality bar set upfront

Before starting, we agree a minimum quality score a website must meet before a link from it counts, and every link is checked against it. Links a site generates automatically never count. Those scores are estimates, not exact figures.

04 / SOURCES

The tools are named

The charts come from SEMrush, an industry tool that estimates how many visitors a site gets. Different tools give different numbers for the same site, so the charts show which direction things moved — not an exact visitor count.

◆ The clients stay anonymous. Their names and web addresses are withheld under confidentiality agreements, and their industries are described only in broad terms. Where a link is mentioned, it is described by the kind of site it came from — a university page, a college page — never the address.

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