From Zero to 100K: How Golden Link Building Transformed Spades.co's Organic Traffic
Stats
From 6 to 89,496 Monthly Visits
Client
Spades.co
Industry
Online Gaming
Duration
July 2023 Until Today
In mid-2023, Spades.co came to us with the problem of not being able to get traffic on their site, despite existing for 4 years.
Since they come from a competitive niche, they needed a targeted SEO strategy that would not only bring results fast but also place them as an authority in their industry.
The goal was clear: start strategically building high-quality links and get users onto their website ASAP.
About Spades.co
As the name says, Spades.co is an online platform allowing users to easily play the card game Spades – a highly competitive industry with millions of platforms offering the same.
It started in 2019 with a very simple interface that allowed users to play the game in single-player or multiplayer mode.
However, despite being established for 4 years, the site couldn’t bring one real user to the site to play the game…
But this wasn’t their only issue, as there was something bigger underlying that not everyone could know how to avoid…
The Most Volatile Period in Google’s Algo History
After the June 2024 spam update, many websites have seen a downgrade in their rankings, even those containing high amounts of backlinks with high Domain Ratings.
Why you may ask? Well, the graph below shows we’re currently in the most volatile period of Google’s algorithm.
It especially made it scary, as it seemed that everything we knew about backlinks before, wasn’t the case anymore…
This puts users in a position of not knowing what to expect, and how to fix the damage it caused, let alone navigate the next one when it comes out.
The Catalyst: How WLDM Increased Traffic By 8,949,500%
- Sites with over 1,000 monthly visitors ensure exposure and legitimacy, critical for authoritative link-building.
- We targeted pages already ranking for keywords relevant to Spades.co’s market.
- Each link needed to come from a page receiving at least 3 organic visits per month.
- We only acquired links from sites with a DR of 20 or higher, filtering out low-authority sites.
The Link Building Execution
Before July 2023, Spades.co had 0 links coming to their site and was one of the reasons the website experienced no traffic since its publishing.
Starting in July 2023, our team carefully started currating backlinks each month, sourcing 10-15 high-quality links within the monthly $5,000 budget.
Each link-building effort was crafted to fit seamlessly into Spades.co’s content strategy and align with their target keywords.
And the payoff couldn’t have been better! After only one month, the website started getting its first visitors since it was pubslihed!
With the client’s trust, our team continued building backlinks that meet the Golden Link standards, showing it as proof of our strategy work.
Links were continuously monitored, in case any links needed replacing to make sure there was no interruption to the website’s growth.
We targeted reputable blogs, industry-specific platforms, and niche websites that talked about the topics relevant to Spades.co.
In the end, only 179 backlinks were needed to skyrocket their traffic!
Every backlink was anchored with carefully selected keywords that matched Spades.co’s SEO goals, apart from containing all the golden link requirements.
Anchor Text Strategy
A crucial component of our strategy was the choice of strategically beneficial and contextually relevant anchor texts.
By analyzing search intent and competitor insights, we ensured that anchor texts were optimized to improve rankings for priority keywords, keeping them relevant for Spades.co’s niche.
Our anchor text approach blended branded, exact-match, and long-tail keyword anchors, creating a natural link profile.
Just like our golden links, our anchor texts followed specific criteria, making them resilient to algorithm changes:
- Relevant (they’re related to Spades)
- Credible (come from authentic websites, not link farms)
- Use natural anchor text (the text fits within the content where it appears)
- Dofollow (“follow” links allow search engines to follow the link, discover your content, and transfer link equity)
Undamaged By the Google Core Update
As we mentioned at the beginning, we are currently in the most volatile period of Google’s algorithm.
This was all due to the link update that happened on the 20th of June, which changed the way SEOs build links forever.
Why? Because Google introduced a new spam core update, specifically relating to backlinks. Mostly every website saw a crash in their traffic, even if they were still building high DR links.
Mostly everyone, but not our clients, and one of them was Spades.co.
As proof of the power of our golden links, Spades.co not only avoids spam update damage, but our links increase its traffic.
From the 20th of June when Google’s Core Update was released to this present moment, Spades.co’s traffic increased by 10.88%.
What started with 0 traffic and ended with almost 100,000 a month, withstanding every Google Core Update – is a clear indication of the power our golden links strategy has.
The Results
Within 1 year, our link-building strategy managed to obtain almost 100,000 users a month from a site that had 0 users for years.
We knew what to look for and how to accustom to the client’s budget, so with just 15 backlinks every month with a budget of 5,000$, we grew a no-name platform into one of the most authoritative ones in the niche.
Today, Spades.co counts an average traffic of 87,488 users a month! All with the power of golden links.
Key Performance Highlights:
- Organic Traffic Growth: Increased from 0 to nearly 100,000 visits per month, reflecting sustained improvement in organic visibility.
- Domain Rating (DR) Improvement: Strengthened authority by building links exclusively from websites with a DR of 20+, positioning Spades.co as a trusted resource in its industry.
- Enhanced Keyword Rankings: Our precise anchor text strategy contributed to improved keyword rankings, making Spades.co more visible across search engine results pages for relevant terms.
- Improved Visibility in Relevant Niches: By securing links from high-traffic, industry-relevant sites, we increased Spades.co’s visibility in relevant niches, leading to higher engagement from target audiences.
Insights and Takeaways
This case study underscores the impact of high-quality link-building focused on relevance and authority.
By investing in carefully vetted Golden Links, Spades.co not only saw a dramatic increase in traffic but also strengthened its domain authority and search engine rankings in a competitive field.
A clear presentation, that just by acquiring golden links, it was enough for the sites Domain Rating, Keywords, and Traffic to increase – without doing any additional SEO work.
