Scaling an Industry Leader: +153k Organic Growth via Crowd & Submissions

Our client is a leading auto marketplace with a multi-million audience. By the start of the campaign, the site already boasted impressive metrics: over 5 million organic visits per month.

This mature, authoritative project with high rankings needed to address several key objectives for further scaling and market share protection:

• Strengthen the link profile and increase the number of referring domains (RDs).
• Support steady organic growth without sharp fluctuations.
• Build Domain Trust to rank for highly competitive keywords.
• Scale positions while avoiding risks associated with aggressive tactics.

To tackle these ambitious goals, a dedicated SEO campaign was launched, focusing on crowd marketing and link submissions. The strategy centered on building a highly natural and powerful link ecosystem.

Strategy

Over 3 months of active work, the team placed over 4,000 links, with a balanced 50/50 distribution. This approach simultaneously expanded the link profile and boosted brand visibility within niche communities.

Crowd Marketing (≈ 2,000 placements)

• Platforms: Niche forums, discussion threads on automotive portals, Q&A services (e.g., Quora), local Reddit communities, and comments on relevant articles.
• Anchors: Primarily branded, naked URLs, and generic phrases. Direct commercial anchors were avoided.
• Goal: Generate organic brand buzz, enhance user engagement signals, and strengthen brand signals for search engines.

Submissions (≈ 2,000 placements)

• Platforms: Industry-specific business directories, business listings (e.g., Yelp, Yellow Pages), profiles on automotive marketplaces and aggregators, and regional US directories.
• Goal: Rapidly and safely increase the number of referring domains and expand the brand’s digital footprint across various web segments.

Results

• 🚀 +153,846 organic traffic
• 🔗 +487 referring domains
• 🧱 4,000+ placements (50% crowd / 50% submissions)
• 🤖 Enhanced AI Visibility and brand signals
• 📊 Steady growth for a project with 5M+ monthly traffic

Key Results Breakdown

Referring Domains Growth

The starting point for the number of referring domains was already substantial. However, we achieved significant growth, demonstrating the strategy’s effectiveness even for established projects.

• June 1, 2025: 2,373 domains
• August 30, 2025: 2,860 domains
• Growth: +487 domains

Organic Traffic Growth

The project’s core business metric responded positively and predictably. Traffic growth was consistent and impacted a wide range of pages.

• June 1, 2025: 5,151,154 visits
• August 30, 2025: 5,305,000 visits
• Growth: +153,846 visits

Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic

The traffic increase was driven not only by branded queries (which also grew due to crowd marketing activities) but primarily by commercial and informational queries, indicating improved site relevance in Google’s algorithm.

Added Value – AI Visibility

Alongside the core metrics, we observed an interesting “side effect”: an increase in the site’s citations within generative AI responses. This is an indirect yet significant signal of brand authority in the digital landscape.

• AI Overview: 1.5K
• ChatGPT: 5.9K
• Perplexity: 3.5K
• Copilot: 2.2K

Key Takeaways

This case clearly demonstrates that even for industry giants with a multi-million audience, active link profile management remains critically important. The balanced 50/50 strategy (crowd + submissions) successfully:

• Strengthened the link profile without creating aggressive patterns that might raise search engine flags.
• Significantly increased the number of quality referring domains.
• Supported and accelerated the organic growth of a market-leading site.
• Reinforced the brand’s digital authority and presence in both community discussions and AI-generated results.

Even for a site with over 5 million monthly visits, a well-structured and scalable link-building campaign proves to be the most effective and safe tool for reaching new heights.