Linkbuilding SEO Case Study: How FamilyBreakFinder Attracted 200+ High Quality Backlinks From Global News Media And Top Viral Websites

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dominic-sawyer
Dominic, Founder

This linkbuilding case study explains why and how a UK travel start-up achieved global media coverage with a content idea that went ‘viral’. FamilyBreakFinder was featured on The Guardian, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Engadget, Lonely Planet, New York Times, BBC, CNN, Yahoo, Mashable and others, as well as numerous foreign language news sites. Over 40 50 60 100 200+ high quality backlinks were achieved in under 10 days.

We’re sharing this case study to thank all the SEO experts that helped us with their own stories, advice and tips. We’ve linked to some of the resources that influenced us below.

But also we want to inspire all those who are trying hard to build links. Success doesn’t always come easily or quickly – keep the faith!

Background

familybreakfinder-seo-case-studyEarlier this year my start-up DayTripFinder pivoted to become FamilyBreakFinder. Why? The quick story is that holidays and short breaks are a better prospect than days out.

In a short time at DayTripFinder we’d built a solid audience of families – mostly mothers – keen to get more value from their leisure time. We began transitioning into package holiday deals and our audience responded well. Awareness of our cheap travel deals grew through a lot of social media hard work. Our email list reached 140,000 this year and our Facebook audience is close to ¼ million fans.

Getting traffic and attention for our content has become easy.

But to grow revenues we realised we needed traffic that converts to sales. And when it comes to buying holidays and breaks, search engine traffic converts better than social and email traffic.

The Problem We Faced

Our search engine visibility was low. We are operating in a market where big name brands dominate search results. Even so, beyond the first search engine result pages we barely featured.

Changing our domain name and the entire purpose of our business hadn’t helped. We’d also quickly rolled out lots of new products, including travel voucher codes and discounts, a flight search engine, theatre tickets shop, holiday rentals engine and package holiday finder, with no reputation in search for delivering that kind of content.

We realised we needed to rank better to succeed.

What We Learnt About SEO

seobook-seobacklinko-seosearchengineland-seomoz-logo-seoWe’re a small team. We each do a lot of different jobs across the business. We haven’t reached the point yet where we can employ dedicated SEOs.

So we all muck in – and when we don’t know what we’re doing we spend time trying to figure it out.

We’ve read Moz, SearchEngineLand and SEO Book. We’ve followed diverse influencers like Brian Dean, Neil Patel, AJ Ghergich, Bruce Clay, Aleyda Solis and Eric Enge to name a few. And we’ve ripped through countless presentations and slides from events like State Of Search, SearchLove, Inbound and SMX Advanced.

Our three biggest takeaways from all of this:

  1. The content on our site needed to be good. It had to be well structured with good use of titles and headings, use the keywords and phrases we wanted to rank for, be appropriate in length and valuable to those arriving on our pages. See here for more on content optimization;
  2. Technically our site and its pages needed to perform well. The site needed to be easily crawled by search engines, site speed had to be quick and site architecture strong with a sitemap and SEO friendly urls. See here for more technical SEO tips;
  3. We needed links. When determining how relevant your site and content is, search engines are very influenced by who links to it already and how important their sites are (their domain authority). We had very few incoming links, so we needed to research linkbuilding and find ways to attract links.

Tackling points 1 and 2 would be straightforward, and we set to work on them immediately. ScreamingFrog was a very useful tool we used to identify and address technical problems.  And there is still a lot to do!

Point 3 – generating a volume of quality links to FamilyBreakFinder – was a more challenging prospect that would take time.

Beginning Our Linkbuilding Initiative

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We like to use Asana to manage of projects, so we set up a linkbuilding project and began collecting ideas as a team.

A resource called ‘180+ linkbuilding strategies‘ proved invaluable as we worked out how long different ideas would take to deliver results and what kind of approaches would fit with our business.

However, an important aside about many of the case studies given by internet marketing experts: often the examples only work within the internet marketing niche. We found a lack of high quality, actionable ideas for those of us in consumer markets.

We were keen to move fast and prepared to allocate time across a variety of different ideas rather than go ‘all in’ on one, since we thought it unlikely we’d hit the link jackpot with our first and only idea.

An invaluable tool we used throughout our linkbuilding work was Ahrefs. We used this for examining competitor links, keyword research, domain authority comparison and backlink tracking. We also like SEMrush for keyword research and brand monitoring.

Idea 1: The Travel Survey

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Keen to stay close to our core business of travel and to attract links from high authority travel-oriented sites, we turned first to a long-time popular PR idea: the research survey.

Our team had had some success in the past with surveys at different companies. The idea was to create a survey full of topical and interesting questions that would provoke interesting results that journalists would take interest in (leading to coverage and links to the survey results).

Given that a) we had access to 140,000+ UK members to achieve a credible sample size; b) the Brexit referendum had just happened, triggering discussion about the impact on Euro holidays; and c) consumers were particularly nervous about travel given global political insecurities, we thought we could generate some good content from the survey results.

We set about surveying over 1,300 members about their family travel plans for 2017.

We try to validate our ideas before developing them too far. With this one we decided to seek an exclusive press partner who would give us guaranteed coverage and get the link tsunami started. If we could find a press partner, surely our idea would have potential?

Via a contact, we were recommended the Telegraph, whose travel coverage is strong and who incidentally have a great digital marketing team. They were interested in seeing the results and happy to link to us as the source.

A crucial beginners mistake we made at this early stage was not checking whether the Telegraphs links were do-follow or no-follow. The Telegraph’s links are generally no-follow, meaning search engines ignore them. Never mind, we said, because this excellent coverage on the Telegraph will lead to other stories and plenty of do-follow links from other sites.

telegraph-familybreakfinderOur story was published and we were happy with the report. We felt there were some interesting findings revealing the mindset of British families. We prepared press releases and created a PDF report with all the graphs and pie charts, plus some infographics for social media distribution.

Despite concerted efforts targeting UK media news desks and travel editors we failed to capture attention. We did get some pick up from travel industry sites but, frustratingly, none of the travel editors seemed impressed.

Analysing the failure of this first idea, we made notes:

  • We learnt belatedly, after trawling the tweets of travel editors to understand what they DO cover, that they really hate surveys. So much so, some of them mention the fact in their Twitter bios. Conversations between travel editors on Twitter showed them mocking the efforts of companies trying to engage them with their research. Surveys are seen as saturated;
  • We observed, also via Twitter, that much of the press coverage given to PRs or companies by journalists relates to trips (aka ‘junkets’), and often there seemed to be an established relationship between the PR and the journalist. We could offer neither of these;
  • We realised that choosing an exclusive press partner may have hampered our chances of getting coverage elsewhere. By giving our research to the Telegraph, we were snubbing others;
  • We accepted that you can create a survey full of great questions, but you can’t guarantee great answers. While our survey results provided useful industry data about consumer spending and intentions, they were not “wow” interesting. Reflecting on our headlines, we were forced to admit they were not the kind of clickbait today’s media are probably looking for.

Idea 2: The Candy Map

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Many of the top news websites have high domain authority. That was a reason we were targeting them. But looking more closely at the kind of content they cover, we realised our best hope in featuring on them was by creating something ‘viral’ since we couldn’t provide products or holidays or eye-catching exclusives. Could we create a piece of highly popular, shareable content they would want to run a story on?

Large amounts of viral content is these days sourced from Reddit by journalists, so we began to investigate the ‘front page of the internet’ and consider how we might approach it.

We were also very interested in a presentation from Brighton SEO by Hannah Smith, Head of Creative at Verve Search. Titled ‘Art, virtual snowballs and the feels’ it examined the success of ‘Beer Map’, a piece of content created by alcohol fan-site Vinepair.com. Hannah’s presentation questioned how such a simple concept and basic content format – every country’s favourite beer plotted with logos on a world map – could inspire coverage from over 500 sites. The answer? It made people ‘feel’ something. It created an emotional response.

With Halloween on the horizon and aware that news websites like topical stories, we decided to replicate the beer map idea – but with candy (trick or treat?) From our research using BuzzSumo, we could see that confectionery was a popular topic that roused emotions.

So we bought a map file from Shutterstock and began researching every country’s favourite candy – chocolates, sweets, gum – and collecting their logos. While we used many of the same industry sources as Vinepair (particularly Euromonitor) it wasn’t always clear which were the top-selling brands. Sometimes we had conflicting answers, so we had to interpret the right answer using mixed data. We thought if we listed our sources this would legitimize the map.

Following the exact layout that Vinepair had used, setting our title and references in the same places, we ensured that the content design would not be a differential when we compared results. Just like Beer Map, our candy company logos were plotted on each country.

A week or so earlier – in anticipation of posting ‘Candy Map’ – we’d set up a Reddit account and begun exploring the renowned site. We had all been occasional Reddit readers, but none of us had registered an account before. We began engaging with other users’ posts, joined sub-Reddits we were interested in and posted a few finds.

When the map was finished, we posted Every Country’s Favorite Candy on a Friday, at 9 am EST (1 pm GMT). This is considered the best time to post on Reddit. We posted a direct link to the map on FamilyBreakFinder rather than an image upload to Reddit. We thought this would be better for encouraging links; we didn’t want people to take the map image only and use without attribution. We posted to the subreddit called /dataisbeautiful. This is one of the default subreddits and it has almost 9 million subscribers. It’s the most relevant place to post a map or data visualization.

Immediately there was a response. Comments, upvotes and downvotes started to pour in.

uproxx-seoWe’d observed that early comments are important on Reddit and can determine the success of the post. Here we were seeing lots of early upvotes, but we were also attracting negative comments. We wanted people to debate the map, as it meant it was creating an emotional response. But the early comments were unfortunately calling out the credibility of the data – “Using Mars as a source. Jeez” – and this really shaped the discussion. The upvotes piled up, but so did the negative comments and downvotes. Opinion on our map was polarised – people take candy seriously.

thrillist-seoNevertheless we continued to promote the map, sending it with a press release to our database of tabloid news sites, viral publishers and food sites. Pleasingly we got an early response, from pop culture site Uproxx who said they’d be covering it. Over the weekend the map also appeared, with a link, on Thrillist. Then Metro US published it. We received over 100,000 visits in two days from Reddit alone. However the map was continuing to prove divisive.

To get to the front page of Reddit and be seen by story-skimming journalists you generally need 1000+ upvotes within hours. Candy Map had stalled at 700 and the ratio of upvotes to downvotes was around 2 to 1. If any journalist was seeing it, they were no doubt also seeing the negative comments.

Our key takeaway from this idea was: be more rigorous about accurate data sources to avoid a Reddit roasting.

Candy Map could have been a winner.

Idea 3 – Glamping Inspiration

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Although we were encouraged by Candy Map’s performance and pleased with our first few links, we decided to try something quite different next. Staying close to a topic we know well, glamping, we aimed to create an inspiration photo-driven listicle.

100 Best Glamping Experiences In The World’ would feature a photo of an amazing glamping accommodation, a short description and link to each glamping site. We weren’t expecting big publishers to use this content; our tactic here was to attract links from all the glamping sites featured, as well as travel blogs and glamping booking sites. We knew these would not have the same level of domain authority as big publishers, but thought what we lost in quality would be gained in quantity.

The post was published and we reached out by email to the 100 sites featured, as well as other glamping-related targets and travel bloggers. Speculatively we also prepared a press release and sent to our media list.

The results were underwhelming.

From those glamping sites that did respond to us, the majority chose to mention their inclusion on Twitter or Facebook rather than with a website link, despite our nudge with the inclusion of a badge they could embed on their sites. Of the travel bloggers that did reply, most asked for money to be featured on their sites. We did get a nice follow link from a global glamping booking site.

The results of this idea made us consider more carefully the role of social media. It would be little use to us creating further ideas that were simply shared on social; we needed to be sure they would be linked on good websites. We also began to revise our predictions of how much response our outreach work would deliver.

Idea 4 – The Top Attractions Map

favorite-usa-attractions-by-state-870

Still observing the popularity of maps on Reddit and big publisher sites, and feeling that the format aligned well with our travel focus, we returned to thinking about how we could replicate the success of Beer Map while applying learnings from Candy Map.

Any new map idea had to be based on solid data to succeed on Reddit – but it also needed ‘talkability’. The content needed to provoke comments, and preferably not critical ones.

We’d noticed as frequent TripAdvisor users that often the top-reviewed attractions for different counties and states are not the most visited places. A great day out is not determined by the size and profile of the attraction, and travellers’ favourite museums, theme parks and natural attractions are usually those that deliver amazing value for money (especially free), great atmosphere or stunning customer service. So a place like Alcatraz Island can outrank Disneyland in TripAdvisor’s top attractions for California list.

We thought this was quite interesting and might appeal to Redditor mentality – discovering little gems, a little geeky and a nod to the underdog.

So we researched and made two maps, one for US states and one for UK counties. The data was solid this time as we had one definitive source: TripAdvisor. We posted our new creations to Reddit, dropping a direct link to FamilyBreakFinder. We chose the humongous /dataisbeautiful for our US states map and /unitedkingdom for our UK counties map.

An immediate problem occurred when a moderator removed the US states post from /dataisbeautiful. It turned our that our data wasn’t beautiful enough: you are not allowed to post maps that are simply labelled with words. So instead we turned to the much quieter but less stringent /mapporn (289,000 subscribers).

scotsman-seoMeanwhile on /unitedkingdom we were again subjected to the harsh scrutiny of Redditors – early comments complained that the attractions were “no way” the top ones in each county and that the map pins had not been plotted in the exact locations on each attraction. This was again something we didn’t consider; we plotted the pins by county and didn’t research the exact geographic spots. Because our hopes were that this map would be used by UK media, we hastily replotted the whole UK map for our press release distribution.

On /mapporn there was a similar reaction to the US map. The map was misunderstood – how could these be every state’s favourite attraction if no-one has heard of them? It reached 34 upvotes and 27 comments – not a huge success, but also not a complete failure. Uproxx gave it nice coverage (and another link) and the UK map attracted the attention of The Scotsman, who covered it but would not add a link despite our request.

Idea 5 – The Weird Place Names Map

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Determined to crack Reddit with a winning map, we continued to explore ideas.

We noticed that over the years the topic of strange or funny town names had been popular. Real estate website Estately had done well with their map of lewd sounding town names in America, achieving over 100 backlinks and coverage on the likes of Esquire and Sports Illustrated. Could a map of weird UK place names capture the attention we craved from British media?

No. However, Reddit loved this one. This time we uploaded the map image directly to the post, hoping it would perform better if users could see the content on Reddit without clicking out. We were right. We also stripped off all our branding and applied a small Creative Commons Attribution credit to the corner of the map, to experiment with a less protective approach to our content. Since this was another simple map with labels, we chose /mapporn to post in.

The response was excellent, with Redditors jumping in to point out all the other funny and strange place names we could have included on the map. The upvotes rained heavy and we got close to the front page, though never on it. Our outreach to UK national and regional media included mention of the fact this map was “going viral” on Reddit with over 3500 upvotes and 500 comments.

Frustratingly, UK media – including travel editors and travel bloggers – were still giving us the cold shoulder. It’s worth mentioning that we used an excellent tool called Yesware to keep track of all our outreach work. This gave us insight into who actually read our emails, what attachments they opened and who didn’t open our messages.

The results of this explosion of interest on Reddit were just two notable backlinks, one from Thrillist (again) and another from an Anglophile website. This disproved our hypothesis that if we could achieve success on Reddit then media coverage would naturally follow.

Idea 6 – We Have A Winner! The Tourism Slogans Map

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By now we felt more confident as Redditors. We had learned lots about the culture of its communities (each subreddit is different), the familiar patterns of debate that take place and, most importantly, what content does well. We’d also built a high karma score, although I would not say this makes a huge difference to the success of posts.

We realised that, actually, maps continued to be one of very few options available to us. When you analyse the Reddit front page, you mostly see photos, videos and plain text statements (eg /showerthoughts). Outbound links are usually breaking news stories. None of these formats are practicable for us.

We were developing a criteria. Our next map should have global relevance, we said, to embrace all Redditors.

Our team had knowledge of tourism destination marketing from previous work and we discussed the prospects of a ‘slogans map’. This would show the tourism marketing taglines of every country. Our feelings were that often these statements, which most countries have, are either amusingly bland or somewhat odd. We began to research them.

In our research we noticed that an old article on The Guardian that had done well and we were encouraged that it was reasonably easy to find slogans using the official tourism websites for countries. Knowing that any mistakes in the data could be our downfall, we carefully filled up our faithful world map with the slogans we found. We decided to return to using our branded template – complete with large-sized FamilyBreakFinder credit – because we were concerned that, if the map did go viral, we might lose attribution for it.

Posting to Reddit (/mapporn) at our preferred time of 9 am EST, we watched the early comments and votes. The post ticked along nicely with upvotes and comments. The progress was very similar to that we had seen with the Weird Names Map: steady and strong.

Comments were exactly what we hoped for. They were about the slogans and how funny, surreal or boring they were. The map also enabled a creative response, with many suggesting their own witty alternatives. Just like Weird Names Map, the post accelerated quickly towards thousands of upvotes. We prepared our press release, which included mention of the Reddit response, and hit up those all those news sites, travel editors and virals publishers again. We sent publishers an unbranded version of the map to use, which meant the content could look more integrated on their sites.

Overnight we saw the map appear on 4chan, where more commentary took place. In the morning we reflected on the fact we’d achieved Reddit success again, but still had no ‘bites’ from publishers. We were determined to continue our outreach, which grew wider with each idea we tried.

Then we saw our first external link come in! Happily it was from a site on our target list, but not one that had featured us before: Boing Boing. Often we knew an article was about to be published because we would see a referral in our analytics. It was exciting to see Boing Boing, because we knew they were an influential blog as well as one with very high domain authority (70 Domain Rating – DR – on Ahrefs).

Another big moment followed shortly afterwards: coverage from the Daily Mail travel section. While the Mail rarely links (and sometimes barely credits) we coveted Mail coverage because we knew it would give our content media endorsement. The Mail is looking for big traffic and is pretty good at finding and angling stories to score maximum visits, shares and comments. Being featured on the world’s biggest newspaper website was a good signal for other journalists considering the piece.

Shortly afterwards The Guardian responded to our email, saying they’d like to feature the map and asking if we had any other images. We hurriedly pulled together some ads and posters featuring a variety of the slogans. Then another backlink popped up, this time a lower DR (45) from a Turkish magazine site called MNE. Things were happening.

Over the next few days more links and enquiries came in. Digg ran a piece. Remember Digg? They still have incredible domain authority – DR82.

Then came Engadget (DR75), Lonely Planet (DR73), Stuff (DR 71), Mental Floss (DR 68), AV Club (DR 67), AllTop (DR 65), Huffington Post Greece (DR 58) and the legendary Kottke (DR 64).

Within 10 days we’d achieved 50+ follow links, plus dozens more mentions and thousands of social shares.

Update 4th January – The map has exceeded all our expectations. Over the holidays we attracted over a hundred new links with some brilliant wins. We’ve been featured with links on New York Times, CNN, Mashable, BBC, Yahoo, Quartz, Mashable, MSN, Telegraph, Independent and lots of others.

*Champagne emoji* 

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Questions?

There’s a lot we couldn’t fit in here. Got a question about our linkbuilding campaign? Fire away in the comments and we’ll try and respond asap.

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