Real numbers from real client books.
Every link verifiable in Ahrefs. Every traffic graph from Search Console. Client names anonymised — competitive intel protected — but the numbers are real and the screenshots are available on a discovery call.
Seven years. 120 brands. 2,400 placements.
The numbers below are aggregated across every client engagement since 2018 — consulting, outreach, retainers, white-label. No selective averaging. No "up to" qualifiers.
Four anonymised engagements. Full transparency.
Below are four representative engagements across SaaS, DTC, B2B services, and affiliate. Numbers are exact. Names are anonymised because clients prefer their backlink profile stays their advantage, not someone else's competitive intel.
DR 32 → DR 61 in nine months. 4.2× signups from organic.
The situation
$2M ARR B2B SaaS. Spent two years and ~$120k with a previous agency that built 80 links — almost entirely from PBN-adjacent sites. DR was stuck at 32. Money keyword sat on page 4. Founder was about to abandon SEO entirely and double-down on paid.
What we did
- Day-1 backlink audit flagged 41 toxic placements — disavowed
- Rebuilt the anchor profile from "60% exact-match" to a Google-safe distribution
- Growth-tier retainer · 10 placements/month, DR 60+ average
- Content pillar rewrite on 3 priority cluster pages
- Internal link redistribution to concentrate equity on money pages
The trajectory
- Month 1–3: 28 placements live. First ranking shifts on long-tail.
- Month 4–6: Money keyword broke into top 20. Branded search up 60%.
- Month 7–9: Money keyword hit position 4. Blog cluster generating 1,200 weekly signups.
- Month 12: Founder paused retargeting ads entirely. Organic carries the funnel.
Total investment
$31,500 over 9 months ($3,500 × 9). Versus the previous agency's $120k that destroyed their profile.
Page 4 → position 2 on the keyword that drives 60% of revenue.
The situation
$2.4M/yr DTC apparel brand. Healthy Meta ads, but CAC was climbing 8% MoM. Organic was invisible. Their highest-margin product category sat on page 4 of Google for the term that drives 60% of category revenue. Founder needed organic to start carrying weight.
What we did
- Audit identified 3 thin category pages bleeding rankings via cannibalisation — consolidated
- Growth-tier retainer + a one-off audit ($1.5k credited back)
- 14 DR 60+ guest posts targeting the category cluster
- Niche-edit insertions on 6 commercial-intent listicles
- Branded HARO campaign — 3 placements on lifestyle publications including 1 DR 80+
The trajectory
- Month 1–2: Cannibalisation fixed. Pre-existing rankings stabilised within 4 weeks.
- Month 3: Money keyword climbed from page 4 to position 12.
- Month 5: Hit position 5. Conversion-rate of organic traffic 2.1× higher than paid.
- Month 6: Position 2. Held for 14 months and counting at time of writing.
Business outcome
Paused Meta ad scaling — organic now pays for itself many times over. Founder shifted budget into product photography and email retention.
From 0 to ranking page 1 for 14 high-intent legal keywords.
The situation
Mid-sized US law firm specialising in employment law. New website built in 2023 — beautiful, totally invisible to Google. Six months in, GSC was showing 200 impressions/day. They were paying $18k/month for Google Ads to compensate.
What we did
- Built E-E-A-T signals: author bios, schema, citations, attorney profile linking
- Authority-tier retainer · 20 placements/month, legal-niche publishers
- Digital PR: 4 commentary placements on US legal publications via HARO
- Targeted keyword cluster: 12 employment-law sub-topics, each its own pillar
- Local citations + Google Business Profile optimisation
The trajectory
- Month 1–4: Foundation phase. Impressions climbing slowly. Few rankings.
- Month 5–7: First page-1 rankings appearing on long-tail. Branded search 4×.
- Month 8–10: Money keywords broke top 10. Lead form submissions doubled.
- Month 11–12: 14 page-1 rankings on commercial intent. Cut Google Ads spend 70%.
Business outcome
Reduced PPC spend from $18k/mo to $5k/mo. Net ad-budget savings exceed retainer cost 2.5×. Inbound leads up 340%.
From DR 18 to DR 47. Affiliate revenue +218%.
The situation
Solo-operator affiliate site in the personal finance niche. Strong content (200+ comparison posts written by the founder, a former financial journalist) but Google saw the domain as an unknown — no authority signals, no editorial backing. Affiliate revenue stalled at $4k/mo for 18 months.
What we did
- Audit identified content quality wasn't the problem — authority signals were
- Starter retainer scaling to Growth · finance-niche publishers
- Founder positioned as a quotable expert via HARO — landed 3 finance publication mentions
- Niche edits placed on 8 high-traffic comparison articles
- Content cluster strategy: linked 200 existing posts into 4 topical authority hubs
The trajectory
- Month 1–3: 18 placements landed. DR climbing slowly. No revenue change yet.
- Month 4–5: Long-tail rankings appearing. Affiliate clicks up 60%.
- Month 6–7: Money keywords on credit-card comparisons hitting top 10. Conversions up.
- Month 8: Affiliate revenue at $12,700/mo. Founder went part-time at day job.
Business outcome
Founder transitioned to full-time on the site within 9 months of the engagement starting. Still a client at time of writing.
The full portfolio is private. For good reason.
If I published every live placement publicly, every competitor of every client could replicate my publisher list overnight. So the live portfolio — actual URLs, GSC screenshots, Ahrefs DR proofs, client names — gets shared privately on a call.
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