Case study · E-commerce
How contextual link building nearly doubled traffic to a fashion brand's core category, in four months
The campaign at a glance
- Client / sector
- Fashion Retailer · E-commerce
- Starting point
- Dresses are the brand's biggest category, but the dresses page drew 5,855 organic visits a month and had almost no authority of its own. A famous name wasn't enough in a niche crowded with fast-fashion giants and department stores.
- What we built
- Strongly contextual editorial links on fashion, lifestyle and occasion titles, every one pointed at the dresses page and nothing else. Concentrating them meant every link told Google the same thing about the same page, with none of the authority leaking elsewhere.
- Headline result
- +80% organic traffic to the dresses page, 5,855 to 10,521 visits a month, when the same months a year before grew 7%
- Timeframe
- 4 months, January to May
- Headline KPI
- 4 in 5 of the page's keywords moved up, 1,423 of 1,786
The campaign
Situation → strategy → work → result — what we started with, what we did, and what changed.
A big brand, but a page with little pull
The brand is a well-known UK womenswear label, and dresses are its biggest category. But a famous name doesn't give each page authority. The dresses page had a URL Rating of just 5 out of 100, and in January 2025 it drew 5,855 organic visits a month, in a niche crowded with fast-fashion giants and department stores.
Success meant more of the page's dress searches ranking on pages one and two, and more traffic to the category, beyond what the season would bring anyway.
Everything on one page
The angle. Formal and occasion dresses, the part of the category where shoppers look for advice on what to wear, which gives fashion writers a real reason to recommend a dress and gives the link a natural home.
The target list. Fashion, lifestyle and occasion titles chosen for relevance, not size. No link farms and no general sites that cover everything.
The mix. Links only. No digital PR, because the job was authority for one page, not brand coverage.
The pages. Just the dresses category. Spreading links across the site would have diluted them. Putting them all on one page meant every link told Google the same thing about the same page.
Fewer, better links
Editorial links to the dresses category over four months, in articles about what to wear and where. Every site went through M-Flux first, which scores domain rating, real organic traffic, topical relevance, outbound link ratio and uptime history. The ones that passed were checked by a person against our 33-point list, from editorial quality to sponsor disclosure. The brand approved every site before it went live.
80% when the season gives 7%
Traffic to the dresses page rose from 5,855 to 10,521 visits a month. Over the same months a year earlier it grew just 7%, so this wasn't the season. It held afterwards, and four months after the campaign it was on 11,609. The page's URL Rating rose from 5 to 9 without a large number of links. Dress-related rankings went from 261 to 420, keywords ranking on pages one and two rose 85%, and the page started ranking for 718 new keywords. In all, 1,423 of its 1,786 keywords moved up, four in every five.
The result, charted
One clear before/after view — honest axes, no truncated scale.
Method, not luck
Every site in this campaign was scored by M-Flux and passed a 33-point manual quality check, and the client approved it before the link went live. That's why the profile holds up — and why the result keeps compounding after the campaign ends.
What the client said
“Over the past 3 months, we've focused on building high authority backlinks to a specific category, that's resulted in significant growth. Having worked with UK Linkology in my previous agency and now at KM, I couldn't recommend them more. The team delivers great results that support a wider organic strategy. Yasmin and Rachel have been extremely helpful, providing strategic recommendations and working to help us achieve our organic goals.
Want the full authority program run for you?
Our Managed Authority Campaigns run the full off-page mix — strategy, digital PR, links and more — to one plan.
Campaign FAQs
What did Linkology do for this fashion brand?
We built editorial links to one category, dresses, over four months, choosing fashion and lifestyle sites for relevance, every one approved by the brand first.
What results did the campaign achieve?
Traffic to the dresses page rose 80%, from 5,855 to 10,521 visits a month, against 7% over the same months the year before. Four in five of the page's keywords moved up.
How long did it take?
Four months, January to May 2025. The page jumped in the first month, held the gain, and was higher again four months after the campaign ended.
Can you get results like this for my e-commerce brand?
Every brand starts from a different place, so results vary by your authority, competition and goals — we won't promise a number before we've looked at your site. What we can do is apply the same method: M-Flux-vetted editorial links, a 33-point manual quality check, and your approval on everything. Book a free strategy call and we'll give you an honest read.
More results
Online pharmacy
+258% organic traffic in 6 monthsRead the case study →LegalImmigration solicitors
+864% organic traffic in 3 monthsRead the case study →TravelPeru travel agency
+52% organic traffic year on year Read the case study →Want results like these?
Fifteen minutes, a look at your site, and an honest read on what's realistic in e-commerce.