The Beginning of Cooperation
| Domain Age | 19 years |
| Niche / Market | Online Forex Broker |
| GEOs | Nigeria, Iran, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, South Africa |
| Target Languages | 11 language versions |
| Monthly Organic Traffic (start) | 43.6K users |
| Backlink Profile | 2.8K referring domains (mostly low-trust) |
| Pages | 50K+ |
At the start of 2023, the client approached us to scale visibility and traffic across six key GEOs, aiming to boost conversions for their top trading products.
However, due to internal resource limitations, we had no access to implement technical or content updates — meaning link building was the only lever available to achieve growth.
Main Issues
Our cooperation began with a full SEO audit and competitive analysis to identify the most critical roadblocks.
Technical SEO
- An incorrectly configured robots.txt file and sitemap errors
- Pagination and canonicalization issues
- Slow loading speeds for individual pages
- Duplicate metadata across languages
Content
- Duplicate and short content on focus pages
- Non-unique or untranslated texts across language versions
- Weak internal linking between key money pages and supporting blogs
Links
- 2.8K referring domains, mostly spammy and low-trust
- Over-optimized anchor text profile
- Frequent spam attacks from competitors
Challenges
The website operated in highly competitive trading markets across multiple regions — each with unique search behavior and language signals. The client was unwilling to implement technical fixes or content rewrites, so our team had to rely purely on link building and off-page signals to increase rankings.
Our main challenge was to stabilize rankings and grow traffic organically under these limitations, ensuring that every new referring domain was relevant, trusted, and region-specific.
Project Strategy Development
We divided the work into three stages, focusing on strategic link growth and risk management:
- Initial Stage: Competitor research, link profile audit, and SEO strategy creation
- Implementation Stage: Regional link building and anchor optimization
- Calibration Stage: Continuous link velocity control and disavow management
To execute this strategy effectively, each GEO (Nigeria, Iran, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, and South Africa) was assigned an outreach specialist responsible for local site selection and anchor analysis. This ensured natural growth patterns and clean backlink profiles tailored to regional search behavior.
Team
- Senior SEO Specialist: Strategy development and performance control
- Link-Building Manager: Regional link acquisition and outreach quality
- Analyst: Competitor backlink monitoring and visibility tracking
- Account Manager: Reporting, communication, and progress alignment with the client
Competitor and Market Analysis
We analyzed the client’s primary competitors in each GEO using Ahrefs and SERP data, identifying anchor types, donor domain authority, and topical overlap. This allowed us to understand how leading brokers gained visibility regionally and replicate safe link building patterns.
We discovered:
- Competitors used gradual link velocity increases (not spikes)
- Most backlinks came from financial news portals or blogs
- Anchor ratios favored brand + partial match keywords
- Regional TLDs (.ng, .in, .vn) had stronger weight in local SERPs
Based on these insights, we built a balanced anchor plan and domain selection checklist for each GEO.
Action Plan Development
The final roadmap focused on gradual link growth and spam control:
- Conducted a full link audit and disavowed toxic domains
- Cleaned anchor list from over-optimized and spammy terms
- Developed a per-GEO outreach strategy
- 10+ guest posts and 30+ community links per month
- Focused on regional domains (.ng, .ir, .vn, etc.)
- Controlled link velocity to maintain organic growth
- Monthly progress reviews to track visibility and traffic trends
Work on the Project
Stage 1: Audit and Strategy Setup
We performed a complete analysis of the link profile, anchor distribution, and competitive gaps. Based on this, we defined the minimum link quality thresholds and referring domain parameters for each GEO. Each regional team started with gradual link building to ensure stability and avoid unnatural spikes.
Stage 2: Link Building Implementation
We focused on relevance, trust, and geography. Every month, we built 40–50 links per region (a mix of guest posts and manual submissions). Each domain was checked for authority, topical relevance, and non-spammy backlink profiles.
We tracked:
- Link type ratios (do-follow/nofollow)
- Anchor text balance
- Referring domain growth dynamics
Stage 3: Disavow and Risk Management
Frequent spam attacks from competitor bots increased the risk of penalties. Our team created a rolling Google Disavow list, updated every 3–4 weeks, targeting 5–10% of the most toxic links each cycle. This controlled cleanup helped stabilize rankings and strengthen domain trust.
Results
In less than two years of work, the project achieved significant organic traffic and visibility growth across all six target GEOs. Through consistent link-building and careful backlink cleanup, the site’s performance improved steadily — even without technical or on-page updates.
Key achievements included a +329% total traffic increase and +1,286% keyword visibility growth (from 7 to 97 out of 100). According to Ahrefs, the domain reached 203K organic visits per month, ranking for over 63.8K keywords with a Domain Rating (DR) of 76 and nearly 10K referring domains.
Below is a breakdown of the results achieved across each target GEO we focused on during the campaign.
Nigeria
In less than two years, our SEO work boosted organic traffic in Nigeria from 10.1K to 59.8K users per month
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After:
Iran
Within one year of SEO work, organic traffic in the Iranian market grew from 13.2K to 56.5K monthly users.
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After:
Malaysia
In just 14 months, organic traffic in Malaysia rose from 3.2K to 12.9K monthly users — a 303% increase driven by targeted SEO.
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India
In just 1.5 years, our SEO efforts in India boosted organic traffic from 4.3 K to 15.6 K users per month.
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Vietnam
In just 14 months, organic traffic in Vietnam rose from 6.5 K to 20.7 K monthly users — a +218 % increase driven by steady SEO activity.
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South Africa
In 1.5 years, our SEO efforts in South Africa boosted organic traffic from 6.3 K to 19.4 K users per month.
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After:
Conclusion
The main challenges in this project were constant spam attacks from competitors and the client’s reluctance to implement technical, content, or on-page changes.
To protect the site’s authority, we carefully disavowed low-quality backlinks via Google Disavow, reviewing each domain manually to avoid losing valuable links.
Next, we developed tailored link-building strategies for each target GEO, combining outreach on trusted thematic websites, selective PBNs, and high-quality manual submissions.
This regional focus helped us steadily expand authority and visibility across all six markets, despite the limited on-site control.
As a result, keyword visibility increased from 7 to 97 out of 100, while organic traffic grew significantly in every region:
- Nigeria: +5.9× → 59.8K users/month
- Iran: +4.3× → 56.5K users/month
- Malaysia: +4× → 12.9K users/month
- India: +3.6× → 15.6K users/month
- Vietnam: +3.2× → 20.7K users/month
- South Africa: +3.1× → 19.4K users/month
Despite limited access to on-page SEO, we achieved a +329% total traffic increase and 1,286% keyword visibility growth purely through strategic, high-quality link acquisition.
If you’re looking to achieve similar SEO results for your trading or finance project, let’s discuss your goals and growth opportunities. Contact our team to learn how a region-specific SEO strategy can drive measurable organic growth for your brand.
Explore our Crypto SEO Case Study: 6× Organic Traffic Growth to see another example of how strategic SEO delivers measurable success.
