How Consistent Link Building Strengthened the Rankings of a Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway in a Competitive Market

About the Project

The owner of an English-language cryptocurrency payment service targeting the US market approached our team. The project operates in a highly competitive niche and sits within the gambling segment.

The objective was to continuously develop the website’s backlink profile. Our team needed a clear link-building plan that could be scaled consistently while distributing placements across several formats.

Objectives

• develop a link acquisition plan for an English-language project targeting the US;
• maintain a consistent placement pace in the competitive crypto niche;
• combine different types of links rather than relying on a single format;
• monitor changes in organic traffic and keyword visibility;
• adjust the scope of link-building activities as the project developed.

Our Approach

We started by establishing a backlink acquisition plan and identifying a set of formats that could be used consistently over time. Maintaining a controlled growth pattern was essential. New links needed to appear regularly, and the backlink profile should not depend on a single source or placement type.

The campaign was built around four main formats. Article placements provided contextual links within relevant content. Crowd marketing expanded the project’s presence across niche-specific platforms and discussions. Submissions added an extra layer of mentions on relevant websites and directories, while mini-PBNs supplemented the overall backlink profile.

During the collaboration, we completed 540 placements:

• 37 article placements;
• 150 crowd placements;
• 195 submissions;
• 158 mini-PBN links.

Distributing the total volume across several formats allowed us to run the campaign consistently over several months. The focus stayed on continuous backlink profile development and evaluating performance over the long term.

GEO was another important factor. The project targets the US, where both the cryptocurrency and gambling niches are highly competitive. For this reason, our team treated the link-building plan as a long-term tool for supporting and strengthening the project’s search visibility.

As the backlink profile expanded, we continued monitoring the project’s search performance. This let us assess not only overall visibility growth but also changes in keyword distribution across the highest-ranking positions.

Since the collaboration is still ongoing, the current results cover the period from July 2025 to May 2026. This timeframe is enough to evaluate the dynamics after several months of consistent link building and compare them with the initial figures.

Results

In July 2025, the project generated 220 organic visits. By May 2026, this figure had reached 970. This represents a 340.9% increase, meaning organic traffic grew more than fourfold over the period.

Keyword visibility increased from 96 to 194 over the same period. Keyword distribution across search positions also improved significantly. The number of keywords ranking in the Top 1 increased from 1 to 41, while the number of keywords in the Top 10 grew from 24 to 132.

The overall performance trend is the most impressive thing about this practice case. The project began ranking for more keywords, while a significantly larger number of them moved into the top positions in search results. Organic traffic increased at the same time, meaning the improvements extended beyond broader keyword visibility alone.

Conclusion

Over the ten months analyzed, organic traffic to the cryptocurrency payment gateway increased by 340.9%, while keyword visibility grew by 102.08%. The project shows the true value of systematic link building in a competitive market: consistent backlink acquisition, a combination of different placement formats, and long-term performance evaluation.