International Real Estate Directory: 174% Growth in Top 3 Keywords in 4 Months

About the Project

The owner of an international overseas real estate directory approached us. The platform features properties in the UAE, Turkey, Spain, Georgia, Indonesia, Cyprus, Montenegro, Vietnam, Zanzibar, and other destinations. This is a multilingual project, so SEO campaigns cover more than 12 languages, and the website structure includes dedicated regional pages for individual countries, cities, and property types.

The project already had a well-established backlink profile with approximately 8,500 referring domains. Our experts identified the main growth potential in selectively strengthening priority commercial pages, improving the regional relevance of new placements and expanding the website’s visibility in both search results and AI-generated answers.

Objectives

• strengthen priority country and city pages;
• increase the share of keywords ranking in the Top 3 and Top 10;
• distribute link-building efforts across language versions and regions;
• maintain natural growth dynamics for an already extensive backlink profile;
• increase non-branded organic search traffic;
• improve the project’s citation visibility in AI-generated answers.

Our Approach

Our team began by developing monthly link-building plans with separate allocations for each market and language version. The campaign covered CIS countries, the US, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and French- and Spanish-speaking markets. We gave priority to commercial pages targeting Dubai and the UAE, Batumi and Georgia, Bali and Indonesia, Cyprus, Montenegro, and Vietnam.

We used several types of link placements:

• 25-80 crowd links per month;
• 1-7 outreach placements per month;
• 60-220 submissions and placements in regional directories;
• 40-60 mini-PBN links in selected months.

Unlike an early-stage project, this website did not require a sharp increase in the quantity of referring domains. Our team primarily focused on topical and regional relevance, as well as on pages that required additional authority.

At the same time, we monitored changes in organic traffic, keyword ranking distribution, and the website’s presence in AI-generated answers. This enabled us to assess performance across several areas and adjust priorities accordingly.

Results

Over four months, the project’s organic traffic grew from 2565 to 4038 visits, a 57% increase. Midway through the period, traffic exceeded 4,000 visits before a seasonal correction typical of the international real estate market. Even after that decline, the final figure stayed 40% above the starting point.

Non-branded traffic rose from 2,257 to 3,398 (+51%). The directory began attracting more visitors who found it directly through searches related to overseas real estate. Commercial traffic increased from 1,427 to 1,597, while transactional traffic went from 613 to 681.

The strongest progress appeared at the top of the search results. Keywords ranking in the Top 3 jumped from 157 to 385, a 145% increase or 2.4 times more. Keywords in the Top 10 grew from 631 to 767.

In the same period, the website also ranked for 934 new keywords, 751 of which entered the Top 10. The project’s solid content base together with the extra link equity helped these new keywords reach strong positions faster.

Domain Rating moved from 48 to 50. The number of Google AI Overviews citing the site as a source rose from 166 to 377, a 2.3 times increase. The number of source pages grew from 113 to 253. Growth also appeared across AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Conclusion

Over four months, the international real estate directory increased organic traffic by 57%, non-branded traffic by 51%, and the number of keywords ranking in the Top 3 by 145%.

This case demonstrates the specifics of link building for an established multilingual domain. With a backlink profile of 8,000+ referring domains, further growth requires precise allocation of link-building efforts across markets, language versions, and priority pages.