Client / business context
An ecommerce brand selling into Belgium had solid on-site category architecture but a backlink profile skewed toward generic directories and marketplace noise.
Challenge
Commercial category pages needed more relevant citations while protecting the brand from over-optimised anchors and low-quality coupon-style placements.
Strategic priorities
- Separate brand-story PR from category-supporting contributions
- Target Belgian lifestyle and niche interest publishers with genuine product-category fit
- Create buying guides and editorial resources as linkable assets
- Set strict anchor guidelines for commercial URLs
How the work ran
Programme phases
Explore each stage of the engagement. Execution notes sit inside the active phase rather than as a flat checklist.
Programme phases
Phase 01
Clean the opportunity set
Remove affiliate-heavy and doorway-like prospects before any outreach begins.
- Prospect list hygiene and brand-safety filters
- Anchor guidelines for commercial category URLs
- Split brand PR lanes from category-support lanes
Execution notes
- Cleaned prospect lists to remove affiliate-heavy and doorway-like sites
- Pitched seasonal and practical guides rather than hard-sell product blurbs
- Used digital PR around brand and sustainability narratives for broader domains
- Reported placements by category cluster rather than as an undifferentiated link total
Acquisition mix
Link acquisition approach
Guest contribution and digital PR led; insertions were used sparingly and only on strong existing articles.
Link mix explorer
Relative emphasis across acquisition lanes — not a volume quota.
Interactive
Guide contributions
35%Practical buying and seasonal guides placed on relevant lifestyle and niche sites.
Topical relevance
Every target had to demonstrate audience overlap with the brand’s Belgian shopper segments.
Authority considerations
Authority was distributed across guides and categories to avoid an unnatural homepage-only pattern.
Outcomes
Results framework
Performance numbers are client-confidential. Evaluation centres on relevant domain acquisition, improved category visibility trends, and reduction of low-quality referring domain share over time.
Evaluation framework
Toggle criteria to see how this programme type is reviewed.
4/4 active
Lessons learned
- Ecommerce programmes need explicit brand-safety filters
- Guides often earn better editorial links than pure product URLs
- Reporting by URL cluster makes commercial impact clearer to stakeholders
Clarifications
Frequently asked questions
They were filtered out early. Brand safety and audience quality mattered more than easy placement volume on commercial category URLs.
Brand stories can open broader publishers, while category pages need tighter topical fit and stricter anchor discipline. Mixing the two without a plan creates noisy reporting.
Placements were grouped by category cluster so stakeholders could see which commercial URL groups were gaining relevant citations.
These programme examples show how our Belgian-focused link building practice approaches sector-specific work. For methodology detail, see our methodology.