We Built 365 Links in 13 Months For This Independent Music Distributor

Our client is a digital music distribution service that allows musicians to upload and sell their music on streaming services.

It covers all the main music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and TikTok.

Our client faced competition from new players and needed help maintaining its position as the number one choice for independent artists to distribute their music.

They knew that link building was the way to do this—but that’s no easy feat in this unique industry.

Luckily, our professional link builders were on-hand to guide them and launch creative link building campaigns that gave them a solid foundation to grow their online traffic and visibility.

⛰️ The challenge

Because our client provides a unique service, building links for them comes with unique challenges.

Let’s take a look at them:

⛰️ No blog content

Most of our link building campaigns rely on using educational or informational blog content as linkable assets.

However, our client didn’t have a blog. This meant we had to build links to the company’s homepage and commercial pages.

This limited the appeal of outreach campaigns, as many websites prioritize linking to educational resources rather than commercial pages.

⛰️ Outreach resistance

Because our campaigns faced resistance from the sites we targeted. This included:

• Outright rejection: This was usually due to policies against linking to commercial music platforms.

• Irrelevant promotional requests: For example, asking our client to sponsor events in exchange for a link.

• Perceived as too commercial: Many webmasters perceived our clients as a commercial entity rather than a resource for musicians.

⛰️ High competition

Many of our client’s competitors in the music distribution industry had already been building links, leaving our client fewer opportunities to secure backlinks from authoritative sites in the niche.

Our client is one of the best-known brands in the independent record distribution industry. But they still face stiff competition from authoritative competitors, including:

• CDBaby (DR 91)
• Tunecore (DR 78)
• Amuse (DR 74)
• iMusician (DR 73)
• Ditto Music (DR 72)
• Awal (DR 70)

💡 Our Strategy

Our client faced a ton of unique challenges. We’ve been building links since 2016—so we have the knowledge and experience to develop solutions.

Here’s what we did:

💡 Prioritize commercial pages

We focused on building backlinks to our client’s homepage and service landing pages. We did this by emphasizing their relevance and utility.

⭐ We positioned the homepage as a central hub for independent artists to access our client’s services.

⭐ We positioned the client’s commercial pages relating to platforms like Apple Music and Spotify as essential resources for artists seeking to distribute music.

💡 Analyzed competitors

We analyzed our client’s competitors’ backlink profiles using Ahrefs to identify:

⭐ Sites linking to competitors’ homepages and commercial pages.

⭐ Gaps in the competitors’ backlink strategies that we could target with link building campaigns.

💡 Reframed outreach pitches

To overcome resistance, we crafted pitches personalized to individual webmasters. We used the following tactics:

⭐ Emphasized our client’s unique value proposition, including highlighting that they enable unlimited uploads and don’t charge commission on royalties.

⭐ Positioned our client as a game-changer for independent artists, not just a commercial service.

⭐ Focused on our client’s broader impact on the music industry, appealing to entrepreneurial and creative-focused websites.

💡 Expanded niche targeting

Recognizing the limitations of the music niche, we broadened our targets to include relevant adjacent niches like:

⭐ Entrepreneurial blogs focusing on gig economy workers.

⭐ Creative industry sites supporting independent professionals.

⭐ Video production blogs, emphasizing our client’s integration with audio and video projects.

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🚀 The Results

We’ve built 365 backlinks for our client since October 2023—pretty impressive, given the challenges we faced!

✅ This has helped fuel a rise in linking domains over the past year.

✅ Our client now ranks in the top three for relevant search terms like:

• Get your music on spotify

• Distribution music

• Distribute music

• Free mastering

• Deezer for artists

• Tiktok profiles

• Spotify canvas maker

• How to find songs on instagram

As a result, organic traffic to our client’s website has grown by 49,447 monthly visitors—and counting! Securing the same visibility through paid search ads would have cost the client $11,784.

✅ We secured valuable backlinks from a ton of relevant, authoritative websites.

• Sortlist.com (DR 81)
• Mailmunch.com (DR 78)
• Searates.com (DR 72)
• Podcastle.ai (DR 75)
• Inbeat.co (DR 72)
• Plainenglish.io (DR 75)
• Reverbico.com (DR 66)

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🔥 Niche Too Challenging for Link Building? Contact the Pros

Our client faced stiff link building challenges. But we had the experience, expertise and creativity to develop campaigns that overcame these issues.

The result? They now have a base of powerful links for their traffic to grow from.

If your business struggles to rank on Google or other search engines, get in touch.

We’ll assess the challenges you face and develop creative link building solutions to drive organic traffic to your site and get you ahead of competitors.