When Nifty needed to scale its link-building efforts, it was able to start winning a significant number of backlinks, increase site traffic, and even see a boost in its Domain Rating.
Respona helped with all this vital organic growth, with up to eight backlinks a week won using the tool, contributing to a tripling of organic traffic for the project management tool.
Along with other efforts, Nifty’s improved backlink profile directly contributed to an increase in Domain Authority from 59 before Respona to 72 now – a 22% increase.
“Respona is exactly what I expected; we’ve definitely accomplished what we wanted to accomplish in terms of SEO… The search feature really accelerates our whole process. The tool gives us a real competitive advantage.”
Jeff Kagan
Co-founder and CRO
Nifty's needs
Before deciding to use Respona, Nifty’s CRO and co-founder Jeff Kagan was building backlinks through networking on Facebook and Slack.
“We had never really focused on SEO and we knew that it was a process we had to get going… focusing on link building and focusing on our on-page SEO,” he said.
Link building to boost organic visibility and generally managing the company’s cold outreach process is what led Jeff to go searching for a tool.
Put simply, “If we did find a tool, [outreach] was not an avenue that we’d proceed with and we’ll just have to hire more link builders.”
The aim was to find the right places to ask for backlinks as well as build a bigger and better list of relationships that could be used for SEO and other business purposes in the future.
How Nifty used Respona
Jeff uses Respona on a daily basis and with up to four other members of his team with access to the account, there are four campaigns running each week.
In terms of link building, Jeff notes, “We can be sending a campaign to 50-100 people for a specific blog. Even if we get two to three links or build one relationship and not get a link, it’s still something that’s worthwhile that we were missing out on before.”
The team has found another interesting use for Respona, which is the ability to use advanced search operators.
“Doing a web search, we’ll use Respona to do a deep search. Say I want to ask for a link from a company, I would search for their website and a focus keyword and get the best ranked page,” he said.
The ability to hone in on a group of keywords to generate new outreach opportunities has been another great use case for the SEO team at Nifty.
“One area that we really leveraged Respona for was to put in keywords that are more obscure to get a new list of websites that we can reach out to build relationships with,” Jeff explained, meaning he could start to build relationships and potentially place guest posts with these sites.
Using Respona, Nifty has been able to build a network of people beyond the immediate community it was already working with through social media and networking tools.
Campaign Results
Since Jeff’s team at Nifty started their link-building campaign, here are the key campaign numbers that they’ve achieved.
98%
Emails delivery rate
1496
Total emails delivered
61%
Email open rate
923
Total emails opened
6%
Email reply rate
54
Total emails replied
