Two Southeast Asian industrial brands, 108 article links and 477 local directory listings

One-line summary: A turf and irrigation distributor and an industrial cable manufacturer, both selling across Southeast Asia, got article links on topic pages and listings in local directories across six countries. This case study shows what that looked like in the records, and what the records can't tell us.

The situation

Two B2B clients with the same problem: they sell technical products to buyers in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia, and their sites were thin in the places those buyers actually search.

• A turf and irrigation distributor sells golf-course and sports-turf equipment.
• An industrial cable manufacturer sells to factories, data centres and building contractors.

Both were part of the same regional programme. The tracker for each is a monthly sheet with a published link, a DA figure, an anchor and a target page.

The play

1. Topic-led article links. The cable tracker starts with a "foundational links" block of 46 live links in 2025. Each row pairs a topic and a one-paragraph brief with the live link. The brief names the technical point and the page the article should support. 38 of the 46 point at industry or product pages (intralogistics, data centres, fire-resistant cables and so on), and 8 at the home page.

The turf tracker works the same way, but the anchors are mostly product names. In 2025, 20 of the 24 live links carry a product-name anchor and point at the matching product or category page. The other 4 use a one-line description of the company and point at the home page.

2. Local directories, country by country. Each client has a "directory links" tab with one sheet per country.

• The cable manufacturer: Malaysia 50, Thailand 53, Vietnam 53, Singapore 55 and Indonesia 52. That's 263 listings.
• The turf distributor: Malaysia 50, Thailand 27, Vietnam 40, Singapore 22, Indonesia 40 and Myanmar 35. That's 214.

The "number of live links" column is the sheet's own count. We haven't opened the country sheets, so we're quoting the totals as recorded.

3. Content in the buyer's language. The turf client had an international content calendar for August to October with nine topics. It has columns for a Thai, a Vietnamese and an Indonesian translation next to each English draft. Three of the nine are country-specific guides (the best golf courses in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, each tied to turf maintenance), and those three are marked "no need" for translation.

Three real emails

The turf and cable trackers have no pitch emails in the files we have, so these three come from another account's outreach in 2024 and from the same style of conversation. We're telling you that now so you don't read them as these clients' mail.

1. A gift-guide blog asks where the link will go (July 2024)

We pitched a regional gift-guide blog on interlinking two graduation-gift articles, in the usual shape: their page, our page, a reason and a second route. The reply came on 16 July 2024, in full:

Thanks, may i ask where will our article appear?

The answer we drafted for that thread named a specific spot (product and site names removed). It's a draft, and the tracker doesn't confirm it was sent:

In our post, I would add a sentence to gift item #7, stating a particular product could be a great gift. We can explicitly name them there, saying the recommendation came from your blog and to check it out to find more gift ideas for graduates. The link would, for example, be on "more gift ideas for graduates."

For them to link to us, they could add a sentence somewhere that depending on the field a graduate starts to work in, a good gift idea is something that relates to their work. For example: these nursing gifts for healthcare graduates, or something like that.

This one is on the medical education tracker with a DA of 17, so it's a small site, but a close topic match.

2. A blogger says yes (July 2024)

Thanks for reaching out. I'm happy to hear you enjoyed my post, I appreciate it :)

I'd definitely be open to a collaboration!

[A line about their site rebrand is left out.] As I'm refreshing many of my older articles now, I can easily update the post and add a link to your article.

Let me know your thoughts! Otherwise, I'll update the post and email you back once it's done.

3. The hand-off email

Here's one content for your site. [link to shared document] Please check and publish this within 24 to 48 hours. If there is no response from you within 48 hours, I'll send a follow-up, but even then if there is no response, then I'll have to cancel and send the content to another relevant site for publishing. So I request you to acknowledge me once you receive the email.

What editors said

• "Where will our article appear?" The first question from the gift-guide blog was about placement. Naming the exact paragraph answered it.
• A yes with a promise. The blogger agreed in one message and said they'd email when the link was in.
• Sites that go quiet. In the 7 October 2026 check, one turf page and one cable page, both on the same publisher, couldn't be reached at all (a connection error). That's why we re-check. We cover that check in the link-maintenance case study.

The results

Turf distributor (article links, all recorded as live):

Period	Live links	DA range	Average DA
2024 (April to October, phased)	28	21 to 58	39.8
2025 (May to September)	24	29 to 82	51.3
February 2026	5 live, 5 pending	26 to 61	48.2

57 live links, each on a different domain within its year. In 2024, 8 of the 28 used a brand or website-name anchor. In 2025, 20 of 24 are product names and 4 are the home-page line. Three of the product anchors each appear three times in 2025.

Cable manufacturer:

Period	Live links	DA range	Average DA
2025 (April onward)	46	29 to 82	50.0
February 2026	5	26 to 70	54.4

25 of the 46 links in 2025 have a DA of 50 or more.

Combined: 108 article links (57 turf, 51 cable) plus 477 directory listings (214 and 263).

What we can't tell you: the files hold no rankings, traffic or enquiry numbers for either client, so we aren't claiming any. These are placement counts, not outcome counts.

What we'd do again

1. Write the brief before picking the site. Starting from a topic with a technical point, a page to support and a region made the articles read like trade content, not ads.
2. Match anchors to products. Product names on product pages is how a buyer would look for the product. We'd vary them more, since three anchors repeat three times each.
3. Split directories by country. One sheet per country made it obvious where we were thin (Singapore for the turf client had 22, for example).

What we'd change: the host sites are often general business or technology blogs, not turf or cable trade sites. The articles are on-topic, but a trade association or an industry magazine would be a stronger signal. We'd say that plainly to the client at the start.

Receipt box

Four article links, category, DA as recorded, live status, anchor type. No URLs.

Site category	DA	Live status	Anchor type
International news site (turf client, 2025)	82	Live	Product name
News aggregator (turf client, 2025)	63	Live	Product name
Local news site (cable client, 2025)	54	Live	Descriptive keyword
UK finance news site (cable client, 2026)	70	Live, confirmed in the 7 Oct 2026 check	Descriptive keyword

How we vetted these sites

Each client's brief set the topic and the target page, and every link row records a DA figure. There is no traffic column in either tracker, and no written list of rejected sites, so we can't show you a rejected row for these two. What we can show is the 7 October 2026 live check. It covered four of the cable client's pages: three returned a live page with the client link, and one couldn't be reached. One of the turf client's pages, on that same publisher, couldn't be reached either.