White-label link delivery: 83 links in a year for a US agency's enterprise client

One-line summary: For a US B2B demand-gen agency, we delivered guest-post links to one of its enterprise clients, a finance software company, behind the agency's name. The agency's client could see a shortlist before anything was placed and a tracker afterwards, and we kept the receipts, including the ones we'd rather not.

The situation

The agency sold SEO and content to larger B2B companies, and Incify acted as its delivery arm for links: finding sites, handling the editors, placing the content and keeping a tracker the agency could show its own client. That's white-label: the agency's client sees the agency, and we are behind it.

The account that shows the pattern is a B2B finance software company. The 2023 run covered January to December and carried on into the first quarter of 2024.

The play

A shortlist the agency's client could see. The account has an "opportunities" tab with 48 selected sites, each marked "pending confirmation from editors". The DA on that list runs from 30 to 77 with an average of 55.7. Nothing was placed from the list until an editor confirmed.

Topics set by the agency. Every anchor and target page came from the agency's keyword plan. The tracker lists seven target pages and 23 different anchor phrases across 83 links.

A tracker the agency could forward. Each monthly block lists the published link, DA, status, anchor text, targeted page and a column for the client's comments.

One rule for every hand-off. The hand-off emails in the threads carry the same 48-hour rule: publish within 24 to 48 hours, or the content goes to another relevant site. It tells the editor the slot isn't held forever, and it stops one slow site from holding up a month's work.

Three real emails

Names and site names are removed, and the second email is lightly tidied.

1. The last follow-up

From the thread behind one of the 2023 placements, sent on 17 October 2022 as a final follow-up. The editor replied the same day, and the thread ran to 63 messages.

Hi,

Just following up one last time. I was really hoping to work something out in terms of a collaboration for your site.

I'll stop bugging you after this but if there's an opportunity to work together on a guest post, please let me know.

Thanks so much for your time

2. Fixing our own mistake (December 2023)

It seems the content got published on one other site as well before it was sent to yours. Our writer wrongly entered the same URL for two tasks. So please remove this one, and I will send another replacement.

The editor's first reply was to check for duplicate content: "We have checked the content. It's not showing any other duplicate content. So can you please share the website link on which it has been already published?" Our answer pointed to the other site. The editor then said: "That article is not indexed yet while our article is already indexed," and suggested the other copy be removed. We explained that the other site had already passed its live URL to the client and the client had approved it, and asked for a one-time removal on the editor's side. The editor agreed ("Okay, done, thanks").

3. The replacement (3 January 2024)

Happy new year :)

Here's the replacement content for [site]. Please publish soon!

The editor answered the same day: "Your article has been published." The fix took from 8 December to 3 January, over a holiday.

What editors said

• A careful check. One editor ran the article through a duplicate-content checker before agreeing to take it down, which is exactly what a careful editor should do.
• A same-day answer. The editor behind the last-follow-up email replied the same day.
• A comment from the client, once. The 2023 tracker has a comments column for the agency's client, and exactly one cell in it is filled. It reads: "The site contains gaming posts visible from the home page." That row is the same article that appears in the duplicate-content thread above. The agency's client didn't want a finance article sitting next to gaming content, and said so.

The results

Finance software client, 2023 (January to December):

• 83 links, all marked live, each on a different domain.
• DA 30 to 80, average 52.0, median 52. 52 of the 83 are at DA 50 or above.
• Anchors: 23 distinct phrases across 83 links. Only 4 contain the client's brand name.

The same client, January to March 2024: 19 more links, all live, DA 30 to 82, average 47.4.

There are no ranking or traffic numbers in the files for this client.

What we'd do again, and what we'd change

Again: the shortlist, the comments column and the 48-hour rule. Together they turned a messy sourcing job into something an agency could stand behind.

Changed:

1. Vary the anchors. 23 phrases across 83 links, with one phrase used 12 times, is a tighter pattern than we'd choose now. It can read as engineered. More brand and plain-URL anchors would read better.
2. Check the home page, not just the article. The one comment from the client was about what sat beside the article, not the article. We'd screenshot the home page at approval.
3. Keep one running tracker. The 2023 links and the early 2024 links sit in two tabs, and the 2024 tab ends in March. A year-long view shouldn't need two sheets.

Receipt box

Five links from the 2023 software tracker, category, DA as recorded, live status, anchor type. No URLs.

Site category	DA	Live status	Anchor type
Technology and business blog	77	Live	Exact keyword
Business news site	69	Live	Exact keyword
Technology blog	53	Live	Exact keyword
Business magazine	40	Live	Keyword phrase
Technology and finance news site	63	Live	Exact keyword

How we vetted these sites

The shortlist of 48 shows DA 30 to 77, with editors' confirmation pending before anything was placed. Rejected rows on record: the client's own comment about a home page, and the duplicate-content removal we asked for ourselves. The tracker has DA for every link but no traffic column, so we aren't quoting traffic.