The Client
An IT Equipment Rental Company Serving All Of Australia
This client rents laptops, desktops, printers, tablets, and AV equipment to Australian businesses on terms as short as a single day. The company also runs managed IT services, network security, and IT consulting for everyone from sole traders to government agencies. It has been in the hardware rental market for close to four decades.
An SEO agency partner brought this account to Stan Ventures and kept the client relationship, the invoicing, and the reporting line. Everything below ran under their brand, with no direct contact between us and the end client.
The Australian rental category is crowded and price led. National hire chains, office equipment leasing firms, and no credit check consumer rental brands all compete for the same handful of queries. Everyone wants position one for terms like laptop rental and printer hire.
The Challenge
Traffic Fell By Half Before It Grew
When the engagement started in September 2025, the site was pulling around 1,039 organic visits a month from 238 referring domains. The backlink profile carried years of accumulated junk. A technical audit landed in month one, but most of the fixes were gated behind a full website rebuild the client had already committed to.
Traffic did not climb first. It fell to 802 in October, 611 in November, and bottomed at 541 in December 2025. That is the honest shape of a rebuild running at the same time as a backlink cleanup, and it is why the first four months went into foundations instead of rankings.
The Strategy
Fix The Foundation, Then Add Links
Twelve months across four workstreams. Nothing got published until the technical base could actually hold it.
Foundation
Technical audit, cannibalization audit, schema markup, and monthly Ahrefs crawls plus Search Console error analysis. Redirects, indexation, and page speed were worked through with the client’s developers month by month.
Content
Keyword research and mapping across the full rental catalog, then 5,200 words a month of landing page and blog copy. One existing post rewritten and two new posts added every month, with internal links written into every outline.
Links
Two guest posts at 30+ DA and one at 40+ DA every month, plus two community mentions. Anchor text and target pages were planned against the keyword map rather than picked one placement at a time.
Control
Every placement domain was shortlisted and approved before outreach began. Two backlink audits identified 1,361 toxic domains for disavow, while local citations, NAP cleanup, and GMB posting held the Australian local signals steady.
The Results
Referring Domains Up 147% And Traffic Back Above The Line
Referring domains went from 238 to 589 over twelve months. Organic traffic now sits at 1,375 a month against 1,039 at kickoff, which is a 32% year over year gain and a 154% climb from the December floor. The path between those numbers was not a straight line, and the charts show it.
238 referring domains in September 2025 to 589 in September 2026, after 1,361 toxic domains were disavowed along the way.
541 monthly organic visits at the December 2025 low to 1,375 in September 2026, with a peak of 1,962 in May.
Monthly organic traffic value rose from $1,397 to $2,468, the equivalent paid search spend for the same clicks.
Referring Domains
Organic Traffic Per Month
Keyword Wins
Commercial Rental Terms Moved Into The Top Ten
These are Australian search positions, September 2025 against September 2026. The pattern repeats across the catalog. Page three terms pulled onto page one, and two category pages that were not ranking at all now sit in the top ten.
Why It Worked
Sequence Beat Speed
The temptation on a site with a broken foundation is to start building links in week one, because links are the deliverable the client can see. That would have burned four months of budget pointing authority at pages Google was struggling to crawl. Cleaning the backlink profile and fixing indexation first meant the guest posts landed on a site that could actually use them.
- Pre-approved domains. Every placement target was shortlisted and signed off by the agency before outreach began, so nothing went live on a site they would not defend to their own client.
- Disavow discipline. Two audits flagged 1,361 toxic domains, which is why the referring domain count dipped through March and April before climbing.
- Steady cadence. Three guest posts and two community mentions a month, every month, with no burst that would read as manufactured.
- Honest reporting. When rankings softened in July 2026, a dedicated drop analysis went to the agency with the monthly report rather than waiting to be asked for one.
- Local signals held. GMB posts, geo-tagged images, and citation cleanup kept the Australian local footprint intact while the rebuild was in flight.
Stan Ventures
Want Numbers Like These For Your Client?
We build white-label link building programs for SEO agencies and brands. Pre-approved domains, real relevance, and a cadence that compounds. You keep the client relationship. We handle the links.
Results via Ahrefs, September 2025 to September 2026. Positions are Australian search. Data current as of 3 September 2026.
Ananyaa
AuthorAnanyaa Venkat is a seasoned content specialist with over nine years of experience creating industry-focused content for diverse brands. At Stan Ventures, she blends SEO insight with strategic storytelling to shape a compelling brand voice. She has contributed to several leading SEO publications and stays attuned to evolving trends to ensure her content remains authoritative, relevant, and high-quality.