The Client
A CBD SEO Agency With A Client Outside Its Lane
Our client here isn’t the brand. It’s a CBD SEO agency based out of Los Angeles that built its name ranking compliance-restricted wellness sites. When one of its clients, a functional mushroom supplement brand for dogs and cats, needed real link authority, the agency white-labeled the build to us.
The end client sells in one of the toughest corners of pet e-commerce. Marketplaces, big-box pet wellness brands, and affiliate listicles fill every SERP, and supplement claim rules take words like prevent completely off the table. The agency knew that game from CBD, and it needed a link building partner who could play it without creating compliance risk.
The Challenge
Steady Growth That Hit A Wall In January
Through 2025, the brand earned its way to 322 referring domains by December, with monthly organic traffic hovering around 800 visits. Then the curve went flat. January added just 6 new referring domains, February added zero, and March went backward with a net loss of 16.
A one-month traffic spike in February faded almost as fast as it arrived, and by April monthly visits had slipped back under 1,000. The content was winning some rankings on its own, with 88 keywords in the US top 10. But at Domain Rating 35, the site lacked the link authority to hold those spots or climb the harder SERPs.
The Strategy
Links, Content, And Technical Fixes On One Monthly Drumbeat
Starting in May, we ran the full program under the agency’s banner, with every workstream shipping on the same monthly cycle.
Foundation
Screaming Frog and Ahrefs health checks, Search Console error cleanup, Core Web Vitals work, schema on five focus pages, and analytics tracking fixes. All while steadying the site through a platform migration.
Content
Monthly competitor gap analysis fed keyword-mapped content calendars, new blog outlines, and reworks of older posts. Every outline was written inside supplement compliance rules from day one.
Links
A link plan built around the focus pages each month, shifted to shield the homepage during the migration. Then live placements on relevant pet and wellness sites through the month.
Control
The agency reviewed and approved every link plan, outline, and schema change before implementation. A dedicated account manager ran the cadence, with white-label performance and keyword reports landing every month.
The Results
Up And To The Right From Month One
Every core Ahrefs metric turned upward in the first full month of the program, and the pace picked up from there.
From 340 at kickoff to 708 by late July. That is 368 new linking domains in under 90 days.
Monthly organic visits rose from 976 in April to 1,310 in July. The same clicks would cost about $674 a month in paid search, up from $515.
US keywords in the top 10 grew from 88 at kickoff to 142 today. Top 3 rankings climbed from 48 to 79, and Domain Rating ticked from 35 to 36.
Referring Domains
Monthly Organic Traffic
The tall February bar is the one-off spike that faded before the program began. The orange months are the engagement.
Keyword Wins
Money Terms Moved From Page Three To Position One
These are live US positions from Ahrefs, comparing May 1 against late July. Not every keyword on the domain moved up in that stretch, but the ones that matter for revenue did.
Why It Worked
Nothing Went Live Without A Yes
Three months is a short window in SEO, and this program didn’t win on link volume alone. It won because links, content, and technical fixes landed in the same months instead of in sequence, and because the agency stayed in the approval seat the whole way. When authority, relevance, and site health move together, rankings stop wobbling and start compounding.
- Approval gates. The agency signed off on every link plan, outline, and schema change before a single item went live.
- Compliance-first copy. Outlines were written inside supplement claim rules from the start, so nothing got gutted in review.
- Three levers at once. Link placements landed the same months as content reworks and technical fixes, so each gain reinforced the next.
- Monthly tracking. Performance and keyword ranking reports every month, packaged for the agency to send under its own name. That’s follow-through most link vendors skip.
- Link maintenance. Placements are watched and replaced if they drop, closing the leak that shrank the profile in March.
Stan Ventures
Want Numbers Like These For Your Client?
We build white-label link building programs for SEO agencies and brands. You confirm every domain before outreach starts, a dedicated account manager runs the plan from strategy onward, and one flat fee covers it, about 60% less than most vendors charge. You keep the client relationship, and we handle the links.
Results via Ahrefs, February to July 2026, US keyword data. Positions compare May 1 with July 27. Client identity withheld under the white-label agreement.
Dileep Thekkethil
AuthorDileep Thekkethil is the Director of Marketing at Stan Ventures and an SEMRush certified SEO expert. With over a decade of experience in digital marketing, Dileep has played a pivotal role in helping global brands and agencies enhance their online visibility. His work has been featured in leading industry platforms such as MarketingProfs, Search Engine Roundtable, and CMSWire, and his expert insights have been cited in Google Videos. Known for turning complex SEO strategies into actionable solutions, Dileep continues to be a trusted authority in the SEO community, sharing knowledge that drives meaningful results.