Case 46. Dentistry (Kazakhstan), continuation of case 28: three years, 174 links and a traffic ladder from 73 to 2 640 visits/mo (Tier1.shop)

Владислав Бобров (Mdevostator)

Founder of tier1.shop · PBN Specialist, in SEO since 2009

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Case from the Tier1.shop collection · 2026 · ← all cases

This is a continuation of case #28, published in December 2024. Back then, the story of a dental clinic from Kazakhstan ended with "many queries in top 1–3 over 15 months". Another year and a half has passed — the client continues to place links, and now we can show a rare thing: what a link strategy looks like over a distance of three years, with verified figures according to our new methodology.

Result in brief: 📈 a private dental clinic (Kazakhstan) grew from 73 visits/month to 2 640 — in a stepped ladder, where each new wave of placements raised traffic to a new plateau: 250 → 580 → 1 300 → 2 600+. The number of keywords in the top 3 became 18 compared to 0–2, and in the top 4–10 — up to 43. Ahrefs independently confirms the shape: monotonic growth from zero to 3 392 estimated visits/month without a single rollback over three years. All 174 placed links are active to this day, and the client has been renewing the annual links from 2023 for the third year in a row.

What was in case #28 — and what we clarified

The old case recorded the picture as of the end of summer 2024: groups of 5–20 links since June 2023, many clinic queries in the top 1–3 of both search engines. Preparing the continuation, we recalculated everything based on the order database with completion dates: by the end of August 2024, there were 59 completed placements (the old case mentioned the figure 94 — it apparently included orders in progress and planned batches), and by March 2026, there were 174. All figures below are only completed placements with a placement date.

What was done

The client places links in waves with pauses: 59 links during the first summer-autumn of 2023, a wave of 33 in September 2024, a series of waves from May to October 2025 (62 links), and a batch of 20 in March 2026. Target pages — home page (26 links) and almost the entire spectrum of clinic services: implantation (28), gnathology (25), braces (17), individual methods and implant manufacturer pages. Anchor text — commercial with geo and intent: "dental implantation [city]", "gnathologist [city]", "braces [city] price"; 123 unique formulations out of 174 (71% — acceptable, although we advise striving for 100%); the most frequent repetition is ×5 (see the series of observations about duplicates in the cases #43–#45).

Dynamics by Semrush (monthly data, Kazakhstan)

• Plateau Ladder. Before links — 73 visits/month (the site was almost empty: the first non-zero figures appeared only two months before the start). First wave → plateau ~250 → 580; September 2024 wave → level 1 000–1 350; 2025 waves → 1 800–2 900; currently — 2 640. Each rise is preceded by a wave of placements.
• Two one-time spikes (4 367 in December 2024 and 5 890 in August 2025) — single months that deviate from the trend: there is nothing similar in neighboring Decembers and Augusts, and Ahrefs does not see these spikes at all. We honestly consider them estimation artifacts or one-time surges in demand — we do not include them in the case figures.
• March 2026 Core update passed in growth: top-3 did not drop (10 → 11 → 13 → 18 by July), traffic after a short dip in April (1 626) returned to 2 600+. The sixth case we analyzed in 2026 where a live link profile passed an update without losses or with rapid recovery (#40–#45).

Keywords in the tops are growing by the same ladder: top-3 — from 0–2 to 18 (series maximum — June-July 2026, already after the core update), top-4–10 — from 1–2 to 43. The gray dashed line is general visibility (all keywords in top-50): from 12 in the first month of placements to 103 now (peak — 125). Note: the acceleration of top-4–10 growth began at the end of 2024 — after the second wave of placements, when the active mass exceeded 90 links.

Ahrefs dynamics (daily data, world)

Ahrefs is independent confirmation of the entire history, and here it is particularly clear: a monotonic ladder without a single noticeable rollback — 0 (until June 2023) → 60 → 152 → 299 → 498 → 992 → 1 778 → 2 252 → 3 392 now. Keywords in top-3 — 99 (world), in top-4–10 — 251. There are no Semrush spikes on the Ahrefs curve — another argument in favor of these being artifacts, not real surges.

Link mass and traffic: step by step

Return to the first graph: its lower panel shows the accumulated link mass — how many links were actually in place at each moment (the status of each is tracked in our system). The mass grows in steps 59 → 92 → 125 → 154 → 174, and all 174 links are active to this day. Traffic on the upper panel repeats these steps with a slight lag: four waves of placements — four consecutive rises on the same site. A clear connection of "increased link mass → obtained a new level of positions and traffic," which is rarely possible to show so cleanly.

A separate fact that will say more than any graphs: the client has been renewing the 2023 annual links for the third year in a row (the nearest renewal milestone is August 2026, 48 links). This is only done with placements that bring results: renewing a paid link for the third year in a row is the most honest "voting with the wallet."

Breakdown by target pages

We ran all 29 acceptor pages through Semrush (Kazakhstan): the traffic of each before its first link and after, plus all anchor texts. Anchor repetitions are marked by density: ×N in one day — all repetitions on one date, ×N in one batches — within a month, ×N for M mo — stretched over time. The result — honest, without selecting convenient ones:

We tested two hypotheses on these data. The first — "zero pages lacked commercial anchors": the share of formulations with transactional markers (price, installation, buy, appointment) turned out to be the same in all groups — 9–11%, so the difference is not in the intents; zero pages are united by something else — 1–3 links to narrow showcase pages of implant manufacturers without their own demand (their links worked for the general site profile, as in cases #43/#44). A side honest observation: there are few transactional formulations in the entire profile — this is a growth area for the anchor list. The second hypothesis — "dropped pages are overloaded with repetitions" — was confirmed: in the "grew and dropped" group, anchor uniqueness was only 53% (the worst), for those that grew — 65%, for the rest — 88%. The pages with the highest share of repetitions are exactly those that dropped from their peaks. Causality cannot be proven by one case (the redistribution of queries between service pages could also have played a role), but this is already the fifth data point in our series of observations in favor of a simple rule: the more anchor repetitions, the higher the risk.

And an important caveat to the entire per-page slice: Semrush and Ahrefs are third-party services that estimate traffic based on their own keyword databases. Only the website owner sees the real numbers — in Google Search Console and Yandex.Webmaster, and they may differ from the estimates. This especially applies to the "zero" rows of the table: the absence of traffic in the Semrush database does not mean that the page receives no transitions at all.

Conclusions from the case

• More active links — higher traffic level. Four waves of placements gave four consecutive increases (250 → 580 → 1 300 → 2 600 visits/month). This is the most vivid demonstration in our selection of the direct link between increasing the link mass and the growth of positions.
• Three years without a single rollback (Ahrefs). Medical topic, competitive geo — and monotonic growth through all core updates of 2023–2026. The common denominator with cases #40–#45: a live, replenishable link profile.
• Renewal is the best satisfaction metric. The client has been renewing annual links from 2023 for the third year and buying new waves. Since the publication of case #28 (December 2024), the client has almost doubled the link profile — from 92 to 174 active links, — and traffic grew from ~1 000 to 2 600+ visits/month.
• Anchor profile: acceptable, but not a model. 123 unique formulations for 174 links (71%). A model is 100% unique anchors (in case #42 it was 96%), and data from the same case show the cost of repetitions: for pages that dropped from their peaks, anchor uniqueness was only 53%. Repetitions here could have been avoided completely.
• Budget — 473 000 ₽ for 33 months (~14 300 ₽/mo): comparable to the salary of a part-time assistant — given the manifold growth of the clinic's non-branded organic traffic.

Verifiability

The client's domain is hidden due to the privacy policy (as in case #28), so instead of a link to the site — screenshots from analytics services (estimates in the interfaces and on our graphs may differ: different databases and regions; the curve shape matches).

Semrush Domain Overview (entire history; the geo tab in the interface is general, "world", therefore absolutes are higher than on our graphs based on the Kazakhstan database): years of zero until 2023 and a growth ladder — the shape matches.

Ahrefs, organic traffic for the entire history: zero until summer 2023 and a monotonic ladder to current maximums. White badges Ⓖ — Google algorithm updates, green marks — site content edits (recorded by Ahrefs).

Ahrefs, keywords by position: growth of all baskets from zero.

How we measured

Number of links, dates, types, terms and renewals — from the Tier1.shop order database (only completed placements with the placement date; the activity of each link is tracked by status in the system). Placements were made from two client accounts for one site (154 + 20 links) — we count them together. Traffic and positions — Semrush (Kazakhstan database — client geo) and Ahrefs (world, daily points); graphs are built from raw exports. Both services are third-party estimates based on their own keyword databases: accurate traffic data is visible only to the site owner in Google Search Console and Yandex.Webmaster. Two one-time Semrush spikes are not included in the case figures (explanation in the text). The discrepancy with the figure "94 links" from case #28 is analyzed at the beginning: 59 completed by that date versus 94 including orders in progress and planned batches.

*Costs are calculated at current Tier1.shop prices; the client was placed at the prices of their time — the order of magnitude is the same.