Case #47: Electronics Store (Belarus) — ×12 with one link per month

Владислав Бобров (Mdevostator)Article updated: 3 September 2026

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

This is the most disciplined placement schedule in our selection. The campaign has been running for 28 calendar months — from March 2024 to June 2026. During this time, the client placed 16 links, and in no single month were there more than one: 16 months with placements, 12 months of pauses. Without large one-time batches or haste: a young electronics online store from Belarus increased its link mass at a pace of "maximum one PBN home page per month" — and by July 2026 reached a historical traffic record, updating it right in the month this case was prepared.

Result in brief: 📈 domain traffic — from ~300 visits/mo before the first link (March 2024) to 3 594 in July 2026, ×12 over 28 months, the site's historical maximum. 📈 The number of keywords in "money" positions (Google top-10) became 87 versus 7 — also ×12; overall visibility (all keywords in top-50) grew from 117 to 538. 📈 The smartphones category — the main goal of placements — rose from ~20 to ~1 200 visits/mo. 📈 Ahrefs (world, daily measurements) confirms independently: from ~670 to ~4 600 visits/mo by monthly averages (×7; daily peak — 7 501 in January 2026), keys in top-3 — from 14 to 320 (×23), and the July value — a historical maximum. And a separate fact about trust: 12 out of 16 annual links the client paid for immediately for two years in advance — including the freshest, June 2026.

Starting point

The site is a young mobile electronics store: in the Semrush database, it appeared only in 2023 and throughout that year stayed at 60–190 visits/month. By February 2024 — about 300: the store was being filled with a catalog, and small organic growth was already underway. We honestly record this immediately: we did not come to a dead site, but to a site with initial dynamics — the question was its scale and stability. What happened next is visible on the graphs: over 28 months of link maintenance, the level grew by an order of magnitude, and each subsequent peak was higher than the previous one.

What was done

Strategy — regularity instead of volume: no more than one link per month, each time — from a new PBN home page (all 16 donors are unique, there are no repeat donors). The first year — slowly: three links for 2024 (March, September, December). From 2025 — almost monthly: nine links per year. In 2026 — another four, the last one on June 21.

Target pages: home page (3 links), smartphones category (5), iPhone catalogs (6 — to the old and new catalog addresses, more on this below), tablets category (1) and a flagship smartphone product card (1). The anchor strategy went through three phases: in 2024 — broad category formulations ("mobile phone store", "buy smartphone"); in 2025 — geo-specifications and the iPhone cluster ("buy phone in [city]", "buy iPhone in [city]"); in 2026 — expansion to tablets, branded formulations and again broad categories. 14 out of 16 anchors are unique (87.5%); the only repeat is "buy iPhone in [city]" ×3, stretched over 16 months (about this — in the anchor analysis).

Dynamics by Semrush (monthly data, Belarus)

• Ladder of levels. Before links — ~300 visits/month. Month of the first link — 744. Then the levels: 1 516 (October 2024) → 2 032 (August 2025) → 2 300–2 500 (beginning of 2026) → leap to 3 393–3 594 (May–July 2026). 📈 The current three months are the highest in the site's entire history.
• Two dips — both recovered. March–April 2025: 1 416 → 848 (−40%), the window coincided with the Google core update March 13–27, 2025; by May the site returned to 1 410. September–October 2025: 2 032 → 1 175 (−42%), the window coincided with the Google spam update (August 26 — September 22); by December — 2 150, above the pre-drop level. Both dips were passed without removing links — the mass continued to grow according to the graph. The site passed other confirmed window updates (June and December 2025 cores) with growth.
• Seasonality checked honestly: comparing the same months. July 2024 — 731; July 2025 — 1 736 (×2.4); July 2026 — 3 594 (×2.1). Doubling year-over-year for two consecutive summers is not a seasonal wave. The only clear seasonal episode is the September 2024 spike (1 479): the month of new iPhone releases.

Positions are growing by the same ladder as the traffic. Keywords in the top-3 were 0–1 before the start — now 11 (series peak — 19 in February 2026). Keywords in top-4–10 — from 7 to 76, and this is a series record set right now, in July 2026. Total "money" positions (top-10) — 87 versus 7 at the start: ×12, exactly the same multiplier as the traffic. The gray dashed line on the middle panel is the overall visibility (all keywords in the top-50): from 117 to 538. Note the shape: visibility is growing not in a jump after a single link, but continuously for all 28 months — just as continuously as the link mass was being replenished.

Ahrefs dynamics (daily data, world)

Ahrefs calculates based on its own keyword database and worldwide — and confirms the history independently: monthly averages grew from ~670 (February 2024) to ~4 600 visits/month (July 2026) — ×7; peak daily estimate — 7 501 in January 2026. 📈 Keywords in the top-3 — from 14 to 320 (×23), and the July value is the historical maximum of the series: the positional foundation is gaining height right now. Keywords in top-4–10 — from 162 to 808 (×5). The September 2024 step is visible here as well, both 2025 drops — also, and both with recovery.

Detail for honesty: in 2026, the curve shapes of the two services diverge — Ahrefs (world) rolled back to ~4 600 after the January peak, while Semrush based on the Belarusian database was hitting records in the same months. This is a common divergence of third-party estimates with different coverage and keyword databases. What the services agree on: manifold growth compared to the start of the campaign and maximums for "money" positions right now.

Breakdown by target pages

We ran all target pages through Semrush (Belarusian database): traffic for each before its first link and now, 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. In this case, only the third, safest type is encountered. Result — honest, including the page where there is no effect:

Smartphone category graph — page-by-page version of the entire history. Before the first link to it (September 2024), the page fluctuated around 2–30 visits/mo with a one-time spike to 106. Then — a staircase: by December 2024 ~106, after the links of spring–summer 2025 — 190 → 261 → 441 → 512, and in 2026 — reaching 915–1 290. 📈A two-order growth for a page that received 5 links over 21 months, while the rest of the domain's mass was simultaneously growing.

The role of anchor text. The only repeating anchor text in the case is "buy iphone in [city]": it was used three times over 16 months (in January 2025 — to the old iphone catalog address, in October 2025 and May 2026 — to the new one). Another anchor text on the new catalog address almost matches it — "buy iphone [city]", without the preposition: the wording is slightly different, but the query is the same. The point of this approach is to avoid repeating the anchor text word for word: the page gets several similar formulations instead of several identical ones, and the anchor profile remains diverse. In the mode of this case — where repetitions are rare and spread out over time — there are no signs of penalization in the data: both catalog pages are in the plus, and the domain is at a record high. We emphasize the framework: this is an observation about spread-out repetitions; this case has no data on clustered repetitions in a single day or a single batch (see the series of observations on duplicates in cases #43–#46). The second observation — the anchor text "iphone 16 pro image" to a product card: over 13 months, the page never began to collect traffic (the only non-zero month was a one-time 240 in May 2026, with zero in neighboring months). "Image-based" queries on product cards did not work in this case.

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

• How often and how many. No more than one link per month (16 links over 28 months) — and a x12 increase in traffic. A slow start (only three links for the year 2024) did not hinder progress: mass accumulates, and the effect catches up. This is a guideline for small budgets: 2 000 ₽/month on average — without large one-time batches. A disclaimer of honesty: we did not compare the "large batch versus regularity" scenario in this case — there were simply no large batches here.
• Which pages. The best target is a category with its own demand: the smartphones category showed growth from ~20 to ~1 200 visits/month on 5 links, the tablets category — a series record six months after a single link (with a caveat: the page was growing even before it). A specific product card — zero, and the explanation "there is no demand there" was not confirmed: according to Wordstat, this model has 3 341 impressions per month in Belarus. Demand exists, but the page did not capture it — likely, marketplaces occupy the search results for such queries, and the anchor text was selected for an image-based query. This is a hypothesis, not a proven conclusion. If the catalog structure changes — take note: 3 links in this case point to the old catalog address, which the client replaced with a new one.
• With which anchor texts. The working combination of the case is commercial intent + geo: "buy ... in [city]". 14 unique formulations out of 16; the only repetition is spread over 16 months — in this mode, no penalization is visible. "Image-based" anchors to product cards had no effect.
• How long to wait. At the domain level, movement is visible as early as the month of the first link (300 → 744, with a caveat: the young site had its own dynamics). At the page level, the effect manifested within 1–3 months: after the September 2024 link, the smartphones category steadily broke away from the base by December. Do not give up in the first few weeks: the ladder of this case took over two years to form.

All conclusions are guidelines from a single case, not guarantees: another site, niche, and geo will have its own numbers.

Verifiability

The client's domain is hidden due to the privacy policy, 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 shape of the curve matches).

Semrush Domain Overview, Belarusian database, full history (extra series disabled — only those on our graphs remain): multi-year zero until 2023, a ladder from 2024–2025, and a record ~3.8k on the right edge — July 2026. The bottom panel — keywords in top-3 and top-4–10 with Google update badges.

Ahrefs, organic traffic over 5 years (weekly grid): zero until 2023, a step in autumn 2024, a 2025 plateau with two passed dips, and 2026 maximums.

Ahrefs, keywords by position: orange baskets (top-3, top-4–10, top-11–20) grow throughout the distance — their result is on the right edge. The gray mass — the far "tail" (positions 21–50 and 51+), which sharply decreased at the end of 2025: the site lost thousands of tail keywords outside the tops, while the "money" baskets continued to grow. We show this too — an honest picture is more important than a pretty one.

How we measured

Number of links, dates, types, and deadlines — from the Tier1.shop order database (only completed placements with a placement date; the activity of each link is tracked by the status in the system — all 16 are active). Traffic and positions — Semrush (Belarusian database — client geo, monthly data points) and Ahrefs (world, daily data 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.

*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.

Honestly

• Growth started before us. A young store was growing even before the first link (137 visits/month in November 2023 → ~300 by February 2024): the catalog was being filled, and the site was gaining its first positions. We supported the growing site with links — and over the distance, growth accelerated manifold along with the increase in mass. It is impossible to isolate the "contribution of links in percentages" from this picture — any such figure would be speculation.
• The catalog grows on its own. In today's top site pages, there is a category for push-button phones — 208 visits/month without a single link from us. Expanding the assortment and the client's work on the site are part of the overall growth picture.
• There were dips. Two pits in 2025 (−40% and −42% from local peaks) — both were recovered with a move to new maximums; the first coincided with the Google core update of March 2025. Links were not removed during these periods, and the placement schedule did not change.
• Branded anchor text. Two anchor text out of 16 are branded; navigational demand for the brand in a growing store grows on its own.