A blog that wasn’t gaining traction.
Backlinks that weren’t moving the needle.
An SEO strategy that needed a major pivot.
Fast forward a year, and they’ve 10X’d their organic traffic, crossed $1M in revenue, and built an SEO foundation that keeps delivering results.
Here’s how it happened.
Case study summary (at a glance)
| Metric | 2023 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organic Traffic (GSC Last 28 Days) | 7,190 clicks | 73,800 clicks | +927% |
| SEO-Driven Revenue | $636K (Confirmed) | $1M+ (2024 Confirmed) | Likely Higher |
| Traffic Value | $2,991/month | $11,834+/month (Ahrefs, true value much higher) | +295% |
| Domain Rating | DR51 | DR59 | +8 Points |
Note: All data compares September 2023 (when we started with client) to end Feb 2025 (when we were wrapping up our final campaign) except for Organic traffic data. Traffic data (clicks) compares Feb 2024 to Feb 2025 from Google Search Console. September 2023 value is not obtianable from GSC because this was before GA4 migration. The earliest traffic data from 6th Nov 23 – 6th Dec 23 is even lower at 3.71K clicks. So the true growth percentage is actually higher than 10x.
OneUp’s SEO was stuck in the mud
OneUp is a social media scheduling platform that helps businesses, creators, and marketers automate their posts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and Google Business Profiles.
It’s a powerful, affordable alternative to big-name competitors, offering unlimited accounts, AI-generated captions, and robust analytics—for a flat price.
But despite a killer product, their SEO wasn’t delivering the growth they needed.
Key SEO challenges before working with us:
✅ Their blog was on a subdomain. This made ranking harder, since Google sometimes treats subdomains as separate sites. Their blog content wasn’t benefiting from the authority of the main domain, limiting its impact.
✅ A lean team with limited content resources. With just a few employees, consistent high-quality content production wasn’t feasible. We had to work with what was already published.
✅ Choosing the right pages to promote. We knew backlinks would be an important factor for driving results, but we needed a strategy to make them count.
We started building links to priority pages, but some of them simply didn’t budge.
This happens.
Links are powerful, but they’re one of many ranking factors. When things weren’t moving, we both adapted fast—and that’s where the real breakthrough came.
From blog to free tools
After a few months of building links, we weren’t seeing the movement we expected. That’s when OneUp made a strategic pivot—they doubled down on product-led content.
They did this by developing a set of free tools designed to attract their target users:
- YouTube Hashtag Generator – Helps video creators optimize hashtags for YouTube SEO.
- Facebook Caption Generator – Generates engaging social media captions in seconds.
- Instagram Grid Generator – Generate an image grid for your Instagram post in seconds.
They also did the same for other platforms like Threads, Pinterest and Tiktok.
The idea behind creating these tools is not random. OneUp supports content scheduling to all these social media platforms. Each tool page has a CTA that nudges users to create a free account:
Importantly, these tools were published on the main domain so they had the benefit of existing domain authority.
We pushed hard on earning links to these tools and promoted them for 12 months through a mixture of guest posts and outreach links (niche edits). We secured many links that money simply cannot buy through our exclusive partnership system.
Many of these authority backlinks came from true DR70+, 80+ and even DR90 domains:
One link from these domains are hundreds of times more powerful than you get with standard backlinks from other providers.
To reiterate, one of these links is worth HUNDREDS of standard backlinks. This is something many people don’t understand.
We use a 15-point qualification criteria along with DR to measure the value and linkworthiness of a website.
The best part?
We don’t charge extra for these links. That’s where the huge value of our service comes in. To get the same calibre of links, you’re often paying double of triple what we charge.
Here’s what happened a few months after we shifted focus:
More high-intent users started finding OneUp organically — and discovering their paid features through clear CTAs on these free tool pages.
This was a huge win because these weren’t just any visitors, they were social media managers and business owners actively looking for solutions.
And that’s the best kind of traffic you can get.
Now let’s cover the numbers:
10X organic growth & $1M+ revenue
We’ve been working hard on OneUp’s SEO since September 2023. We only finished our campaign in March 2025. Over the last year, traffic to the OneUp website from organic has skyrocketed by 10x, driven by the creation of strategic tool pages and smart off-page promotion:
- Feb 2024: 7.19K clicks per month
- Feb 2025: 73.8K clicks per month (927% increase!) 🚀
💰 SEO-driven revenue growth
- 2023 Revenue (Confirmed): $636K
- 2024 Revenue (Confirmed): $1M+
- 2025: The client has not disclosed an updated figure, though the actual number could be quite a bit higher than 2024.
🔗 Authority surge & SEO value
- Domain Rating: DR51 → DR59
- Traffic Value: $2,991/month → $11,834/month (Ahrefs estimate, real value likely much higher)
Traffic value is the estimated monthly cost of acquiring the same organic traffic through paid search (PPC). It’s a powerful metric because it reflects how valuable the ranked keywords are — higher commercial intent means higher traffic value.
But here’s the key caveat:
Ahrefs traffic estimates are often much lower than real Google Search Console data.
In OneUp’s case:
✅ Ahrefs reports ~38K visitors in the last month
✅ Google Search Console reports 73.8K visitors in the last 28 days
This means the real traffic value is much higher than Ahrefs’ estimate of $11,834/month—likely 2-3X more based on actual user numbers.
Takeaways & practical tips
SEO these days is rarely a straight-line effort. Sometimes things don’t work out at first and that’s okay. What’s most important is how you pivot your approach. This is where we have to stress the importance of a collaborative approach. Our best clients are invested in their content markteting strategies and willing to make changes accordingly.
You can’t throw links at a wall these days and expect the graph to go up and to the right.
Here are some things we learned from this campaign with OneUp:
- Some pages just won’t rank—move on. We saw firsthand that links alone won’t always move the needle. Instead of forcing a failing strategy, we pivoted fast and focused on a different approach.
- Subdomains can hold back SEO. OneUp’s blog content wasn’t benefiting from the authority of their main site. If it had been on their root domain, the initial pages we pushed could have responded much better.
- Content strategy matters just as much as backlinks. The free tools shift was a turning point. Instead of focusing on long-form blog content that wasn’t OneUp’s strength, they doubled down on smart product-led resources that we could promote.
- SEO isn’t just traffic—it’s a revenue driver. The SEO strategy helped push OneUp’s revenue past $1M—proof that when done right, SEO delivers real business results.
