CASE STUDY

Stacking MIT Sloan’s Esteem Through Link Building That Boosted Page Authority Score Across Key URLs

MIT Sloan has an edge of its own, but we increased Page Authority across target pages by an average of +3 through targeted link building to boost it even more.

MIT Sloan Executive Education is an arm of the MIT Sloan School of Management that offers various programs, including executive certificates, short courses, academies and custom corporate programs. MIT Sloan emphasizes bridging theory and practice, innovation, data-driven thinking and interdisciplinary links with technology.

THE CHALLENGE

Lackluster Link Building With A Previous Agency

Unfortunately, link building is one of those SEO strategies that low-quality agencies may try to hack for quick wins. “Grey-hat” tactics are so prevalent for link building that there are even unique denominations, like securing links from irrelevant websites or link farming across domains that’ve been built specifically to game the system. Both are inauthentic ways to attempt to boost search rankings — and could even damage website performance in the long run.

Before coming to Brafton, MIT Sloan was having trouble with its current link-building agency, where secured backlinks were wholly irrelevant to MIT and thus produced no real value to readers or Google, and subsequently, no tangible results for the institution.

THE SOLUTION

Targeted link building.

To restart MIT Sloan’s link-building strategy and set it in the right direction, our experts began by identifying a set of target pages to focus on, prioritizing securing backlinks that were contextually relevant to each target page. Done well, relevant, high-quality backlinks strengthen Page Authority and improve search performance instead of harming it.

First, we focused on unlinked mentions of MIT Sloan, adding links to existing articles related to our target page topics. As the campaign progressed and new opportunities arose, our strategy shifted to creating quality guest posts across authoritative websites to guarantee link relevance and maintain consistent quality.

THE OUTCOME

Higher Page Authority Across Key Pages

+51

high-quality backlinks secured.

+3

avg. increase in Page Authority score across pages.

Once our initial link-building effort wrapped up, four out of six target pages saw an average increase of three points in Page Authority, with relevant backlinks being the key driver of success. Benchmarking the top 10 results for our chosen target keywords (so we know where to aim), consistent strategy execution and properly SEO-optimized target pages were also critical factors in this link-building win for MIT.

Link building is a continuous process typically requiring at least 4–6 months of consistent effort to see ideal results. The number of links needed per page varies based on performance and the competitive landscape.

Link building is an incredibly influential arm of SEO; Done well, it supports your well-written, valuable and optimized content to give it the visibility and authority boosts it so well deserves.

Thinking about link building? Ask us how it could help your content reach further and wider in search.

Ask Us About Link Building