National Beauty and Photography School: Domain Rating Growth in 12 Months

Manual, niche-relevant outreach grew Domain Rating and earned hundreds of referring domains for a nationwide beauty and photography school, lifting it to page one and top three placements.

Anonymised national beauty and photography school · Education and training · Australia-wide

The challenge

The school runs two brands, one for beauty training and one for photography, and competes for students across the country. Both sites had thin link profiles and low Domain Rating, so they struggled to rank for the courses that drive enrolments.

Our approach

• Audited both link profiles and disavowed toxic links
• Prospected websites that were genuinely in-niche and in-country
• Ran manual editorial outreach to secure high value, high DR placements
• Prioritised relevance and real traffic over raw link volume

Results

• +9 / +29 — Domain Rating growth across both brands
• +626 — Niche referring domains earned in 12 months
• Top 3 — Placements after page one gains

The outcome

Over twelve months the photography brand grew from almost no authority to 414 referring domains and a Domain Rating of 31, a lift of 29 points. The beauty brand added 212 referring domains to reach 413 and lifted its Domain Rating to 36, a gain of 9 points. The earned authority flowed into rankings, driving large page one gains and top three placements for the course terms that matter most.

The links were real and relevant, and the rankings followed. We went from invisible to top three for the searches that fill our courses.

— Marketing lead, national beauty and photography school