How We Helped A Proxy Client Won AI Overview Visibility with Modern Link Building?

At a Glance

• Goal: Appear more often in Google AI Overview and other AI answers for proxy-related searches.

• Timeframe: Multi-month campaign.

• Outcome:

  • AI Overview pages: 71 → 114 (+61%)

  • AI Overview citations: 305 → 768 (+152%)

  • New AI coverage established:

    • ChatGPT: 64 pages / 94 citations

    • Gemini: 116 pages / 134 citations

    • Perplexity: 52 pages / 114 citations

    • Copilot: 17 pages / 27 citations

  • Backlinks: 14.4K → 30.8K (+114%)

  • Referring domains: 3,547 → 4,300 (+21%)

  • UR: 39 (+6)

  • DR: 72

Challenges & How We Solved Them?

• Editor Skepticism Toward Proxy Topics
  
  – Challenge: Many publishers are cautious with proxy content (compliance/abuse risk).
  
  – Solution: We pitched use-case-first angles (price monitoring, QA testing, ad verification, research) with clear compliance notes and neutral tone. This opened doors for guest guides and listicle insertions on reputable tech sites.

• Lack of Backlinks Support to Educational Assets
  
  – Challenge: Authority concentrated on the homepage; key explainers lacked links.
  
  – Solution: Built editorial deep links via detailed guest posts, listicle updates, and “Brand vs Competitor” comparisons—pointing directly to explainers, definitions, and benchmarks that AIs prefer to cite.

• AI Overview Volatility & Opaque Attribution
  
  – Challenge:Citations shift frequently; there’s no official API to “track” everything.
  
  – Solution: Created a tracking system to capture AI answers; tagged each win to its upstream placement. Prioritized sources already visible in AI answers to stabilize citations.

• Over-Optimized Anchors From Past Campaigns
  
  – Challenge: Legacy exact-match anchors risked dampening trust signals.
  
  – Solution: Switched to brand + descriptive anchors and varied synonyms around “proxy,” “rotating IPs,” “sticky sessions,” etc., which strengthened entity signals without spam.

• Community Moderation (Reddit/Forums/Quora)
  
  – Challenge: Strict rules and low tolerance for promotion.
  
  – Solution: Value-first posts only—answers with steps, screenshots, and proof points; disclosed affiliation where required; linked to non-sales resources; paced contributions to keep trust.

• Link Decay & Editorial Refresh Cycles
  
  – Challenge: Listicles update and remove entries; good links can vanish.
  
  – Solution: Set refresh reminders, maintain relationships with editors, and keep a reclamation queue to restore or replace mentions quickly.

Our Backlinks Strategy

1) Published Detailed Guide Posts 

We published 50 detailed guides: Educational “what-is”/“how-to” guides with checklists, tables, FAQs, and light schema on trusted sites in networking, scraping, and security. All links are deep-linked to our most citable pages.

2) Inserted Links on Top-Ranking Listicles

Audited page-1 “Best Proxy Providers/Tools” posts; requested editorial updates with neutral blurbs and brand/descriptive anchors pointing to explainers and benchmarks.

3) Published 20+ Guest Posts: “Brand vs Competitor”

Unbiased comparisons with feature tables, pricing snapshots, pros/cons, and use-cases. These pages match the comparison intent that AI Overviews frequently summarize.

4) Reddit Comments

Targeted evergreen threads in scraping/privacy subs. Delivered answer-first comments with mini frameworks and (where allowed) a link to a supporting guide; disclosed affiliation when required.

5) Forum Links (Niche Boards)

Solved long-tail problems with step-by-step fixes, screenshots, and references; linked to support docs and explainers. Kept threads active for recrawl.

6) Quora Mentions

500–800 word, evidence-based answers to foundational questions (e.g., residential proxies, rotating IPs) citing third-party sources plus one link to our guide.

Execution Plan

1. Mapping & Baseline: Identify target queries/pages; build an influence list of listicles, publishers, communities, and Q&A sources already surfacing in AI answers.

2. Acquisition: Roll out six tactics above, prioritize editorial quality and topical fit, balance anchors, and avoid exact-match stuffing.

3. Consolidation: Second-pass listicle insertions, light internal linking, reclaim/refresh lost mentions, monitor AI coverage weekly.

Results (What Moved)

1. Referring Domains