Case Study: Building 100+ Backlinks in Saudi Arabia

When a European B2B SaaS company approached us in early 2025, they had a problem that is increasingly common among international brands entering Gulf markets: a technically solid Arabic website with almost zero authority in Saudi search results.

Their product—a cloud-based procurement platform—had strong English-language SEO performance across Europe. They had invested in professional Arabic translation for their site. Their .sa domain was registered and verified. But after eight months of minimal traction, their Saudi organic traffic sat at roughly 200 sessions per month, mostly branded searches from people who already knew the company name.

The brief was straightforward: build meaningful Arabic backlink authority in Saudi Arabia within twelve months. The target was 100 quality backlinks from Saudi-relevant domains. No shortcuts. No link schemes. Links that would still look defensible in an audit two years later.

This is the story of how we did it—and what we learned along the way.

The Starting Point

Before proposing a strategy, we conducted a full audit. The findings were instructive.

Their backlink profile contained 34 referring domains. Of those, 31 were international English-language sites with no Saudi or Arabic relevance. Two were Arabic directories with inconsistent NAP data. One was a guest post on a low-quality blog that used exact-match Arabic anchor text awkwardly translated from English.

Their top five Saudi competitors averaged 180+ referring domains from Arabic and .sa sources. The authority gap was significant but not insurmountable—the competitors had built their profiles over three to five years, not overnight.

Keyword research revealed opportunity. Several high-intent Arabic procurement and supply chain queries had moderate competition but weak content from existing rankers. Most top results were thin directory pages or outdated blog posts. A brand with genuine expertise and proper authority signals could compete.

Strategy Design

We structured the campaign around four pillars, sequenced deliberately rather than executed simultaneously.

Pillar one: Saudi citation foundation (Months 1–2). Before any editorial outreach, we cleaned up existing directory listings and submitted to verified Saudi business platforms, chamber of commerce directories, and industry-specific catalogues. This produced 18 foundational links with branded anchors and established the company’s baseline Saudi presence.

Pillar two: Arabic content-led outreach (Months 2–8). We commissioned original Arabic research—a whitepaper on digital procurement adoption rates among Saudi SMEs, based on survey data from 150 Riyadh and Jeddah businesses. This asset became the centrepiece of our outreach, giving editors a reason to link that went beyond “please publish our guest post.”

Pillar three: Digital PR and expert positioning (Months 4–10). We positioned the client’s Riyadh-based country manager as a procurement technology commentator. Through HARO-equivalent Arabic services, direct journalist relationships, and reactive pitching around Saudi Vision 2030 supply chain news, we secured coverage in business publications and trade media.

Pillar four: Strategic guest contributions (Months 6–12). Only after pillars two and three had built brand recognition did we pursue guest articles. By this point, editors recognised the company name, which dramatically improved acceptance rates.

Execution Highlights

The Whitepaper Campaign

The Arabic whitepaper was not a thin lead magnet. It was 28 pages of original data with professionally designed infographics, published in both Modern Standard Arabic and English on the client’s site. We created a dedicated landing page optimised for Arabic search terms around procurement digitisation in Saudi Arabia.

Outreach for the whitepaper targeted three groups: Saudi business and technology journalists, procurement and supply chain bloggers, and academic institutions with logistics programmes. We sent personalised pitches in Arabic, each referencing the recipient’s recent work.

Results from the whitepaper alone: 23 editorial links over four months, including placements on two Tier-1 Saudi business publications, four industry trade sites, and several university resource pages. Average domain rating of linking domains: 42. Not a single link was paid.

Digital PR Wins

The most valuable link in the entire campaign came from an unplanned digital PR moment. When a major Saudi retailer announced a supplier portal modernisation, our team pitched the client’s country manager as an expert commentator within four hours of the news breaking. A business editor at a Riyadh-based financial news site included his analysis in a same-day article—with a follow link to the client’s Arabic homepage.

That single link, from a DR 68 domain with heavy Saudi readership, correlated with a measurable ranking improvement for three target keywords within three weeks. It validated our investment in journalist relationships and reactive PR infrastructure.

Over the full campaign, digital PR generated 31 links across 14 publications. Fourteen of those links came from publications we had no prior relationship with—they found our expert through existing coverage and reached out independently.

Guest Post Selectivity

We published only 12 guest articles during the campaign — each on a site we would proudly show the client’s board. Every article was 1,500+ words of original Arabic content from a native speaker with procurement expertise. Acceptance rate: 34%, well above the sub-10% industry average for cold Arabic outreach, reflecting months of prior brand visibility.

The Numbers at Month Twelve

At campaign close, the results:

• 112 live backlinks from Saudi-relevant and Arabic-language domains (target: 100)
• 67 referring domains (up from 34, with 48 new Arabic/Saudi domains)
• Saudi organic traffic: 2,840 sessions/month (up from 200—a 14x increase)
• 14 keywords ranking in top 10 for Arabic procurement and supply chain terms (up from zero)
• Domain Rating increase from 28 to 41 on the .sa property
• Zero manual actions or link-related penalties

Traffic and ranking improvements began accelerating around month seven, which aligns with when digital PR results compounded and the whitepaper gained citation momentum. Months one through four showed modest movement—the citation foundation and early outreach links building crawl frequency and indexation without dramatic ranking shifts.

What Made the Difference

Looking back, three decisions mattered most.

Original research over recycled content. The whitepaper gave every outreach conversation a concrete reason to link. Editors linked to data, not to promotional copy.

Sequencing over simultaneity. Building citations first, then PR, then guest posts meant each pillar benefited from the authority created by previous work. Campaigns that launch all tactics at once spread resources thin and produce weaker results across the board.

Saudi specificity over pan-Arab generalisation. Every link targeted Saudi relevance. We did not count Egyptian or Moroccan links toward the 100-link target even when they were quality placements. For a brand whose immediate business goal was Saudi market penetration, geographic precision in link building matched geographic precision in product strategy.

Lessons for Brands Entering Saudi Arabia

This campaign required investment in Arabic content, local expert positioning, and patience during the foundation period when results were visible but not dramatic. The links we built continue generating authority and referral traffic eighteen months later. Build citations first, create something worth linking to, invest in editor relationships before you need them, and measure success in domain quality and traffic — not link count alone.