Thread 1
Digital PR
Newsworthy, data-backed stories pitched to design desks in London, Berlin, Vienna and Milan.
A census of the last working looms, a Design Week tie-in and commission stories: 146 new referring domains in 12 months.
Kilimara Weavers · Handwoven kilim workshop · Chiprovtsi
How a seven-loom kilim workshop earned links from design press across Europe
A Authority engagement for a seven-loom workshop in Chiprovtsi, Bulgaria: 12 months, 4 threads of work, one rug.
+146
referring domains
in 12 months · 9 → 155
Warp: keywords · Weft: links · Pattern: Chiprovtsi medallion
The challenge
Admired abroad, invisible in search.
Kilimara's rugs were admired abroad but the site had nine referring domains and no authority to compete with mass-market rug retailers for 'handwoven kilim' in English and German.
Buyers in Hamburg and Copenhagen were searching for exactly what Kilimara makes. But Google measures trust in links, and a workshop that had spent three centuries perfecting its craft had spent almost nothing on being cited. The retailers outranking it sold machine-made flatweaves with thousands of referring domains.
- Mass-market rug retailer A2,840
- Marketplace rug category1,960
- German Teppich chain1,310
- Kilimara Weavers9
Diagnosis
Nine faults in the warp.
Before a single pitch went out, we audited the backlink profile, the international setup and the content a journalist would land on.
Authority
- 019 referring domainsSeven were directories; only two editorial links, both from 2019.
- 0263 unlinked mentionsDesign blogs, a museum catalogue and travel guides named the workshop but never linked.
- 03Image theft, uncreditedWorkshop photography ran on 23 sites with no attribution link.
International
- 01Hreflang loop brokenEN pages pointed to /bg/ as x-default; DE pages had no return tags, so Google ignored the cluster.
- 02Machine-translated DE'Kelim' never appeared; German category pages used the English 'kilim' throughout.
- 03One currency, one marketPrices only in BGN, with no shipping copy for the EU, the source of most export intent.
Content
- 01A 300-year story, untoldNo page on Chiprovtsi's weaving guild, motifs or dyes, the very angles design editors want.
- 02Thin product pagesAvg. 38 words per rug; no size, knot, dye or weaver attribution.
- 03No press roomJournalists had nothing to download: no images, facts or founder background.
The pattern draft
Four threads, one design.
Built on our Authority plan (digital pr & links). Each tactic is a colour in the weft: on its own it is a stripe, together they make the medallion.
Thread 2
Heritage storytelling
An archive of motifs, dyes, guild history and the seven weavers, written to be cited.
Every pitch linked to a specific archive page, so coverage landed on linkable assets, not the homepage.
Thread 3
Link reclamation
Finding every place that already named or pictured Kilimara and asking for the credit.
Mention crawls plus reverse image search, with a polite two-touch outreach: 41 links reclaimed.
Thread 4
Hreflang
One clean EN/DE/BG cluster with reciprocal tags, a proper x-default and native German copy.
So that the authority earned in English design press also lifts the German pages it was meant for.
Interactive · scroll to weave
Every link is a pass of the shuttle.
24 warp threads stand for 24 head terms in English and German. Each month's coverage weaves three rows; when a keyword reaches the top ten, its thread turns gold.
The loom · Month 12: Finishing
155
Referring domains
63
Top-10 EN/DE
36/36
Rows woven
Binding the edges
Disavow review, link-velocity check and a 12-month press calendar handed to the workshop. (12 new domains.)
Warp 1 of 24 · 24 in top 10
“handwoven kilim” EN · 4,400/mo
Top 10 since month 9 · now #4
Month by month · 12 months
The weaving draft.
M01 · Warping · 13 RD
Mention audit and hreflang repair
Crawled 2,300 pages of press, forums and museum sites for unlinked brand mentions; fixed the broken EN/DE/BG hreflang cluster.
6 mentions reclaimed
M02 · Warping · 20 RD
The Chiprovtsi archive goes live
Twelve heritage pages: motifs, dye recipes, the 17th-century guild, each weaver's loom and signature pattern.
7 new domains
M03 · First passes · 29 RD
Data story: the last 40 looms
Original census of working kilim looms in Chiprovtsi, pitched to EN and DE design desks with embargoed photography.
9 new domains
M04 · First passes · 41 RD
German-language PR desk
Native-written DE story angles for Wohnen and interiors titles; dedicated /de/presse page with downloadable assets.
12 new domains
M05 · Body · 54 RD
Motif dictionary launched
Interactive glossary of 38 traditional motifs became a citable reference for design students and journalists.
13 new domains
M06 · Body · 68 RD
Milan Design Week tie-in
A one-loom live weaving demo story; pre-briefed 30 design journalists with a quotable fact sheet.
14 new domains
M07 · Body · 83 RD
Link reclamation round two
Image-reverse search found 23 sites hot-linking Kilimara photography without credit; most added a link.
15 new domains
M08 · Medallion · 99 RD
Museum and university partners
Ethnographic museum and two textile programmes linked to the dye-recipe pages as teaching material.
16 new domains
M09 · Medallion · 115 RD
'Handwoven kilim' reaches page one
Category page rebuilt around provenance, care and sizing; internal links from all archive pages.
16 new domains
M10 · Medallion · 130 RD
Commission stories
Case features on rugs made for a Berlin hotel and a Copenhagen library, written for trade press.
15 new domains
M11 · Finishing · 143 RD
DE category depth
Kelim-Läufer and Flachgewebe collections translated by a native editor, not machine-localised.
13 new domains
M12 · Finishing · 155 RD
Binding the edges
Disavow review, link-velocity check and a 12-month press calendar handed to the workshop.
12 new domains
Results after 12 months
The finished rug.
9 → 155
Referring domains
+190%
Export organic orders
4 → 63
Top-10 EN/DE keywords
41
Unlinked mentions reclaimed
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Referring domainsExport organic orders (index, M0 = 100 → 290)
English 35German 28
- Design & interiors press41
- Reclaimed unlinked mentions41
- Travel & heritage media27
- German Wohnen blogs23
- Museums & craft institutions14
Ochre: months 1–3 · Madder: 4–8 · Indigo: 9–12
| Keyword | Market | Searches/mo | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| handwoven kilim | EN | 4,400 | #61 | #4 |
| chiprovtsi kilim | EN | 590 | #6 | #1 |
| bulgarian kilim rug | EN | 880 | #14 | #2 |
| handmade kilim rug | EN | 3,600 | #48 | #5 |
| vegetable dyed rug | EN | 720 | #39 | #6 |
| balkan rug | EN | 480 | #11 | #3 |
| traditional bulgarian rug | EN | 260 | #9 | #1 |
| handgewebter kelim | DE | 1,900 | — | #3 |
| bulgarischer kelim | DE | 390 | #18 | #2 |
| wollteppich handgewebt | DE | 1,600 | #66 | #7 |
| naturfarben teppich | DE | 590 | #43 | #5 |
| kelim kaufen | DE | 2,900 | #88 | #10 |
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Authority · Digital PR & links
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