Illustrative case study

A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.

Ladrillo Vivo

Sustainable homebuilder · Mexico City · Latin America

How a Mexico City eco-builder's adobe study earned links from 40 publications

+78referring domains in 12 months, laid one layer at a time.

Read the wall from the ground up. Each band of compacted clay is one month of the campaign; the thicker the band, the more publications linked that month.

M1M5M9M12

The challenge · El reto

A thin domain against concrete giants.

A young builder with a thin domain was competing against large developers for buyers searching sustainable homes.

Ladrillo Vivo builds homes from adobe and rammed earth that stay cool without air conditioning. Buyers searching for sustainable homes in Mexico City found the big developers first: they had decades of property-portal links and paid features. The builder had a better product and a better story, but almost no one on the web vouching for it.

Referring domains at kick-off (modelled)

  • Large developer A1,240
  • Large developer B870
  • Large developer C590
  • Ladrillo Vivo18

Diagnosis · Diagnóstico

Six cracks in the foundations.

  1. 01 · Link profileHigh

    18 referring domains, 11 of them directories or supplier footers.

    Nothing editorial. Search engines had no third-party evidence that this builder knew anything about earth construction.

  2. 02 · Link gapHigh

    Competing developers held 590 to 1,240 domains each.

    Their links came from property portals and paid features; none came from architecture or climate journalism, the gap we could own.

  3. 03 · Citable assetHigh

    Two years of thermal data sat in a spreadsheet.

    Six instrumented test walls, logging every 15 minutes, never published. The best story in the company was invisible.

  4. 04 · LanguageMedium

    The press page was English-only.

    Mexican editors had no Spanish summary, figures or images to work from, so there were zero national or trade mentions.

  5. 05 · AwardsMedium

    Two eligible homes had never been entered.

    Project pages lacked architect, engineer and material credits, so partners had nothing to link back to.

  6. 06 · Brand SERPMedium

    A directory outranked the site for its own name.

    900 branded searches a month landed on a listing page with a competitor's ad beside it.

The strategy · La mezcla

Rammed earth is a recipe. So was the campaign.

Four ingredients, compacted month after month, built on our Authority plan (Digital PR & links). The strip below is the mix by share of the 78 new referring domains.

Digital PR

+21 domains

Launch under embargo, then borough-level re-cuts and reactive heatwave commentary. Twelve angles from one dataset, each written as a ready-to-run Spanish headline.

Spanish-language outreach

+16 domains

140 editors and writers segmented by beat, pitched in Spanish with Mexican units, sources and local framing. Bylined columns followed for the titles that covered the launch.

Research studies

+31 domains

“Adobe vs. concrete: 180 days inside six walls.” A bilingual study hub with methods, raw data download and embeddable charts. Every pitch pointed here, never at the sales pages.

Architecture awards

+10 domains

Two homes entered, project pages rebuilt with full credits so the architect, engineer and award bodies each had a reason to link.

40 publications, laid in running bond.

Of the 78 new domains, 40 were editorial publications. The rest came from partners, universities and directories that followed the coverage.

  • Architecture & design trade (10)
  • Sustainability media (8)
  • Regional & borough news (7)
  • National press (6)
  • Awards & industry bodies (5)
  • Universities & research (4)

Month by month · El muro

12 layers, rammed one at a time.

Choose a layer, with a click or the arrow keys, to read what was compacted into it.

Layer 05 of 12

Launch the study

“Adobe vs. concrete: 180 days inside six walls” goes live. Indoor temperature swung 4.1 °C less behind earth than block.

New domains
+11
Total domains
44
Branded / mo
1,650
Enquiries / mo
20

Links laid this month

  • National daily, property section
  • National daily, science desk
  • Radio station explainer page
  • Climate news site feature

Results · Resultados

What the wall holds up.

Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.

Referring domains

18to96

123456789101112
Branded search / month

900to4,100

1k2k3k4kMonth 1Month 12
Pre-sales enquiries / month

12to39

Rankings, Mexico City, Spanish-language Google

KeywordVol./moMonth 1Month 12
ladrillo vivo casas1,30041
casas sustentables cdmx2,400384
tierra apisonada1,900612
casas de adobe6,600>1009
constructora sustentable cdmx880523
casa bioclimática ciudad de méxico720>1005
adobe vs concreto temperatura390>1001
preventa casas ecológicas cdmx320446

Your plan · Tu plan

Get a plan like this

Earned links, built from a story only you can tell. Start with the Authority plan, or tell us what you are building.

← All case studies