Lapichka Rescue · Animal shelter charity · Plovdiv
Adoption stories that earned links: a Plovdiv shelter's year in the news
A twelve-month digital pr & links programme in Plovdiv, Bulgaria: one animal at a time, one story at a time, one link at a time.
8 stories pinned, 55 new referring domains, 12 months.
The challenge
Loved on Facebook. Invisible on search.
A volunteer-run shelter depended on Facebook and was invisible when people searched to adopt or donate.
Lapichka had everything a newsroom wants — rescues, second chances, a city that cared — but all of it lived in a social feed. When someone in Plovdiv typed “adopt a dog” or “donate to a shelter”, the results were aggregators and a council page. The shelter’s own site had no animal pages, no story pages and almost no links.
The brief: make the stories findable, make them earn links, and make sure every visitor could adopt or give without leaving the site.
Diagnosis, pinned up
8 findings, week one01 · Links
9 referring domains, six of them directories. Years of local press coverage, almost none of it linked.
02 · Mentions
38 articles named the shelter — split across ‘Lapichka’ and ‘Лапичка’ — with no link at all.
03 · Technical
Every adoptable animal lived in one weekly PDF. Nothing indexable, nothing shareable, nothing to link to.
04 · Technical
Mobile LCP of 5.8 s, driven by an uncompressed 40-photo gallery on the homepage.
05 · Content
Homepage titled ‘Home’, English-only meta, zero coverage of Bulgarian adopt / donate queries.
06 · Donations
A seven-step off-site payment form with no landing page; ~64% of starts abandoned.
07 · Local
No ‘Animal shelter’ category on the business profile; three different addresses across citations.
08 · Measurement
No donation attribution, so nobody could see what search was — or wasn't — contributing.
The strategy
Every animal is a story. Every story needs a page worth linking to.
Built on our Authority plan (Digital PR & links), with four tactics working as one loop: story → page → coverage → link → donation.
1
Digital PR
We built a story bank of 60 animals with volunteers, then pitched them on the news calendar — spring abandonment, floods, winter appeals — to regional and national desks. Every pitch pointed to a page that existed only on the shelter's site.
2
Story-led outreach
One animal, one angle, one destination. Each story got its own page with photos, a timeline and a clear ‘meet me’ button, so journalists had a reason to link rather than embed a Facebook post.
3
Unlinked mentions
A sweep across both spellings found 38 linkless mentions. A short, friendly note to each editor — with an updated photo and the new page — turned 19 of them into links.
4
Donation page optimisation
The off-site form became a two-step, on-site page with a monthly default, clear ‘what your 20 лв buys’ tiers, and links in from every story page.
The wall
8 polaroids, 8 links that mattered
Each photo develops as it comes into view. Choose one to read the angle, the outlet and the link it earned.
Story card · May · month 5
The Maritsa Seven
Flood rescue of a litter by the Maritsa river; data story on spring abandonment rates.
- Outlet
- National TV news website
- Type
- National news
- Authority
- 81
- Earned
- Followed link to /stories/maritsa-seven
Modelled outlet profile; authority is an illustrative 0–100 score.
Month by month
A year in the scrapbook
- M110 RDs
Story bank & audit
Volunteer interviews, 60 stories logged, link and mention audit across both spellings.
- M213 RDs
Adoption hub
PDF replaced by one page per animal, with schema and share images. First pitch: Baba Tsveta.
polaroid: Baba Tsveta
- M317 RDs
Mention sweep
38 unlinked mentions found; the first 11 reclaimed. Kapitan lands in a city magazine.
polaroid: Kapitan
- M422 RDs
Donate, rebuilt
Seven steps become two. Monthly giving default, tiers, trust signals, attribution set up.
- M528 RDs
Maritsa Seven
Flood-rescue litter plus an abandonment data story — picked up by national TV online.
polaroid: The Maritsa Seven
- M633 RDs
Run for Lapichka
Zara's charity 5K page; links from running clubs and an outdoors blog.
polaroid: Zara
- M739 RDs
Bonded pairs
Expert guide using the shelter's own data; a parenting portal mention reclaimed.
polaroid: Mila & Mitko
- M845 RDs
Foster & volunteer
New pages plus civic citations from the municipality and two university societies.
- M950 RDs
Bus 26
The commuting stray story earns a civic transport link and a wave of adoption enquiries.
polaroid: Sharo
- M1055 RDs
Vet partners
Neutering-day resources page, linked by a veterinary trade site and three clinics.
polaroid: Tom the vet's cat
- M1160 RDs
Appeal prep
Internal links from every story to donate; winter landing page staged.
- M1264 RDs
Home by New Year
Live adoption tracker and national weekend-magazine feature close the year.
polaroid: Zima
Results after 12 months
The wall, developed
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Organic-attributed online donations, indexed to month 0 = 100 (dashed line).
Where Lapichka ranks now
| Query | Before | After | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| приют за животни Пловдивanimal shelter Plovdiv | 34 | 1 | ▲ 33 |
| осиновяване на куче Пловдивadopt a dog Plovdiv | 100+ | 2 | new |
| котки за осиновяванеcats for adoption | 61 | 4 | ▲ 57 |
| доброволец приют Пловдивshelter volunteering Plovdiv | 100+ | 3 | new |
| дарение за животниdonate to animals | 100+ | 6 | new |
| кастрация на котки Пловдивcat neutering Plovdiv | 100+ | 8 | new |
| Лапичкаbrand name | 7 | 1 | ▲ 6 |
Before
приют за животни Пловдив
Facebook · Lapichka Rescue
Lapichka Rescue — posts and photos
No adoption info, no donate path
pet-directory.example
Animal shelters in Plovdiv (12 listings)
After
приют за животни Пловдив
lapichka.example
Приют Лапичка, Пловдив — осиновете куче или котка
Adopt · Donate · Foster · Our stories
News · national TV
The Maritsa Seven: all seven pups now home
Get a plan like this
Stories you already have, turned into pages that earn links and coverage that converts.