SOLENKA FISH HOUSE · Seafront seafood restaurant · Varna
How a Varna fish house got national press for its Black Sea catch-of-the-day
+94
referring domains from food & travel press
Varna, Bulgaria · 10 months · Hospitality & Food
MONTH 10 · AUG103 referring domains2 best seafood Varna
How to read the chart: each italic sounding is a keyword’s Google position. Shallow water by the Varna shore is the top of page one. Each anchor is a referring domain earned; flagged anchors name the publication. Modelled data.
ITHE CHALLENGE
Loved by the harbour, unseen from the motorway.
The restaurant was loved locally but invisible to summer visitors researching where to eat in Varna. It had only nine referring domains, against travel-portal listicles with thousands.
Every June the city fills with visitors who plan dinner on their phones. They search in English, read the travel-portal listicles and book whatever is on them. Solenka’s boats landed better fish than anyone on those lists, but on the search chart it sat in deep water: position 23 for its own head term, page three for most of the rest.
The task was not more pages. It was earning the kind of editorial links that tell a search engine a restaurant is genuinely notable, from the food and travel press visitors already trust.
SURVEY NOTES · MONTH 0
9
Nine referring domains
Six were directory listings and two were defunct tourism portals. Nothing a search engine would treat as editorial endorsement.
31
Thirty-one unlinked mentions
Bloggers, a regional paper and two travel forums had written about the restaurant by name, with no link back to the site.
0
No story to link to
The daily catch lived only on a chalkboard and an Instagram story. There was no crawlable page a journalist could cite.
4
Four spellings of the name
“Solenka”, “Solyanka”, “Соленка” and a Cyrillic–Latin mix, “Solенка”, split citations across travel portals and maps listings.
2.1k
Listicles with thousands
The top five results for “best seafood Varna” were travel portals averaging 2,100 referring domains each.
EN
Thin English pages
Summer visitors search in English; the English menu was a PDF and the about page was two lines long.
II · THE COURSE PLOTTED
Four bearings, one harbour.
The campaign ran on our Authority plan: earned editorial links, never bought ones, built around a story only this restaurant could tell.
N · DIGITAL PR
41 domains
The Black Sea Catch Index
Five years of the house's own landing records became a month-by-month guide to what is fresh off Varna. Journalists got a chart, a quotable statistic and photographs they could use.
E · LOCAL PRESS LINKS
22 domains
Varna, told from the harbour
Stories for regional papers and city guides: the dawn boats, the families who fish for the house, the winter menu. Each one with a link to the catch log.
S · FOOD-CRITIC OUTREACH
12 domains
Tables, not press releases
Food writers were invited to eat, with no obligation to write and no payment. Reviews that followed were the writers' own.
W · UNLINKED MENTIONS
19 domains · 31 links
Reclaiming what was already written
Every mention of the restaurant's name, in any spelling, was found and its author asked, briefly and politely, to add a link.
IIISHIP’S LOG
Ten months, entered daily.
MONTH 1NOV
Survey & fix the name
Canonical Latin and Cyrillic spellings set; maps and portal citations corrected; English menu rebuilt as HTML.
- Domains
- 13
- Head term
- #23
MONTH 2DEC
Catch-of-the-day page
A daily, crawlable log of what the boats landed, with species, weight and the dish it became. The linkable asset.
- Domains
- 19
- Head term
- #21
MONTH 3JAN
Mentions reclaimed
Polite outreach to everyone who had written about the house; first link-backs from local blogs.
- Domains
- 28
- Head term
- #17
MONTH 4FEB
Critic tables
Invitations to eat on the house's tab, with no obligation to write and no paid placement. Three national food writers came.
- Domains
- 38
- Head term
- #14
MONTH 5MAR
Black Sea Catch Index
A data story from five years of landing records: which fish to order in which month. Pitched to food and travel desks.
- Domains
- 51
- Head term
- #11
MONTH 6APR
National pick-up
The index was syndicated by travel desks ahead of spring bookings. Thirteen new domains in a month.
- Domains
- 64
- Head term
- #8
MONTH 7MAY
Season opens
Head term enters the top six. Reservation widget tagged so organic bookings can be counted.
- Domains
- 77
- Head term
- #6
MONTH 8JUN
Summer features
“Where to eat in Varna” guides refresh; the house is added to four of them with a link.
- Domains
- 90
- Head term
- #4
MONTH 9JUL
Holding position
Top three for the head term. Outreach slows; effort shifts to keeping the catch log fresh daily.
- Domains
- 97
- Head term
- #3
MONTH 10AUG
Season reckoning
103 referring domains in total, position 2 for the head term and reservations up 142% on the prior season.
- Domains
- 103
- Head term
- #2
IVSOUNDINGS AT SEASON’S END
From deep water to the shallows.
+94
23 → 2
+142%
31
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
TABLE OF SOUNDINGS · KEYWORD POSITIONS
| Keyword | Monthly searches | Month 0 | Month 10 | Water column |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| best seafood Varna | 2,900 | 23 | 2 | Up 21 places |
| fish restaurant Varna | 1,900 | 31 | 3 | Up 28 places |
| catch of the day Varna | 320 | 40 | 1 | Up 39 places |
| seafront restaurant Varna | 1,300 | 19 | 3 | Up 16 places |
| Black Sea fish restaurant | 880 | 48 | 4 | Up 44 places |
| mussels Varna | 590 | 27 | 2 | Up 25 places |
| Varna restaurant by the sea | 720 | 38 | 5 | Up 33 places |
| where to eat in Varna | 4,400 | 64 | 7 | Up 57 places |
| Bulgarian Black Sea seafood | 480 | 71 | 9 | Up 62 places |
CHART YOUR OWN COURSE
Get a plan like this
Earned links from the press your customers already read, built on a story that is genuinely yours.
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