Tumbleweed Haul
Junk removal & recycling · Austin
What Austin throws away: a landfill-diversion study that earned a junk hauler national links
+112 referring domains in nine months
Local Services · Austin, United States · 9 months on the Authority plan
The challenge
Outweighed by the franchises
Franchised national haulers outranked the local operator with massive link profiles and ad budgets.
Tumbleweed Haul is a family-run hauler that sorts every load for reuse and recycling. It does the work the franchises advertise, yet on page one it was invisible: national brands own the top results on inherited authority, and outbidding them on ads was never going to work. The only fair fight was links — and links have to be earned with something worth citing.
- National franchise A1,240
- National franchise B860
- National franchise C610
- Tumbleweed Haul41
Diagnosis · what we found in the load
The audit
- Tag · LinksHigh
41 domains, mostly directories
31 of 41 referring domains were citation directories or quote aggregators. Zero editorial links, zero local news mentions.
- Tag · GapHigh
A 20× authority gap
The top three franchise pages for “junk removal Austin” inherited links from national domains with 600–1,200 referring domains each.
- Tag · AssetsHigh
Nothing worth linking to
The site had service pages and a quote form. No data, no guides, no newsroom. Journalists had no reason to cite it.
- Tag · AnchorsMed
Exact-match anchor clumping
Old directory links used “junk removal Austin” verbatim on 38% of anchors — a pattern worth diluting with branded, natural citations.
- Tag · DataOpp.
Six years of weigh tickets
Every load had been weighed and sorted at the transfer station since 2019. Nobody had ever looked at it as a story.
- Tag · LocalMed
Neighbourhood blind spot
Service-area pages were thin clones. No zip-level detail, so neighbourhood press and associations had nothing specific to share.
The strategy
Turn the trash into the story
Built on our Authority plan (digital pr & links): one original data asset, sorted and shipped to four kinds of publisher — the same four bins the links landed in.
- Furniture 26%
- Wood & yard 22%
- Metal 14%
- Cardboard 12%
- Electronics 6%
- True landfill 20%
61% diverted from landfill, the press-release headline.
- 01
Digital PR
A press pack per audience: a statewide data angle for newsrooms, a decluttering angle for lifestyle desks, a policy angle for sustainability reporters. Pitched in two waves, embargoed to launch morning.
- 02
Original data study
“What Austin throws away”: 6 years of anonymised weigh tickets, sorted into material streams, with a 61% landfill-diversion headline and a methodology page journalists could cite.
- 03
Local news links
Zip-code cuts of the data (move-out spikes in student areas, renovation debris in fast-growing suburbs) pitched to neighbourhood newsletters and local blogs.
- 04
Infographics
Five embeddable infographics with attribution snippets and alt text, so every reuse became a credited link rather than a scraped image.
9 months on the line
Month by month
- 0145 RDs · #11
Link-gap audit against three franchises; cleanup plan for directory anchors.
- 0250 RDs · #10
Weigh-ticket export, cleaning and material classification; methodology drafted.
- 0358 RDs · #9
Study page, five infographics and press packs built; embargo list assembled.
- 0476 RDs · #7
Launch: “What Austin throws away”. First wave of news coverage lands.
- 0599 RDs · #5
Second-wave pitches: lifestyle desks, sustainability reporters, trade press.
- 06115 RDs · #4
Edu outreach: university sustainability pages adopt the dataset as reading.
- 07129 RDs · #3
Neighbourhood cuts released; association newsletters and local blogs link in.
- 08142 RDs · #3
Spring clean-out hook re-pitched with fresh monthly data.
- 09153 RDs · #2
Study refreshed; link equity routed to the core service page via internal links.
Results after 9 months
Bins full
Referring domains
41 → 153
Top 3 for 'junk removal Austin'
Yes (from #11)
Organic jobs booked
+68%
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Sort yard · month 9 of 9
153referring domains
- Rank, “junk removal Austin”
- #2
- Organic jobs (index)
- 168
- Won so far
- +112
News bin · 38 domains by month 9
- Statewide daily: data story on city waste
- Regional TV station site: spring clean-out segment
- National home-and-garden outlet: decluttering stats
Source types are described generically; the business and its coverage are fictional.
- Starting profile
- News
- Local
- Edu
- Industry
Line: Google position (lower is better). Bars: organic jobs booked, index 100 at kickoff → 168.
| Keyword | Monthly searches | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|
| junk removal austin | 2,900 | #11 | #2 |
| junk hauling austin | 880 | #14 | #3 |
| furniture removal austin | 590 | #18 | #4 |
| appliance recycling austin | 320 | #23 | #2 |
| mattress disposal austin | 480 | #16 | #5 |
| construction debris removal austin | 260 | #27 | #7 |
| austin landfill diversion rate | 140 | — | #1 |
| what can be recycled in austin | 1,300 | — | #4 |
- 1National franchise A — Junk removal near you
- 2National franchise B — Junk removal near you
- 3Quote aggregator — Junk removal near you
- 4National franchise C — Junk removal near you
Tumbleweed Haul sat at #11, on page two.
- 1National franchise A — Junk removal near you
- 2Tumbleweed Haul — Austin junk removal, sorted for recycling
- 3National franchise B — Junk removal near you
- 4National franchise C — Junk removal near you
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