Many new websites and companies struggle with overwhelm when they first realize that a low Domain Rating means it will be an uphill battle against larger and more established competitors. It can feel particularly frustrating when some Google ranking factors— including the age of the domain in question— are out of your hands.

The good news, though, is that with the right strategy and effort, you can control some ranking factors that you maybe thought you couldn’t— including generating external backlinks from other websites. 

uSERP offers both earned quality backlinks and SEO consulting for our clients, helping even new-to-SEO brands rise to the SERP ranks quickly with a strong strategy in place.

In this case study, we’ll show you how we helped new telehealth company Henry Meds (also known as the corporation “Adonis Health”) increase their DR dramatically— and enjoy the ranking benefits that come alongside those efforts. 

The client 

Henry Meds is a monthly healthcare subscription service with experienced and licensed providers. They focus on providing holistic care for endocrine conditions like weight loss management, insomnia, and testosterone treatment through telehealth care. All programs include free medication shipping directly to the customer’s doorstep.

The challenge

Henry Meds is a relatively newer company, having been founded in 2022 after telehealth practices became more widespread. They had an outstanding idea for a product— access to holistic, convenient healthcare for ongoing conditions in a time when specialist waitlists can take weeks or months to book— but were struggling to compete for high-value keywords.

They knew they needed to grow organic visibility by increasing brand awareness around critical topics and search queries. These included queries for specific medications or treatment options, with some content centered around currently trending medications like Ozempic and Semaglutide. 

They also needed help securing top rankings for competitive and high-value keywords, especially keywords related to their products that could help connect them with potential patients. 

The solution

Knowing that SEO and brand awareness were crucial to the brand’s client acquisition strategy, Henry Meds came to work with both uSERP and Codeless in August 2023 to create a strong SEO and content-centered strategy. (You can check out Codeless’s work with Adonis Health to learn more about that side of the equation). 

Here at uSERP, we focused on increasing overall domain authority, targeting key pages for SEO impact, and providing SEO recommendations. Let’s take a closer look at the steps involved.

1. Increased DR with natural links to their homepage

A website’s Domain Rating (DR) is a score used by Ahrefs to provide a basic understanding of how competitive your site will be in the SERPs. Google doesn’t use DR scores to rank content, but the DR score accounts for known ranking signals that Google does account for to help you track your progress. 

When we first started working with Henry Meds, their DR was 8 out of 100. This is a true “starting from scratch” level DR, and it meant that even well-written and fully-optimized site pages and content would struggle to rank well against more established websites.

So, we focused on backlinks. Backlinks are a significant signal to Google that your content is relevant, authoritative, and trustworthy. And while some people think external backlinks are outside of their control barring prohibited spam-focused tactics, that’s not the case; you can invest in generating and earning natural backlinks, which is a big part of what we do at uSERP.

This involves finding relevant high-authority publications that may be open to guest posts, for example. A single guest post on a respected website can generate one or two backlinks to the client’s site, and anchor text (which is the text users can click to access a link) using relevant keywords can strengthen those backlinks.

We started by targeting natural links to Henry Meds’ homepage with the goal of strengthening their DR and URL Rating (UR). 

2. Targeted commercial pages for conversions 

Once we started getting backlinks to Henry Meds’ homepage, we also started looking at other high-value pages we wanted to drive extra power to through external links. 

The next step was to start targeting commercial pages with the goal of driving conversions. If customers are making high-intent searches like “semaglutide online pharmacy,” we wanted customers to end up on the relevant product page (in this case, the semaglutide landing page). 

We identified the highest value landing pages that could successfully drive conversions, and began outreach and publication campaigns to generate external backlinks accordingly. 

3. Targeted blog pages for topical authority 

While increasing the site’s overall DR and driving traffic to conversion-focused pages, we also knew that we wanted to create a strong content funnel that would increase brand awareness, generate customer trust, and nurture lukewarm users through conversion.

That meant investing in tactics to create stronger topical authority around key subjects for HenryMeds that appeared on the blog. While Codeless handled the content creation, we worked on driving traffic and external backlinks to high-value pages. 

As the content would attract more backlinks, individual posts could see serious gains in ranking potential. This, in turn, strengthened the overall topical authority of the site, which actually impacted even non-targeted blog posts by creating a stronger overall foundation. 

4. Provided SEO recommendations for optimization 

Henry Meds was a newer company, but they did have an existing site when we first began working with them. We conducted a thorough site audit to look for any additional optimization opportunities that could help their ranking potential.

We made specific recommendations for optimization that included the following:

• Creating an internal linking strategy. 
• Making copy and keyword suggestions for key landing pages.
• Suggesting alterations to H1s, H2s, meta titles, and meta descriptions. 

The results 

We’ve accomplished outstanding results together in under a year since we began working with Henry Meds in August of 2023.  

When the partnership started, Henry Meds’ DR was only 8. As soon as the first links went live, that changed and DR increased rapidly. Now, after 8 months of engagement, their DR sits at 53. 

In those eight months, the site has also gained:

• Earned backlinks from 219 referring domains.
• 6.6K+ new keywords ranking in the SERPs.
• 226 keywords that now rank in the top three positions of the SERPs. 

Henry Meds has also seen major page-level growth on key product pages. 

The semaglutide landing page, for example, saw the following results:

• Increased UR by 3+ points.
• Ranks for an additional 225 new keywords.
• Ranks in the top three positions for 62 keywords. 

Many of the new keywords that now rank in the top 3 positions include high-intent and highly competitive keywords like “semaglutide online” and “semaglutide prescription online.” 

Let’s look at another example. The “Semaglutide Diet Plan” page was published in January 2024, at which point we began prioritizing it with link-building campaigns. Three months later, it has:

• 160 backlinks from 38 referring domains.
• 155 new keywords, with 524 monthly site visitors.
• 3 high-value keywords in ranking in the top three positions. 

In addition to the three keywords appearing in the top three positions, many keywords are now also ranking on the first page of the SERP results. 

Finally, let’s look at the GLP-1 Weight Management page. During our engagement, it gained:

• 111+ new keywords.
• 6 new keywords in the top three results.
• Multiple queries rose to top positions on the first page of the search results. 

Final thoughts

Whether you’ve been in business and chugging away at SEO for ten years or you just launched your site today, the good news is that there’s always more you can do if you’re not getting the results you want to see.

Improved on-site optimization that accounts for updated ranking factors and modern best practices combined with genuinely earned backlinks from diverse referring domains can have significant and fast-acting impacts on your site. 

The results we accomplished for Henry Meds took eight months, and that was starting from scratch using an approach tailored to their specific needs. We can help you accomplish the same kind of growth, with improved ranking and site traffic that can result in more leads and sales.

Ready to discover how uSERP can help improve your SEO potential? Book a free consultation today.