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Field notes from 3,800 SEO teams · Link Intelligence & Curation

Three teams, three workflows, one 15-minute refresh.

A working case-study dossier — not a sizzle reel. Hours saved per session, pitch acceptance rates, and pipeline impact you can paste straight into your next QBR.

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  • UpdatedQ1 2025
  • Cases3 archetypes
  • Avg. saved3h 12m / session

Three teams. Three workflows. Same 15-minute refresh.

Proof across the three buyer archetypes that show up to renew.

We don't publish case studies for vanity. The rows below are working sessions from paying teams — the tool they ran, the list they walked out with, and the metric their VP asked about next quarter.

  1. 01
    In-house SaaS SEO

    Series-B dev-tools team cut a 4-hour prospecting block to 12 minutes — and raised their acceptance rate by 22 points.

    Situation — 14-person content org, four SEOs sharing one Ahrefs seat, weekly sprint review asking the same question: "Why are we still pitching the same DR-90 list as every competitor?"

    • Filtered the editorial link graph to topical relevance ≥ 0.7 and SignalScore ≥ 80; exported 142 candidate URLs in one click.
    • Replaced the weekly "DR-90 hunt" with a recurring list filtered by editorial-standards pass — dropped 38% of pitches they'd previously sent.
    • Used outbound-link velocity to find freshly updated resource pages rather than stale listicles recycled by every competitor.
    Time-to-pitchable list
    3h 48m12 min
    Pitch acceptance rate
    11%33%
    Pipeline (referred domain value, Q)
    $48k$112k

    "Our pitch list finally looks like editorial, not a backlink spreadsheet." — Head of Organic, dev-tools SaaS (publishes on TechCrunch)

  2. 02
    Niche affiliate publisher

    A two-person review site scaled from 38 hand-vetted sources/month to 311 — without dropping their standards.

    Situation — affiliate publisher in the home-brewing niche, two writers, an E-E-A-T audit pending from Google, and a hard rule: every outbound link must point to a source they'd quote in print.

    • Switched from "top DR" lists to NDAGLinks' editorial-standards filter — 74% of their previous DR-90 picks failed the check.
    • Built a saved view for SignalScore ≥ 70 + freshness ≤ 14 days; gets an updated list every Monday at 09:00 local.
    • Used the topical-relevance slider to expand from 38 vetted sources to 311 across six sub-niches, all still passing the standards check.
    Vetted sources / month
    38311
    Editorial standards pass rate
    61%98%
    Writer hours / source
    9 min90 sec

    "We finally have a list we trust enough to publish without a second reviewer." — Editor-in-chief, two-person affiliate publisher

  3. 03
    Digital PR agency

    Boutique PR shop replaced a junior's full day with a 7-minute query — and won two new retainers off the credibility.

    Situation — 9-person digital PR agency in Berlin; one junior SEO owned link prospecting for the whole client roster; turnaround time was the #1 reason pitches lost to faster competitors.

    • Built per-client saved views with SignalScore thresholds tied to each retainer tier (≥ 90 for fintech, ≥ 75 for DTC).
    • Used outbound-link velocity to spot journalists actively updating resource pages that week, not stale listicles from 2022.
    • Replaced the junior's 4-hour block with a 7-minute recurring query; reassigned the hours to pitch writing.
    Time-to-pitchable list / client
    3h 52m7 min
    Pitches sent / month
    94286
    New retainers won (cited NDAGLinks in proposal)
    —2

    "The pitch lists read like journalism research, not link exchange." — Founder, 9-person digital PR agency, Berlin

Want the underlying methodology behind these numbers? Read the SignalScore spec

The day we switched, the link list stopped looking like a backlink spreadsheet and started reading like editorial research. That's the change our editors noticed first — and the change our outbound-link acceptance rate followed.

Head of Organic B2B SaaS team publishing on TechCrunch

The numbers behind 3,800 paying teams

What 64 countries of SEO teams agreed on, measured in Q1 2025.

  • 3,800+ Paying SEO teams
  • 64 Countries
  • 71 NPS score, Q1 2025
  • 3h 12m Avg. saved / session
  • 41M Indexed editorial pages

Recognised: Best SEO Tool — European Search Awards 2024 Top 50 B2B Marketing Tools — G2 Summer 2024 SaaS Tool of the Year — Product Hunt Global Hackathon 2023

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