How Object First raised its domain rating from 46 to 58 and more than doubled its organic traffic
Information technology- +12Domain rating46 → 58
- +121%Organic traffic2,340 → 5,169 visits a month
- +40%Referring domains671 → 940
- Company
- Object First
- Industry
- Information technology
- Location
- Denver, Colorado, United States
- Market
- Global
- Employees
- 201 to 500
A link building campaign that raised domain authority and brought more visitors to the key guides of an enterprise backup storage company.
Results snapshot
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain rating | 46 | 58 | +26% domain rating growth |
| Organic traffic per month | 2,340 | 5,169 | +121% organic traffic growth |
| Referring domains | 671 | 940 | +40% referring domain growth |
| Live backlinks | 10,843 | 20,649 | +90% backlink growth |
Links secured: 7 high-authority links. Natural (editorial placements), contextual (links inside the article text) and relevant (websites in the same field).
About Object First
Object First provides ransomware-proof backup storage. To win in the enterprise information technology market, it needs two things: enough authority to stand out against long-established vendors such as IBM, and enough visibility to reach buyers while they research.
Object First had strong content but mid-level authority, with a domain rating of 46. That held back its rankings for competitive, high-traffic keywords. It needed a campaign that solved both problems at once: a higher domain rating to compete for the main search terms, and more visitors to its educational guides straight away.
Goals
The campaign was built so that authority and traffic would grow together. Every gain in authority had to turn into visitors.
- Raise domain rating: move the site from the 40s into the high 50s, so it could rank for competitive keywords.
- Bring in qualified traffic: point links at high-volume educational topics such as ransomware response and data backup, to bring potential customers to the site.
- Connect authority to traffic: make sure every point of domain rating growth helped key pages rank higher.
Strategy
Sentosa found the guides on Object First’s site with the most traffic potential, and built high-authority links directly to them.
- Ransomware response. Ransomware response is a high-traffic search for information technology directors. We secured a placement on a high-traffic technology blog, linking directly to Object First’s Ransomware Response Plan guide. The link raised the domain rating and gave that page the ranking strength to capture searches for “ransomware response”.
- Broader topics. To grow traffic further, the site needed to rank for broader terms such as “data backup” and “enterprise backup”. Placements on relevant technology websites linked to the Data Backup and Enterprise Backup guides. These links showed Google that Object First is a main source on these topics, and helped the site rank for many more specific searches.
- Showing expertise. A link on “continuous data protection” from a software website strengthened the technical depth of the site. Visitors who arrive for a definition stay because they trust the expertise.
Results
Higher authority led directly to more traffic.
- 4658Domain rating
- 2,3405,169Organic traffic per month
- 671940Referring domains
- 10,84320,649Live backlinks
- Domain rating up 12 points, from 46 to 58. The site moved into the high-authority range, which raised the ranking potential of every page.
- Organic traffic up 121%, from 2,340 to 5,169 visits a month. As domain rating rose, so did rankings. That is about 2,800 additional visitors a month, most of them information technology professionals.
- Referring domains up 40%, from 671 to 940. The links built during the campaign widened the site’s base of websites linking to it.
- Both measures grew together. The campaign showed there is no need to choose between brand measures such as domain rating and performance measures such as traffic. The right links to the right pages improved both at the same time.
Measured from 1 September 2024 to 1 August 2025. Source: Ahrefs. The August 2025 domain rating is Ahrefs’ monthly figure.
Conclusion
Object First shows what business-to-business technology companies can learn: strong content is not enough on its own. Even the best guides go unseen if the site’s domain rating is too low.
By building high-authority links to its most valuable guides, Sentosa helped Object First turn good content into real traffic.
Summary
We turned an under-used blog into a main source of enterprise traffic.
- Key lesson: find the pages with high potential that are stuck on page two of the search results, and build links to those pages to unlock traffic quickly.
- Impact: domain rating up 12 points and organic traffic up 121%, at the same time.
