Growing Preplys organic by 54% across UK, NL, and DE markets
The challenge
Preply compete with Duolingo, who are spending a bunch of money on top of the funnel activity. In order to compete in the market, Preply wanted a strategy to driving organic rankings and Google to drive non brand traffic. They partnered with us to grow organic visibility across UK, Germany and Netherlands focused on providing them with SEO, content and Digital PR to driving growth for "learn (language)" terms. We noticed that the majority of their existing backlink profile pointed towards the blog, and as a result of that the blog had higher visibility and power than their overall commercial pages and categories. They needed a search first team that understood SEO and Digital PR to driving links into core money pages to outweigh the blog again and drive commercial growth through SEO.
Reactive PR and data storytelling driving growth in one of Europe’s toughest markets.
What we did
We built a repeatable international SEO framework combining:
Always-on reactive PR to capture cultural and seasonal trends in real time.
Market-specific content campaigns designed to drive authority signals into local subfolders.
Cluster content and data assets on Preply’s site to reinforce category relevance across “language learning,” “communication,” and “culture.”
Each market had bespoke story angles engineered to earn high-authority local links and branded mentions - from regional newspapers to national broadcasters — strengthening topical and geographic authority in search.
Examples of Campaigns
Germany’s Rudest Cities - a survey of 2,000 residents ranking the nation’s most impolite places, earning 107 placements (85 do-follow links) across major German outlets including Bild, FOCUS, Merkur, and Der Westen, and broadcast coverage on ProSieben, RTL, and n-tv.
Anglicisms in the German Workplace - a linguistic study exploring the use of English in German offices, achieving 51 backlinks and reinforcing Preply’s positioning as a thought leader in modern communication.
Evolution of Slang in Music - a cross-market campaign analysing slang and swear-word usage across US, UK, and Canadian artists, tapping into both traditional and social media channels to drive brand awareness and link equity globally.
244K extra clicks for European markets
The results
Through consistent execution, Rise at Seven generated 1,000+ backlinks across three international domains — adding 244,000 organic visits and significantly improving keyword rankings and visibility. The model has since been proven scalable across multiple European markets and verticals, establishing a blueprint for international organic growth through culturally relevant search content.
