Seen. Everywhere.

187 Referring Domains at DR 50+, Built to the Pages That Sell

MegaPleasure launched into a category where the advertising platforms would not take the brand and most agencies would not take the client. Absolute Digital Media built the link profile from zero to 187 live dofollow referring domains at DR 50 or above, 67 of them at DR 70 or above.

Hands holding a personal massager

What did Absolute Digital Media achieve for MegaPleasure?

Absolute Digital Media's Link Building campaign for MegaPleasure delivered 187 live dofollow referring domains at DR 50+ (from 0), 67 live dofollow referring domains at DR 70+ (from 0), 24 named press titles (average DR 80) and 4,667 Semrush UK organic keywords (from 41).

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The client

A new domain against brands with decades of history

MegaPleasure is a UK online adult retailer supplying sex toys, lingerie, bondage and fetish wear, and adult clothing to UK and international customers. It launched as a new domain into a market led by Lovehoney, Ann Summers and Bondara, brands with decades of trading history and link profiles in the tens of thousands of referring domains.

The founding team had product range, a Shopify build that could scale, and a category structure deep enough to compete on long-tail commercial terms. What it did not have was a single external signal that the domain existed. Absolute Digital Media was appointed at launch to build that signal, alongside the SEO retainer and the digital PR campaigns that are reported on their own pages.

The results

From zero to 187 referring domains at DR 50+

Ahrefs referring domain counts are live dofollow domains not flagged as spam, excluding sitewide placements. Ranking figures are the highest readings recorded in each tool. Traffic and revenue are reported on the MegaPleasure SEO case study. Both Ahrefs and Semrush are cited so each claim can be checked against a second source.

187
Live dofollow referring domains at DR 50+, from 0, Ahrefs
67
Live dofollow referring domains at DR 70+, from 0, Ahrefs
24
Named press titles, average DR 80
4667
Semrush UK organic keywords, from 41
Independently judged

A multi-award-winning agency

European Agency AwardsIntegrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026European Search AwardsBest Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026UK Digital Excellence AwardsStandout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026UK Paid Media AwardsBest Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026UK Agency AwardsBest New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025UK Search AwardsBest Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024European Agency AwardsIntegrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026European Search AwardsBest Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026UK Digital Excellence AwardsStandout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026UK Paid Media AwardsBest Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026UK Agency AwardsBest New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025UK Search AwardsBest Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024
The challenge

The most restricted category in link building

The strategy

The choices that shaped the programme

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Sex Toys Spilling Out Of A Paper Bag Side View
01 Decision one

Build to category pages, not the homepage

Target URLs were selected from the category taxonomy on the basis of search volume, buying intent and existing on-page quality, and links were placed on those URLs directly. The lesbian sex toys, gay sex toys, sex toys for men and roleplay costumes collections were the first priority set. The rejected alternative was to point every placement at the homepage and let internal linking distribute the equity: easier to pitch, easier to report, and it would have lifted Domain Rating on a similar curve, but it would not have put the lesbian sex toys page at position one, because that page would have been competing on borrowed authority against pages that hold their own.

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02 Decision two

Pitch expertise, not products

Every outreach angle was built on MegaPleasure’s in-house expert commentary on relationships, sexual wellness and intimacy. That is content lifestyle and national desks commission weekly, and a credible quote earns a standard attribution link. It is how Cosmopolitan, Stylist, Metro, Refinery29 and Marie Claire came to link to an adult retailer. The rejected alternative was product-led outreach (gift guides, discount round-ups and review seeding): these convert on mainstream eCommerce and fail on adult, because the publications that would run them are the ones with the strictest commercial content policies.

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03 Decision three

One linkable asset per quarter, built for the advice hub

The advice hub was seeded with research-led articles designed to be cited rather than sold from. The piece on CBD and sex drive became the single most linked URL on the site with 1,043 referring domains, and it passes that equity to the commercial pages through internal links. The rejected alternative was to spread content effort across a high-volume blog calendar: volume produces pages that rank for nothing and earn nothing, and one asset a quarter that a journalist would cite outperforms fifty posts nobody reads.

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04 Decision four

Hold the quality bar and curate the profile

The programme reported only dofollow editorial links from domains at DR 50 or above, screened for relevance and spam signals, with a disavow review on a fixed cadence. The number that mattered was the count that would survive an update. The rejected alternative was to chase referring domain volume: adult sites can accumulate thousands of low-value links in months, the headline number grows, so does the risk of a manual action, and the client cannot tell the two apart from the report.

The team behind the campaign

Who worked on this account

The results

Category pages competing on authority they own

The link profile is the result the programme owns outright. From a standing start, MegaPleasure holds 187 live dofollow referring domains at Domain Rating 50 or above and 67 at DR 70 or above, on a named list that includes Vice, HuffPost UK, Lifehacker, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, Metro, Parade, iNews, Dazed, Stylist and Marie Claire. Domain Rating rose from an opening reading of 11 to a peak of 46 and has held at 40 or above in 45 of the last 46 monthly readings, which is the signature of a profile built to last rather than spiked.

The deep-link decision is visible in the data. The lesbian sex toys collection carries 293 referring domains, gay sex toys 263, roleplay costumes 147 and sex toys for men 136. Those pages do not depend on the homepage. The CBD and sex drive advice article, built as a linkable asset, holds 1,043 referring domains and feeds the commercial pages through internal links.

Rankings followed the links. The lesbian sex toys page reached position one for lesbian sex toys. The sex toys for men page reached position three for best sex toys for men. The homepage reached position two for adult sex toys and position three for adult toys. Bondage and fetish collections hold position one for dominatrix toys, position two for bondage restraints and bondage sets, and position three for nipple clamps, the largest single term the site ranks for. Semrush tracks UK organic keywords at 4,667 from a starting reading of 41, and Ahrefs recorded up to 282 UK terms in the top three and 1,269 on page one.

Page Referring domains From
CBD and sex drive advice article 1,043 0
Lesbian sex toys collection 293 0
Gay sex toys collection 263 0
Roleplay costumes collection 147 0
Sex toys for men collection 136 0

Named placements include Vice (DR 91), HuffPost UK (90), Lifehacker (90), Cosmopolitan (89), Refinery29 (88), Metro (88), Parade (85), iNews (84), Dazed (84), Stylist (81), Tatler Asia (80), Marie Claire (80), AskMen (79), The Big Issue (78), LadBible (77), Cosmopolitan France (77), Woman & Home (76), indy100 (76), Londonist (75), The Tab (75), Kerrang! (73), Libelle (73), Femina (72) and Novara Media (70). Average Domain Rating across the set is 80. Academic and institutional links followed the editorial ones, including the London School of Economics and phys.org.

In their words

What MegaPleasure say

Frequently asked questions

Link building for adult eCommerce, answered

What did link building own in this engagement, and what did SEO and digital PR own?

Link building owned the always-on acquisition of editorial links to MegaPleasure’s category and advice pages, and the authority metrics that follow: referring domains at DR 50 and above, the Domain Rating band the site holds, and the link equity sitting on commercial URLs. The SEO retainer owned on-site work and reports traffic and revenue. Digital PR owned the creative campaigns that produced the largest single spikes in coverage. Rankings on category pages are the shared outcome of all three, and this page says so.

Why build links to category pages rather than the homepage?

Because category pages are where the revenue is. A homepage link raises the whole domain a little. A link to the lesbian sex toys collection raises that page directly, and that page competes for a term with clear buying intent. MegaPleasure’s category pages now hold their own referring domains, which is why several of them rank at position one to three rather than depending on the homepage to carry them.

How do you get lifestyle and national press to link to an adult retailer?

By giving them a reason that has nothing to do with the products. Expert commentary on relationships, sexual wellness and intimacy is editorial content that Cosmopolitan, Stylist, Metro and Refinery29 run every week. When the source is credible and the quote is useful, the link is part of standard attribution. Absolute Digital Media has held those publisher relationships for many years and knows which desks will take the pitch.

How many links do you build a month for an adult eCommerce site?

Fewer than most agencies would quote, at a higher bar. The programme here was built around dofollow editorial links from domains at DR 50 and above, with a named publication list, rather than volume. 187 live referring domains at DR 50 or above and 67 at DR 70 or above is the result of that discipline. The count that matters is the one that survives a Google update, not the one on the monthly report.

Does link building still matter for an adult site if the ads platforms will not take it?

It matters more. Google Ads, Meta and Amazon Advertising all restrict adult product promotion, so organic search is the primary acquisition channel and the link profile is the largest external input into how that channel performs. For MegaPleasure there was no paid fallback. Authority had to be earned.

How do you keep an adult brand's link profile clean?

By choosing what not to accept. Adult sites attract unsolicited links, paid-link offers and spam, so every domain in the reported profile was screened for editorial standards, dofollow status and relevance before it was counted, and the disavow file is reviewed on a fixed cadence. What Absolute Digital Media reports as a placement is a link a competitor would want.

What happened to rankings once the links were in place?

The category pages that received links moved first. Lesbian sex toys reached position one for its head term. Sex toys for men reached the top three for best sex toys for men. The homepage reached position two for adult sex toys and position three for adult toys. Across the site, UK organic keywords tracked by Semrush rose from 41 to 4,667, and Ahrefs recorded up to 282 UK terms in the top three and 1,269 on page one.

What does the link profile do for AI visibility in a restricted category?

Adult retail is one of the categories where AI assistants suppress or decline commercial citations, so brand-level citation counts are not a fair measure of the programme and this page does not claim them. What the link profile does is indirect and durable: the entity signals the systems draw on are the same editorial mentions on Cosmopolitan, Metro, Stylist and Refinery29 that the programme earned. When a category gate opens, the brand already cited by trusted publishers is the one the systems surface first.

Work with us

Excluded from paid media?

If your category is excluded from paid media, your link profile is not a supporting channel; it is the channel. The same method has been run in CBD, iGaming, vaping and short-term credit.