The Challenge
In February 2024, Rula adopted a new brand and name to reflect the company’s vision to increase access to mental healthcare and improve clinical patient outcomes. The company had previously operated for 5 years under a different brand, and thus had accumulated a robust online presence under that brand. They needed to swiftly reestablish their brand authority and domain strength to sustain their growth and maintain their momentum.
The Solution
Rula already had robust editorial content to distribute on the Stacker Newswire, and launched their first story less than a month after the partnership started. Over the next 6 months, Rula built out a new library of content to fit the needs of publishers on the newswire while collaborating with the Stacker team to optimize their stories for maximum reach and engagement.
As they distributed more stories, the team learned how to create and adapt content to meet publishers' needs while quickly expanding their domain authority via hundreds of new referral links and pickups. Anthony Corbo, Sr. SEO Associate at Stacker, appreciates the transparency of that process and how much it impacts their earned media performance.
"The ability to customize our content creation and distribution strategy as we learn more about syndication networks and campaign performance has been amazing," says Anthony Corbo. "With Stacker's real-time insights, we can tailor content specifically for syndication, enhancing our pickups and reach.
How It Works
Stacker combines an innovative earned distribution platform with human editorial expertise to enable the creation, optimization, and syndication of engaging stories from brands to a network of over 3,900 local and national news outlets.
Rula selected Stacker's Connect product, which distributes brands’ ready-to-publish editorial content to thousands of publishers on the Stacker Newswire. With Connect, Stacker's editorial team ensures that each story submitted by Rula meets journalistic standards, and is optimized and timed to maximize reach and engagement. After a story is distributed on the wire, Rula receives detailed and real-time insights on the performance of their stories via Stacker' self-serve reporting dashboard.
With Stacker, Rula was able to distribute stories like How to stop taking things so personally, which earned 245 placements in partner publications. This coverage helped Rula significantly increase its authority and awareness under its new brand while building its reputation as the top online platform for mental healthcare.
The Results
Rebranding can be a risky endeavor when not done correctly. But aided by its partnership with Stacker and a robust content strategy, Rula quickly expanded its domain-wide authority and received immediate positive downstream impacts from it. Within the first 3 months of working with Stacker, Rula increased its domain rating by two points, largely thanks to 194 new referring domains with high authority. 3 months later, the growth in domain rating tripled, showing the effectiveness of their strategy to build momentum and velocity.
6 months after distribution of Rula's first story on Stacker:
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+8
Points increase in Domain Rating
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+100%
Increase in organic traffic
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+138
Keywords in top 3 position
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Using Stacker, Rula smoothly transitioned to its new brand and even established greater authority than before. Over a period of 6 months, the company crafted and distributed 7 stories, achieving over 981 placements and reaching 220,000+ new readers throughout the US. These results were beyond reach with traditional PR approaches, and Anthony is already thinking about what further major progress Rula could achieve through its collaboration with Stacker.
"We are delighted by the results we are seeing so far with Stacker," says Anthony. "We hope to 2x the number of unique referring domains linking to rula.com via Stacker in 2025."
Conclusion
By leveraging Stacker's unique blend of story insights and scalable distribution, Rula rapidly boosted its referral links from reputable sites and increased its authority as a leading platform for mental health. The partnership has led to hundreds of earned media placements that boost organic search performance and are paving the way for further growth for the company's search performance in 2025.
2 out of 3 Americans seeking mental health treatment give up before ever getting the help they need. By increasing its online visibility and trust with readers using Stacker, Rula is able to bridge the gap and hopefully provide more Americans with the help they need, when they need it the most. With Stacker's help, Rula's content is set to reach millions more individuals throughout the US, a crucial step in achieving its mission to shape the future of mental health care.
