How MoonPay Grew Organic Traffic 175% to 433,317 Monthly Visitors

The Short Version

Between July 2023 and May 2026, MoonPay's organic traffic grew 175%, from 157,588 to 433,317 monthly visitors, while page-one rankings rose from 2,482 to 9,150. MADX ran link building and multilingual expansion across eight localised markets, adding 7,040 referring domains over the same period. All figures come from Ahrefs Site Explorer and cover MoonPay's domain-wide organic performance across the engagement.

Client Background

MoonPay is a financial technology company that builds payment infrastructure for cryptocurrency transactions. Operating in 160+ countries, MoonPay enables fiat-to-crypto conversions using credit cards, bank transfers, and digital wallets.

With over $6 billion in processed transactions and 30+ million accounts created, MoonPay has positioned itself as a leader in the crypto payments industry. It serves enterprise clients and retail users alike.

As MoonPay scaled into an enterprise-stage company, its search programme needed to match that ambition across languages and markets, not just in English.

The Challenges

MoonPay had strong brand recognition but three specific gaps. It needed authoritative links at enterprise volume to compete on category head terms. It needed region-specific authority to rank in non-English markets. And it needed link equity pointed at revenue pages rather than the blog.

In a high-trust category like fintech, page-one competition is dominated by incumbents with deep link equity. Closing that gap is a volume and quality problem at the same time.

Our Approach

1. Link building aimed at revenue pages

MADX prioritised sales-driven landing pages over blog content. That meant competitor backlink gap analysis, outreach into crypto and fintech publications, placements in top-ranking listicles and comparison articles, and digital PR campaigns positioning MoonPay as a category authority.

Most link programmes default to the blog because placements are easier to win there. MoonPay's link building pointed at commercial URLs instead, which is why the ranking gains later showed up on head terms rather than on informational long-tail.

2. Multilingual expansion across eight markets

Growth was not limited to English. MADX ran country-specific link acquisition into regional news sites, directories and publications supporting MoonPay's localised subfolders. Each market needed its own regional authority, so multilingual expansion ran as a per-market programme rather than a translation exercise.

This is the same international SEO playbook MADX used to win #1 cross-border payments rankings in the Thunes case study, applied here across eight locales.

The Results

MoonPay's organic performance over the engagement, measured in Ahrefs Site Explorer:

Organic traffic, +175%. Monthly organic visitors grew from 157,588 in July 2023 to 433,317 in May 2026, an all-time high for the domain. The steepest climb came from December 2025 onward, when traffic moved from 297,109 to 433,317 in six months.

Page-one rankings, +269%. MoonPay held 2,482 page-one keywords in July 2023. By June 2026 that had reached 9,150. Top-3 rankings grew faster still, from 810 to 4,567, a 464% increase.

Referring domains, +219%. The link programme took MoonPay from 3,213 referring domains to 10,253, adding 7,040 linking domains, weighted toward commercial and localised pages.

Eight localised markets ranking #1. MoonPay's UK, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Canadian and Australian pages all hold position 1 for brand queries in their market.

Non-branded #1 rankings on category head terms. MoonPay ranks #1 for "buy bitcoin" (13,000 searches/month), "how to buy ethereum" (5,200/month) and "buy crypto with credit card" (3,600/month). These are the queries that convert in crypto onboarding.

Organic traffic value, +47%. The equivalent paid cost of MoonPay's organic traffic rose from $268,510 to $393,814 per month.

Where MoonPay Shows Up in AI Search

AI search visibility is earned the same way page-one rankings are, through pages that engines trust enough to cite. MoonPay is currently cited 2,478 times across seven AI platforms: Grok (814 citations), Google AI Overviews (435), Google AI Mode (418), ChatGPT (295), Perplexity (184), Gemini (175) and Copilot (157).

Grok alone cites 442 distinct MoonPay pages, and Google AI Overviews cites 251. The pages earning those citations are largely the same commercial and localised pages the link programme targeted. That is the pattern MADX builds for in GEO and AI search work: authority built for traditional rankings carries into AI answers, rather than needing a separate programme bolted on afterwards.

Key Takeaways

1. Point links at revenue pages, not the blog

MoonPay's gains landed on commercial and localised URLs, which is why the ranking growth showed up on head terms like "buy bitcoin" rather than on informational long-tail. Blog-only link programmes rarely move commercial rankings.

2. Localised authority compounds separately in every market

Eight locales at position 1 did not come from one campaign. Each market needed its own regional link acquisition, which is why multilingual expansion is a per-market budget line rather than a translation exercise.

3. Traditional authority carries into AI search

MoonPay's 2,478 AI citations were not the goal of the engagement. They are a byproduct of the same authority work, which is the strongest available argument that GEO is not a separate discipline bolted on after SEO.

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