When you land on koin.com, you don't get a homepage—you get a wall. A 'page access denied' screen. Yet, behind this digital fortress sits a media empire generating $34.5M annually with 2.7 million monthly visitors. This isn't a bug; it's the strategy of a legacy broadcaster who knows their local audience is their greatest asset.

"The most telling metric isn't the traffic—it's the 50% direct traffic. That's brand loyalty, not SEO luck."

The backlink profile tells another story: 755,750 backlinks. That's massive for a local station. It means KOIN has become a reference point for everything Portland-related. When national sites need Portland data, they link to KOIN. This creates a virtuous cycle: more links, better SEO, more traffic, more authority. It's a flywheel that local competitors can't easily replicate.

• Direct traffic (50%) exceeds organic (38%)—a rarity in digital media
• Top 5 keywords are hyper-local: Portland, weather, news, radar
• 755K backlinks suggest KOIN is the canonical source for Portland data
• Minimal tech stack indicates focus on content over features