Ranked #1 for SEO, How Many Links Does it Take?

Sometimes, I just get curious about certain topics and if you’re reading this post, I am sure you do too. In this article, I look at the top 5 pages that rank for the term “SEO” online and delve into what their backlink profile looks like. The goal is to answer the question, “How many links does it take to get ranked number 1 for the term SEO?” This post does not take a hard look at onsite optimization, although that is still extremely important. Instead, we just focus on the external hyperlinks.

Let’s take a look.

Ranked #1 for SEO, Number 1 Result

What is SEO by Search Engine Land

The number one result right now for ‘SEO’ is Search Engine Land. They have put a lot of time into their guide to SEO. The template and amount of resources is incredibly well done.

• Link Metrics on URL Level – Source, Majestic SEO
• Total External Backlinks – 49,350
• Referring Domains – 1,995

 

Ranked #2 for SEO, Number 2 Result

Search Engine Optimization Wikipedia Page

Here we see another amazing source of content and excellent onsite optimization. This Wikipedia page has 59 sources and plenty of content to be an authority. Let’s take a look at the link metrics.

• Link Metrics on URL Level – Source, Majestic SEO
• Total External Backlinks – 6,517
• Referring Domains – 701

It is almost a little surprising to see the difference in the amount of links between the domains. The difference is huge on the URL level.

Now, we know that Wikipedia has many more links to the domain level. If we look at Wikipedia vs Search Engine Land on the domain level, it looks like this.

Ranked #3 for SEO, Number 3 Result

Moz Beginners Guide to SEO

This 10 chapter guide is enough to overwhelm anyone. Why they call it a beginners guide, I have no idea, but the content is clearly excellent. Lets take a look at the URL level link profile.

• Link Metrics on URL Level – Source, Majestic SEO
• Total External Backlinks – 17,576
• Referring Domains – 483

Here we see that Moz falls right in line if we look at the number of referring domains as the main ranking signal.

Ranked #4 for SEO, Number 4 Result

Search Console Help by Google 

This piece of content discusses Google’s position on hiring an SEO professional and what to look out for.

• Link Metrics on URL Level – Source, Majestic SEO
• Total External Backlinks – 47,296
• Referring Domains – 1,084

Here we see a discrepancy in links and rankings. If we look at just number of links to the URL, this should be ranked above Moz. However, we know that rankings are much more complex than that.

Ranked #5 for SEO, Number 5 Result

Google SEO Starter Guide

One of the best resources for SEO online, if not the best, is the good old Google search engine optimization starter guide, which is ranked number 5.

• Link Metrics on URL Level – Source, Majestic SEO
• Total External Backlinks – 80,176
• Referring Domains – 2,564

This URL actually has the most links. But some major issues in onsite optimization.

Looking at the Top Post Ranked for SEO

Now, lets take a look at the top posts side by side. Here we see all the metrics lined up looking at the fresh index. We can see the Google starter guide is really the main winner across the board. But that PDF does a redirect and the page could be much better optimized if it were in HTML. So onsite could be the reason it is ranking lower.

Here we see all of the top ranking sites next to each other.

When we look at the backlink history, we see that the Google support page and the Moz page had big bumps in links in June. We can also see that they have all been getting consistent links this entire time. Below we see the cumulative view. As we can see, the starter guide wins, but Search Engine Land is in second.

Here we see their strongest top 50 matching links.

 

Finally, let’s take a look at how they fair in the Majestic Million, which looks at the top Million root domains.

Summary, Ranked #1 for SEO, How Many Links Does it Take?

To answer the question directly, it takes 1,995 referring domains, 49,350 backlinks, 1,578 class C subnets, 1,784 referring IP addresses, 11 educational domains, 16 educational backlinks and 0 .gov links. Both the Google URLs actually have more referring domains and comparable, if not better, link profiles. However, they have not done as good of a job with onsite search engine optimization. When it comes to onsite, Moz and Search Engine Land have the best content, followed by Wikipedia and the two other properties. When we look at the rankings with this in mind, things seem to line up pretty well.