SEO Link Intent Study : How can you get more than 30 links ?

Can you use a link intent study to earn more than 30 links for an seo article ?

A blind squirrel could create something and earn 1 or 2 links.

I wrote about Shopify SEO and got 6 links.

I wrote about chrome extensions for seo and got 3 links.

Sometimes when I provide keyword research services to clients, I’m asked to research the best link building opportunities.

But first, a quick refresher on backlinks.

What is a backlink ?

A backlink is a mention of your web page in the body of another web page that includes a link back to your web page.

Why are backlinks important ?

To quote Ahrefs, “Google has even confirmed that backlinks are one of their top 3 ranking factors“.

We’ve waited 6-9 months but we’re not ranking well or getting traffic from Google

To rank better your website needs links.

The more your website is mentioned (linked to) by other websites the more likely Google will trust you and the higher your pages should rank for the search queries relevant to that page.

How backlinks boost website and page rankings

Sometimes a diagram is the best way to explain how external backlinks boost you website rankings and traffic.

What is link intent ?

I read an interview with Britney Mueller from Moz about link intent; here’s the quote :

So keywords with link intent are things like your industry, statistics, your topic facts.

It’s finding the keywords that have statistics, facts, data, other things that have link intent built in between because people are putting resources together and they want to link out and reference research, they want to reference a statistic. 

Britney Mueller – Moz.com

How many SEO articles were published last year

In this example there are 104,015 pages published in the last year with “SEO” in the title.

Next, sort these pages in descending order to view the pages with the most links (ref domains).

You can create a filter to view the list of pages with 1 or more links.

There’s 16280 pages with one or more links.

Just over 15% of pages published last year with SEO in their title earned a link.

Now you can scroll through this list of pages and try and find some ideas about what to create if you wanted to earn backlinks to a page.

How do find SEO articles with 30 or links ?

My train of thought is to discover what earns the most links and see if I can reverse engineer their approach.

Just filter pages by 30 or more referring domains.

Less than 1 percent of pages published last year about SEO earned 30 or more links.

So I downloaded all these pages and analysed the most frequent words used in their pages titles.

I stripped out some brand names from the title of these pages and excluded words such as _ | and, or, with, &, the, your, a, of, all, numbers and of course SEO.

You can see that “how” appears 148 times in the 950 most linked pages about seo.

That’s twice as many occurrences as pages that also include “Google”.

Most Linked SEO Pages containing How

Here’s a list of the top 10 most linked to articles published last year about “seo” and “how”.

“How” appears 148 times in top ranked SEO articles.

Knowing that an “SEO“ and “How” article is the most linked to is great to know.

But what kind of “how” article?

So I decided to analyse best linked articles that contains “seo” and “how”.

As you can see “Google” is featured the most.

So topics such as :

1. How Google Evaluate SEO for links
2. SEO : How to create content Google wants
3. How Google Links Impact SEO
4. Google Nofollow links how it affects SEO
5. How to optimise your site for Google
6. How to use schema for local seo
7. How to perform technical seo audit
8. How to create a global seo strategy
9. How to boost your on page seo
10. How Google’s new layout predicts the future of seo.

So the angle you may want to focus on is something Google has done or impacted the search results and how you can action, respond or improve a website as a result of it.

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Google

Of the 950 most linked pages about “SEO”, 72 of them contained “google” in the page title.

Here’s the top 10 most linked to articles about “seo” and “google”.

But what kind of Google + SEO articles do the most linked to articles write about ?

You probably want to write about Google and rankings.

• How Google evaluates links for seo
• SEO : how to create content google wants
• How Google’s new links impact seo
• How to use domain authority for seo
• SEO: how to optimise your site for google
• How to use xml sitemaps for seo
• How to do seo for zero click searches
• How to get more traffic without doing any seo
• Bing SEO : how to increase search traffic

And if you can manage to obtain quotes or interview from Google’s John Mueller that’s another topic to consider.

Most Linked SEO Pages containing 2019

Of the 950 most linked pages about “seo” published there are 60 that contained “2019” in the page title.

Here’s the top 10.

It’s too easy to write about SEO trends or SEO predictions for the current or next year.

And you can see that some of the most linked SEO articles about “2019” do write about trends and predictions.

But what were the most frequent words that appear in the most linked to “SEO” and “2019” articles?

So out of the 60 “SEO” + “2019” articles, the most frequent word is “local”.

So perhaps it’s a good idea, based on last year, to write the “Best Local SEO Guide for 2020” to rank better ?

Or

• Local SEO Statistics in 2020
• Local SEO blogs to read in 2020
• Local SEO Checklists for 2020
• A crowdsourced article from Local SEO Experts in 2020

Topical content research; based on hard data !

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Guide

Of the 950 most linked pages about “seo” published there are 60 that contained “guide” in the page title.

Here’s a list of the 10 most linked to SEO articles containing “guide”.

But what kind of SEO guide ?

There were 68 articles about “SEO” + “guide” that earned more than 30 links last year.

What were the most popular words they contained?

“Ultimate” features most frequently with “complete” not far behind.

So consider these topics.

• The Ultimate Guide to SEO tags
• Ultimate Guide to Javascript SEO
• Ultimate SEO Link Building Guide
• Ultimate Local SEO Guide
• Ultimate Guide to SEO Guest Posting

Go on then !

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Marketing

Of the 950 pages most linked “seo” pages 67 of them also contained “marketing” in their page title.

Let’s review some of these best linked “seo” + “marketing” pages.

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th top linked pages in this look rather suspect so I’d ignore those pages.

Sadly you don’t really learn much from top linked SEO pages containing “marketing”; you need to look at each page in isolation.

Most Linked SEO Pages containing What

Of the 950 most linked “SEO“ pages 44 of them also contained “what” in the page title.

Here’s a list of the top 10 most linked to “SEO“ + “What“ pages.

Let’s drill down a little deeper into these “SEO” and “what” pages.

Pages containing “seo” and “what” are predominately educational articles.

• What is
• What do
• What does
• What are and why does x matter
• What, why, how
• What is and why is important

• Domain Authority: What Every SEO Needs to Understand
• Future of SEO: What SEO & Marketing Pros Need to Understand
• The Intersection of SEO & Influence: What B2B Marketers Need to Know
• SEO for Creatives: What Designers, Artists, Photographers & Writers Need to Know
• Is It Time To Outsource SEO? Here’s What You Need To Consider
• Partnering with an Enterprise SEO Agency: What You Need to Know
• AI and SEO in the Post-BERT World: What Marketers Need to Know

So time to get teaching what an seo topic is and what people need to know.

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Content

Of the 950 most linked “SEO“ pages 44 of them contained “content” in the page title.

Let’s dig a little deeper and look at the most linked to “seo” and “content” pages.

The topic is so vast to let’s drill and see what other words appear in the most linked to “seo” and “content” pages.

The top word contained in the most linked pages about “seo” and “content” is “how”.

• SEO : how to create to content
• Build authority with content and seo
• Mine SERPS for seo and content insights
• How to leverage seasonal content for seo
• How much should you pay for seo content
• How to recruit seo content writers

The above list are some interesting angles if you’re considering writing about seo and content.

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Rank

Of the 950 most linked pages about “SEO“ 53 of them contained “rank“ or “rankings“ in the page title.

Here’s the top most linked to “seo” and “rank” pages.

As you can see from the bar chart below “Google” and “how” feature the most frequent in the best linked “seo“ and “rank“ articles.

Including “Google” in an seo ranking article seems fairly obvious but what about how articles about “seo” and “ranking” ?

Here’s some of the most linked to pages.

• How nofollow links affect seo
• How to understand searcher intent to boost seo
• How to outrank big companies with no seo budget
• Local seo: how to rank
• Youtube SEO : how to rank

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Tips

Of the 950 most linked “SEO“ articles there were 45 of those pages that included “tips“ in the page title.

Here’s the top 10 most linked to pages about “seo“ and “tips“ created last year.

“Content” appears 3 times in the top 10 most linked to pages about “seo” and “tips “.

And yes “content“ is the most frequently found word in the most linked to pages about “SEO“ tips.

Let’s look at the most linked to SEO tips and content pages.

• SEO tips to index and rank new content faster
• Tips for creating best seo content
• SEO Content Strategy tips
• 6 tips to create seo friendly content
• SEO : 9 tips for writing great content

Most Linked SEO Pages containing Local

Of the 950 most linked pages about “SEO“, 44 of them contained the word “local”.

Here’s the top most linked to pages about “seo” and “local” that were created last year.

I think we can safely ignore how the 2nd and 3rd most linked to pages got their links.

I’ll ignore the pages that contain 2019 and look at “how” and “guide” articles about “seo“ and “local“.

• How to use schema for local seo
• Local seo : how to rank where it counts
• How to do local seo during holidays
• How to build authority in local seo
• Seo : how distance and intent shape local pack
• Local SEO : how to rank
• Local SEO : ultimate guide
• Guide to strength local seo
• Local seo guide for small businesses
• Local SEO for lawyers : advanced guide
• Guide to local seo for large enterprises

Some of these topics are very advanced but an industry or sector focused local seo guide is perhaps a good angle.

Summary

There’s a saying in sport; you’re only as good as your last game.

In other words, what happened in the past, don’t expect it to happen next time around.

Just because I’ve reverse engineered the most linked to SEO articles doesn’t mean you’ll earn links by focusing on these topics.

The average domain rating of the top linked pages about seo is 79.

So these are big, authoritative websites who probably earn most of their links organically with little outreach.

They can just publish an article, share it socially and email it to their list.

And bang; links.

However around 10% of these 950 pages have a domain rating of 50 or less.

My website is a domain rating of 50 and outreach and link building is a ball breaker.

Yet these low to average domains are earning on average 78 links to their seo articles.

So, earning 30 + links to an article about SEO, regardless of how tough an industry it is, is absolutely within your grasp.

I hope reverse engineering the best link pages can help inspire your next seo article or help research client link building opportunities.