TUTORIAL 2 : A deep look at SEO and backlinks of “20 big websites.” These websites GREW in the past 6 months.

About me:
I am a lazy person, but I know a few things about SEO. I love to do random research on various things on the internet, but I mostly keep my findings to myself. This time I have decided to share some of my research with the BHW community.

What did I do?

I found 20 big websites whose traffic grew by a lot in the past 6 months. I picked these websites to scan because they are definitely doing something right. Most of these websites are Alexa 10-60k.

I knowingly did not pick “the biggest website in these niches.” I wanted to scan big websites but not “the biggest websites in each niche.”

I picked websites in the following niches: Insurance, Automobile, Beauty, Travel, Food.

I chose 4 websites from each niche, so a total of 20 websites.

Then I found backlinks these websites got in the past 6 months and I did a scan of those backlinks.

Food, Beauty – These niche sites are mostly informative.

Insurance, Automobile, Travel– These niche sites are not totally informative. They sell things/services.

Four of my team members have spent a lot of time scanning all these websites. I really hope this article is of some value for some of you.

These are big websites and they acquire many backlinks naturally. I have been doing SEO for the last 10 years and I guess I can recognize if a link is acquired naturally OR it’s a link someone did himself. In this article, I will talk about SEO efforts those websites made themselves.

Let’s Begin:

1. What types of links these websites made in the past 6 months?

These websites mostly created editorial-type site links, magazine site links, and outreach guest posts.

Insurance, Automobile, Travel – these niche websites did a lot of “editorial site links.” They also built some magazine site links and some outreach guest posts too. These websites used links from EDITORIAL sites MAINLY. (editorial site names: New York Times, Forbes, USA Today, INC, Insider, Bloomberg, Time, Washington Post, and more.)

Food and Beauty niche sites – These niche websites mainly built links from magazine sites. (Magazine sites names: Self, Elle, Vogue, Fortune, Smashing Magazine, and more).

They also did editorial and outreach links.

Point to Note

Informative niche websites (Food, Beauty) mostly got links from magazine websites. Service/selling-based websites mostly got links from editorial websites.

2. Did these websites do niche-relevant links?

They did 50% niche-relevant links. The other 50% of the links came from other niche websites.

3. What anchor did these websites use for their backlinks?

It looks like that they used most of the LSI keywords for their backlinking purposes.

4. What about links to inner pages vs. the homepage?

They did 90% links to inner pages and only 10% links to the homepage.

5. How long is the content these websites have posted in the past 6 months?

These websites posted mostly 400-1500 word articles. There were many 700-800 word posts as well.

6. How often do these websites update themselves with new content?

Some websites added 5-6 new articles every day. Others did 2-3 new articles a month.

I have a lot more data, but the points above are the only points I could make with confidence.

Thank you for reading. I hope this article is of some value for some of you.

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