Study: Which Sites Have the Most Links in Search?

To help SEOs and search marketers navigate all the change we see on a (seemingly) daily basis, a few publications stand out as leaders in the search industry.

These brands were highlighted in research conducted by Dutch SEO specialist Wouter van der Meij, who recently published a study of the most-linked content in the search industry – and we’re thrilled to be among the most-linked search resources on the Web!

In Good Company

For his research, van der Meij set out to learn which sites and publications had the most links across the entirety of search.

He began by analyzing the link profiles of 40 SEO companies, blogs, and authorities using Ahrefs to see which sites were linked back to the most.

After reviewing the data, van der Meij discovered that Search Engine Land was the most-linked domain in search, boasting an impressive 32% share of the total links and 177 listings in the top 500.

To nobody’s surprise, our friends at Moz also ranked highly. Given Moz’s unique position in SEO and the wide breadth of high-quality, data-driven content they produce, their second-place ranking was well earned, with 20% of the total link share and 86 links in the top 500.

Together with Search Engine Watch and the Tools subdomain of SEO Book, WordStream rounded out the top five sites with the most links, with 5% of the total link share and 23 links in the top 500.

We work hard to provide you with quality content about all things search, and it was extremely rewarding to be recognized alongside such respected and widely read publications!

Diving Deeper

Marketers love data, and van der Meij delivered far more than just a quick ranking table, however.

After learning which publications were linked back to the most frequently, van der Meij then investigated which content types were attracting the most links.

Overall, blogs proved the most attractive link-wise, followed by news stories. SEO tools and resources also made up a significant portion of the total number of backlinks, with infographics and product pages coming in fifth and six, respectively.

He then dove even deeper into the data, pulling out all sorts of fascinating information, including the most popular types of SEO tools, the most frequently linked-to resources (and the most popular topics of those resources), and even which types of news stories and blog posts were being linked to. For example, below is a list of search marketing infographics with the most links, including our own infographic of the most expensive keywords in AdWords.

On behalf of everyone here at WordStream, we’re honored to be ranked alongside the biggest names in search content.

You can read the full infographic below, and many thanks again to Wouter for taking the time and effort to produce such a great study!