How Many Backlinks Do the Top 10 Sites Have?
If you want to be on the first page of Google for commercial phrases, should you care about backlinks? Should you be trying to get them, or just ignore backlinks altogether?
Earlier this year, I heard from both Google and a couple of SEOs who are also writers that “links aren’t as important as they once were, and you don’t even need links to rank these days.” I never seen anyone write about a website that only had a few backlinks that was ranking well for commericial phrases, so I decided to find some of these near-mythical sites that don’t have many backlinks but still rank on the first page of Google for phrases where people might be making money.
In my previous study last month, I chose 200 random commercial phrases with the help of AI. For each of these phrases, I gathered the top 10 organic URLs on Google. After analyzing them, I found 1,113 unique websites. My programmer, Matt, added several API calls from sources like Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to better analyze this data.
The biggest finding from my previous analysis was that 96% of the websites had more than 1,000 unique domain backlinks. However, I only found 3 sites out of 1,113 that had fewer than 100 backlinks.
I had hoped to find more than just 3 such sites, so this time I decided to expand that analysis tenfold. This time we gathered data on 2,000 commercial phrases which in turn identified 9,337 unique domains that ranked in the top 10 of Google for these phrases.
The primary goal of this data gathering was to answer these three questions:
- How many backlinks do the websites that rank in the top 10 for commercial intent phrases have?
- What is the average number of backlinks that sites in the top 10 have for each phrase, and which phrases might require fewer or more links to rank?
- For sites with fewer than 100 backlinks that still rank on the first page for a commercial/transactional phrase, is it the links, or could other signals be pushing them to the first page?
After digging into this analysis, I stumbled upon a couple of other areas of interest, which I’ll publish after the first three items:
- Sites that Google loves and why? It it because they have so many backlinks?
- Major sites using domain authority to rank high with affiliate pages. Is it parasite SEO if you’re doing it yourself?
In the coming months, I plan to release regular studies similar to this one. The next study will explore “How Many Links Might It Take to Rank for Informational Phrases,” followed by “How Many Links Does It Take in 10 Locations for 10 Local Phrases.” Then, I’ll revisit this commercial phrase study to see what has changed—identifying which sites have left or entered the top 10, how many links the new and old sites have, and the dominant sites in the top 10 three months from now. There’s much more to come, but first, let’s address the first question today.
Process to Find the Number of Backlinks the Top 10 Sites in Google Have
To ideally identify a small handful of sites with “few” backlinks, I analyzed ten times the number of sites from my previous study. This time, I used 2,000 randomly AI-generated commercial/transactional phrases, all with non-local intent and a minimum search volume of over 100 searches per month according to SEMrush.
Looking at the search volume (SEMrush’s estimates of monthly searches in Google) of those 2,000 phrases, we found a nicely spread distribution between low search volume (at least 100 searches per month) to high search volume.
| Semrush Search Volume | # Phrases | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| 100-1K | 406 | 20.3% |
| 1K-5K | 580 | 29% |
| 5K-10K | 399 | 20% |
| 10K-50K | 505 | 25.3% |
| 50K+ | 110 | 5.5% |
Data on the 2,000 phrases and on the 9,337 domains that ranked in the top 10.
You can see the raw list of keywords here, or see the list of 2000 phrases with other data points.
With these 2,000 keyword phrases, we then gathered the top 10 sites that organically ranked in Google for each phrase. This now gave us 9,337 unique domains which we can analyze.
Then, using backlink data from Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, & Semrush, I looked at the number of backlinks to each of those 9,337 websites.
You can see the full data that we gathered on the 9,337 domains here.
How Many Unique Domain Backlinks Do the Websites in the Top 10 of Google Have for Commercial Phrases?
Here’s what the new analysis revealed about the backlink distribution among these top-ranking sites:
| Domain Backlinks | # of Sites | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| 0-50 | 42 | 0.4% |
| 50-100 | 50 | 0.5% |
| 100-500 | 468 | 5% |
| 500-1K | 538 | 5.8% |
| 1K-10K | 4078 | 43.7% |
| 10K-100K | 3090 | 33.1% |
| 100K-1M | 887 | 9.5% |
| 1M+ | 184 | 2% |
Key Takeaways
- Over 99% of sites in the top 10 have over 100 unique domains linking to them.
- 94% of the top 10 sites have at least 500 unique domains linking to them.
- Nearly half (43%) of the sites have between 1,000 and 10,000 unique domains linking to them.
- One third (33%) of the sites that rank in the top 10 have 10,000 to 100,000 unique domains linking to them.
It is possible to rank in the top 10 of Google with fewer than 100 unique domain backlinks, but it’s less than a 1% chance according to this study of the 9,337 websites we analyzed that ranked in the top 10 for commercial phrases.
Like four-leaf clovers or blue lobsters, sites with few backlinks are pretty rare, making up less than 1% of those sites in the wild. So, I’m not sure I’d want to bet on the “backlinks don’t matter” camp if your goal is to rank on the first page of Google for commercial phrases. Even the Google leaked data was drenched in backlink analysis.
In my next analysis, Part 2, I’ll be exploring deeper into these 2,000 phrases and then making live additional data that I’ve been analyzing so I can share with you the surprising things that I discovered. We’ll also be looking at which phrases you “might” have a chance to rank on the first page for… if you have less than 50,000 backlinks… and which phrases, if you’re a small site, you don’t seem to have a chance, and which phrases might be “easier” to rank for, and why. You won’t believe what I found ;)!
Then, Part 3 will dive into the 9,337 URLs, with a focus on the 92 sites with fewer than 100 backlinks that rank for at least one commercial phrase and will see what these small sites have that might be putting them on Page 1 of Google.
Stay Tuned!
I’m Feeling Lucky Today!
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- * When I say “Backlinks,” I mean “Unique Domain Backlinks,” which is, for example, if you have 5 links from bob.com and 2 links from sue.com, we would only count 1 link for each site, so 2 links total, one from bob.com and one from sue.com.
- * When I say “Commercial Phrases,” I also mean what people might call “transactional phrases” or “money phrases.” For example, phrases like “antique clocks,” “auto insurance comparison,” or “beard oil for sensitive skin.”
- * When I say “Top Ten,” I mean the first 10 organic results in Google for that search, as we recorded it in early July 2024.
