{"id":38675,"date":"2020-08-18T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=38675"},"modified":"2024-10-04T11:39:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T16:39:35","slug":"link-building-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/link-building-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Link Building Case Study: How We Built Backlinks With a \u2018Stats\u2019 Page (And Ranked #1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intro-txt\">A few months ago, we created <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/seo-statistics\/\">a list of SEO statistics<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>It might look like a relatively standard post, but we strategically created it to attract links from an outreach campaign.<\/p>\n<p>And it worked. We sent 515 emails and got 36 backlinks from 32 websites.<\/p>\n<p>The post now ranks #1 for \u201cSEO&nbsp;stats\u201d:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"696\" class=\"wp-image-38651\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/1-seo-stats-ranking.png\" alt=\"1 seo stats ranking\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/1-seo-stats-ranking.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/1-seo-stats-ranking-680x296.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/1-seo-stats-ranking-768x334.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/1-seo-stats-ranking-1536x668.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>In&nbsp;this guide, you\u2019ll learn:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#why-a-statistics-page\">Why we chose a statistics page<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#what-we-did\">How we created the page and built links to&nbsp;it<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#our-results\">Detailed results from our campaign<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#improving-results\">How we could have improved our results<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div data-mode=\"normal\" data-oembed=\"1\" data-provider=\"youtube\" id=\"arve-youtube-etf6obwidhc\" style=\"max-width:900px;\" class=\"arve\">\n<div class=\"arve-inner\">\n<div style=\"aspect-ratio:500\/281\" class=\"arve-embed arve-embed--has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"arve-ar\" style=\"padding-top:56.200000%\"><\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t<iframe allow=\"accelerometer 'none';autoplay 'none';bluetooth 'none';browsing-topics 'none';camera 'none';clipboard-read 'none';clipboard-write;display-capture 'none';encrypted-media 'none';gamepad 'none';geolocation 'none';gyroscope 'none';hid 'none';identity-credentials-get 'none';idle-detection 'none';keyboard-map 'none';local-fonts;magnetometer 'none';microphone 'none';midi 'none';otp-credentials 'none';payment 'none';picture-in-picture;publickey-credentials-create 'none';publickey-credentials-get 'none';screen-wake-lock 'none';serial 'none';summarizer 'none';sync-xhr;usb 'none';web-share;window-management 'none';xr-spatial-tracking 'none';\" allowfullscreen class=\"arve-iframe fitvidsignore\" credentialless data-arve=\"arve-youtube-etf6obwidhc\" data-lenis-prevent data-src-no-ap=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/eTF6OBwidhc?list=PLvJ_dXFSpd2u_ABxIRO6RVK3ucKyzn96Y&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;autohide=1&amp;playsinline=0&amp;autoplay=0\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"505.8\" loading=\"lazy\" name referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/eTF6OBwidhc?list=PLvJ_dXFSpd2u_ABxIRO6RVK3ucKyzn96Y&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;autohide=1&amp;playsinline=0&amp;autoplay=0\" title width=\"900\"><\/iframe><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"recommendation\"><div class=\"recommendation-title\">Looking for more case studies?<\/div><div class=\"recommendation-content\">\n<p>Head over to our list of <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/seo-case-studies\/\">SEO case studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-nav-link clearfix\" id=\"section1\"><a class=\"subhead-anchor\" data-tip=\"tooltip__copielink\" rel=\"#section1\"><svg width=\"19\" height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 14 14\" style><g fill=\"none\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\"><path d=\"M0 0h14v14H0z\" \/><path d=\"M7.45 9.887l-1.62 1.621c-.92.92-2.418.92-3.338 0a2.364 2.364 0 0 1 0-3.339l1.62-1.62-1.273-1.272-1.62 1.62a4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.885 5.884l1.62-1.62L7.45 9.886zM5.527 5.135L7.17 3.492c.92-.92 2.418-.92 3.339 0 .92.92.92 2.418 0 3.339L8.866 8.473l1.272 1.273 1.644-1.643A4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.897 2.22L4.254 3.863l1.272 1.272zm-.66 3.998a.749.749 0 0 1 0-1.06l2.208-2.206a.749.749 0 1 1 1.06 1.06L5.928 9.133a.75.75 0 0 1-1.061 0z\" style \/><\/g><\/svg><\/a><div class=\"link-text\" data-anchor=\"Why we chose a statistics page\" data-section=\"why-a-statistics-page\">\n<h2>Why did we create a statistics page?<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>You\u2019ve probably heard of the <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/skyscraper-technique\/\">Skyscraper Technique<\/a>. It\u2019s a <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/link-building-strategies\/\">link building tactic<\/a>&nbsp;where you find a page with lots of links, create something \u201cbetter,\u201d then pitch your new and improved resource to those linking to the now inferior page.<\/p>\n<p>It can work for any type of content, but we had a theory that it might work particularly well for statistics pages because:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Statistics pages tend to have a lot of&nbsp;links<\/li>\n<li>Statistics pages are often outdated<\/li>\n<li>Statistics are often sloppily updated<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Let\u2019s delve a bit deeper into why each of these things matter.<\/p>\n<h3>1. Statistics pages tend to have a lot of&nbsp;links<\/h3>\n<p>Every \u2018skyscraper\u2019 campaign starts with a page or pages that have tons of links. And if you search Google for statistics pages about any popular topic, you\u2019ll almost always see that the top-ranking pages have tons of backlinks.<\/p>\n<p>Just look at the results for \u201cyoutube statistics\u201d:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1052\" class=\"wp-image-38672\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/2-youtube-statistics-serp.png\" alt=\"2 youtube statistics serp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/2-youtube-statistics-serp.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/2-youtube-statistics-serp-646x425.png 646w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/2-youtube-statistics-serp-768x505.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/2-youtube-statistics-serp-1536x1010.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>There are multiple pages here with links from thousands of websites.<\/p>\n<p>This usually happens because bloggers and journalists often cite statistics from these pages in their&nbsp;posts.<\/p>\n<p>For example, look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shopify.com\/blog\/start-a-youtube-channel-for-your-business\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this post from Shopify<\/a>&nbsp;about starting a YouTube channel for your business:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1584\" height=\"1402\" class=\"wp-image-38660\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/3-stat-shopify-post.jpg\" alt=\"3 stat shopify post\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/3-stat-shopify-post.jpg 1584w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/3-stat-shopify-post-480x425.jpg 480w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/3-stat-shopify-post-768x680.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/3-stat-shopify-post-1536x1360.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1584px) 100vw, 1584px\"><\/p>\n<p>The writer cites two statistics in the first paragraph and links to his sources, one of which is a curated list of YouTube statistics. It\u2019s highly likely that he came across this post while doing research for his article, found a useful statistic, then cited and linked to the source.<\/p>\n<h3>2. Statistics pages are often outdated<\/h3>\n<p>Most statistics pages are rarely updated and often feature outdated and inaccurate statistics as a result.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s just one example:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"768\" class=\"wp-image-38659\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/4-outdated-statistic.png\" alt=\"4 outdated statistic\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/4-outdated-statistic.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/4-outdated-statistic-680x326.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/4-outdated-statistic-768x369.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/4-outdated-statistic-1536x737.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>If we look at the source of that statistic, it takes us to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/about\/press\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube\u2019s Press page<\/a>. Here, it says there are over two billion monthly YouTube users instead of the cited 1.9 billion.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s an issue because it leads bloggers and journalists to cite outdated statistics.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if we check the <strong>Backlinks<\/strong>&nbsp;report for this page in <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/site-explorer\">Site Explorer<\/a>, search for \u201c1.9 billion\u201d in the link anchors and surrounding texts, and toggle the \u201cone link per domain\u201d switch, we see 55 websites citing the outdated statistic and linking to the&nbsp;page.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"596\" class=\"wp-image-38650\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/5-outdated-statistic-links.png\" alt=\"5 outdated statistic links\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/5-outdated-statistic-links.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/5-outdated-statistic-links-680x253.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/5-outdated-statistic-links-768x286.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/5-outdated-statistic-links-1536x572.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<h3>3. Statistics pages are often sloppily updated<\/h3>\n<p>Even when people do update their statistics pages, they don\u2019t always do it well. One of the common mistakes they make is removing outdated statistics from the page without replacing them with updated ones.<\/p>\n<p>The problem here is that when statistics get removed, the citations and links remain.<\/p>\n<p>For example, let\u2019s check the <strong>Anchors<\/strong>&nbsp;report for the list of YouTube statistics in <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/site-explorer\">Site Explorer<\/a>.&nbsp;Many referring pages cite a statistic about YouTube being the third most visited site on the web. However, if we search the page itself for that statistic, it\u2019s nowhere to be&nbsp;found.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"948\" class=\"wp-image-38643\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/6-outdated-statistic-anchors.png\" alt=\"6 outdated statistic anchors\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/6-outdated-statistic-anchors.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/6-outdated-statistic-anchors-680x403.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/6-outdated-statistic-anchors-768x455.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/6-outdated-statistic-anchors-1536x910.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because the author updated the page and removed that statistic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-nav-link clearfix\" id=\"section1\"><a class=\"subhead-anchor\" data-tip=\"tooltip__copielink\" rel=\"#section1\"><svg width=\"19\" height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 14 14\" style><g fill=\"none\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\"><path d=\"M0 0h14v14H0z\" \/><path d=\"M7.45 9.887l-1.62 1.621c-.92.92-2.418.92-3.338 0a2.364 2.364 0 0 1 0-3.339l1.62-1.62-1.273-1.272-1.62 1.62a4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.885 5.884l1.62-1.62L7.45 9.886zM5.527 5.135L7.17 3.492c.92-.92 2.418-.92 3.339 0 .92.92.92 2.418 0 3.339L8.866 8.473l1.272 1.273 1.644-1.643A4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.897 2.22L4.254 3.863l1.272 1.272zm-.66 3.998a.749.749 0 0 1 0-1.06l2.208-2.206a.749.749 0 1 1 1.06 1.06L5.928 9.133a.75.75 0 0 1-1.061 0z\" style \/><\/g><\/svg><\/a><div class=\"link-text\" data-anchor=\"How we created the page and built links to it\" data-section=\"what-we-did\">\n<h2>What we&nbsp;did<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>You might already have a rough idea where we\u2019re going with this. If that\u2019s not the case, don\u2019t worry. We\u2019re going to go through the entire process below.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what we&nbsp;did:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Found a winning topic<\/li>\n<li>Found link prospects<\/li>\n<li>Narrowed down the link prospects<\/li>\n<li>Created the statistics page<\/li>\n<li>Found contact information and vetted prospects<\/li>\n<li>Wrote and sent outreach emails<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3>Step 1. Find a winning topic<\/h3>\n<p>From the start, we knew we wanted to create a statistics page about SEO or online marketing because that\u2019s what our site is about. However, we didn\u2019t yet have a definitive topic in mind, so we first needed to do some research.<\/p>\n<p>To start, we searched in Ahrefs\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/keywords-explorer\">Keywords Explorer<\/a>&nbsp;for keywords related to our business like&nbsp;SEO, search engine optimization, content marketing, etc.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"174\" class=\"wp-image-38666\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/7-keywords-explorer-seeds.png\" alt=\"7 keywords explorer seeds\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/7-keywords-explorer-seeds.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/7-keywords-explorer-seeds-680x74.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/7-keywords-explorer-seeds-768x84.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/7-keywords-explorer-seeds-1536x167.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>From there, we went to the <strong>Phrase match<\/strong>&nbsp;report and used the \u201cInclude\u201d filter to find keywords containing words like statistics, stats, facts, and figures.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"863\" class=\"wp-image-38674\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/8-keywords-explorer-include-stats.jpg\" alt=\"8 keywords explorer include stats\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/8-keywords-explorer-include-stats.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/8-keywords-explorer-include-stats-680x367.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/8-keywords-explorer-include-stats-768x414.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/8-keywords-explorer-include-stats-1536x828.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"sidenote\"><div class=\"sidenote-title\">Sidenote.<\/div>&nbsp;Make sure to toggle the settings on the \u201cInclude\u201d filter from \u201cAll\u201d to \u201cAny\u201d when doing&nbsp;this.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<p>This gave us a bunch of ideas, but we needed to narrow them down to those with top-ranking pages that had lots of backlinks. For this, we used the <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/keyword-difficulty\/\">Keyword Difficulty<\/a>&nbsp;filter to exclude all low-difficulty keywords.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"876\" class=\"wp-image-38662\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/9-keywords-explorer-kd.jpg\" alt=\"9 keywords explorer kd\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/9-keywords-explorer-kd.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/9-keywords-explorer-kd-680x372.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/9-keywords-explorer-kd-768x420.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/9-keywords-explorer-kd-1536x841.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re wondering why we used the Keyword Difficulty filter for this, it\u2019s because the metric is based on the average number of referring domains to the current top-ranking pages. If a keyword has a high KD score, it usually means the top-ranking pages have links from many websites.<\/p>\n<p>This narrowed down things quite substantially, but there were a few ideas left, the most relevant of which was \u201cSEO statistics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we checked the SERP overview to ensure that the top-ranking pages were mostly curated statistics pages. It was pretty easy to tell if this was the case from the page titles.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"927\" class=\"wp-image-38648\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/10-seo-statistics-serp-titles.jpg\" alt=\"10 seo statistics serp titles\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/10-seo-statistics-serp-titles.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/10-seo-statistics-serp-titles-680x394.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/10-seo-statistics-serp-titles-768x445.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/10-seo-statistics-serp-titles-1536x890.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<h3>Step 2. Find link prospects<\/h3>\n<p>If we were running a \u201cshotgun\u201d campaign here, finding link prospects would be simple. We\u2019d just download the full list of backlinks to each competing statistics page, write any old post, then blast out the same outreach email to everyone.<\/p>\n<p>This would likely say something generic and vague like \u201cHey, saw you linked to this stats page. Ours is better. Maybe swap out the&nbsp;link?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is the typical \u201cSkyscraper\u201d approach, and it\u2019s not something we like. We\u2019ve all been on the end of these types of outreach emails before. They\u2019re spammy, unhelpful, and annoying.<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s what we did instead:<\/p>\n<p>First, we went back to the SERP overview for \u201cSEO statistics\u201d and looked for the curated stats page with the most backlinks.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"927\" class=\"wp-image-38663\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/11-seo-statistics-serp-most-backlinks.jpg\" alt=\"11 seo statistics serp most backlinks\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/11-seo-statistics-serp-most-backlinks.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/11-seo-statistics-serp-most-backlinks-680x394.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/11-seo-statistics-serp-most-backlinks-768x445.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/11-seo-statistics-serp-most-backlinks-1536x890.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>Second, we analyzed this page to see which statistics were responsible for the most backlinks.<\/p>\n<p>To do this, we opened up the <strong>Anchors<\/strong>&nbsp;report for the page in <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/site-explorer\">Site Explorer<\/a>&nbsp;and looked for frequently mentioned stats. Right away, we saw a lot of links referencing how 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" class=\"wp-image-38647\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12-seo-statistics-93-percent.png\" alt=\"12 seo statistics 93 percent\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12-seo-statistics-93-percent.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12-seo-statistics-93-percent-680x383.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12-seo-statistics-93-percent-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12-seo-statistics-93-percent-1536x864.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>We recorded this in a spreadsheet and then continued looking through the report until we had a few popular statistics.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1066\" height=\"282\" class=\"wp-image-38646\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/13-popular-linked-stats.png\" alt=\"13 popular linked stats\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/13-popular-linked-stats.png 1066w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/13-popular-linked-stats-680x180.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/13-popular-linked-stats-768x203.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1066px) 100vw, 1066px\"><\/p>\n<p>Next, we wanted to tick off two checkboxes for each statistic:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Are there enough people linking because of this statistic?<\/li>\n<li>Can we justify a good reason for them to link to us instead of, or in addition to the current page?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>To do this, we first went to the <strong>Backlinks<\/strong>&nbsp;report for the page, toggled the \u201cone link per domain\u201d filter, then searched for each statistic in the link anchors and surrounding texts.<\/p>\n<p>For the \u201c93%\u201d statistic, over 700 websites were linking to the&nbsp;page.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"468\" class=\"wp-image-38673\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/14-backlinks-93-include.png\" alt=\"14 backlinks 93 include\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/14-backlinks-93-include.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/14-backlinks-93-include-680x199.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/14-backlinks-93-include-768x225.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/14-backlinks-93-include-1536x449.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the first box checked.<\/p>\n<p>Next, we needed to see if there was a good reason to contact those people, so we opened up the stats page and went through this process:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"912\" class=\"wp-image-38656\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/03-link-building-case-study.png\" alt=\"03 link building case study\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/03-link-building-case-study.png 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/03-link-building-case-study-419x425.png 419w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/03-link-building-case-study-768x778.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<p>For the \u201c93%\u201d statistic, we saw that it wasn\u2019t even mentioned on the&nbsp;page.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1472\" height=\"1248\" class=\"wp-image-38652\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/15-no-stat-on-page.png\" alt=\"15 no stat on page\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/15-no-stat-on-page.png 1472w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/15-no-stat-on-page-501x425.png 501w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/15-no-stat-on-page-768x651.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1472px) 100vw, 1472px\"><\/p>\n<p>For most of our other statistics, they were still on the page, but when we checked their sources, we noticed that many were old and outdated. Wherever this was the case, we scoured the web for an updated statistic.<\/p>\n<p>Everything was then recorded in a spreadsheet to give us something that looked like&nbsp;this:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"204\" class=\"wp-image-38655\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/16-statistics-sheet.png\" alt=\"16 statistics sheet\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/16-statistics-sheet.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/16-statistics-sheet-680x87.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/16-statistics-sheet-768x98.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/16-statistics-sheet-1536x196.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Column A: <\/strong>The URL of the statistics page (where we found the statistic).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column B: <\/strong>The number of linking referring domains citing the statistic (we also linked this to the filtered report in Site Explorer for easy access).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column C: <\/strong>The statistic itself.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column D: <\/strong>The original source of the statistic (if we could find&nbsp;it).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column E: <\/strong>The age of the statistic.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column F:<\/strong>&nbsp;The newer statistic (where applicable).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column G: <\/strong>The source of the new statistic.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column H:<\/strong>&nbsp;The age of the new statistic.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Column I: <\/strong>Notes and pitch angle ideas, such as whether the statistic was outdated or missing from the&nbsp;page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Next, we repeated this entire process for the rest of the top-ranking statistics pages until we had thousands of prospects based on eight statistics.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1436\" height=\"488\" class=\"wp-image-38669\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/17-stats-prospects-list.png\" alt=\"17 stats prospects list\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/17-stats-prospects-list.png 1436w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/17-stats-prospects-list-680x231.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/17-stats-prospects-list-768x261.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/17-stats-prospects-list-650x220.png 650w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1436px) 100vw, 1436px\"><\/p>\n<p>Finally, we downloaded all of the relevant prospects for each statistic and page from the <strong>Backlinks<\/strong>&nbsp;report, then imported them into Google sheets and labeled each URL according to their segment.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"605\" class=\"wp-image-38661\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/18-explorer-segmented-links.png\" alt=\"18 explorer segmented links\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/18-explorer-segmented-links.png 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/18-explorer-segmented-links-680x257.png 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/18-explorer-segmented-links-768x290.png 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/18-explorer-segmented-links-1536x581.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"640\" class=\"wp-image-38671\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/19-site-explorer-export.jpg\" alt=\"19 site explorer export\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/19-site-explorer-export.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/19-site-explorer-export-680x272.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/19-site-explorer-export-768x307.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/19-site-explorer-export-1536x614.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>In total, we had 1,986 unvetted URLs.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 3. Narrowing down link prospects<\/h3>\n<p>Despite having a reason to reach out to 1,900+ prospects, we didn\u2019t want to reach out to low-quality websites for obvious reasons. So our next task was to clean up our list of prospects.<\/p>\n<p>The first step was to deduplicate URLs from the same domain since websites could potentially be linking to more than one statistics page. And we didn\u2019t want to reach out to the same site&nbsp;twice.<\/p>\n<p>This was easy enough to do. We just added a column for the referring website and used <a href=\"https:\/\/websiteseochecker.com\/extract-url-to-domain\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a tool like this one<\/a>&nbsp;to extract&nbsp;the root domains in batches. Then we pasted them into our&nbsp;sheet.<\/p>\n<p>We then used the built-in functionality to remove duplicate domains.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"787\" class=\"wp-image-38664\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Recording-2020-07-17-at-05.24-pm.gif\" alt=\"Screen Recording 2020 07 17 at 05.24 pm\"><\/p>\n<p>The second step was to remove prospects linking to the statistics pages with nofollow, UGC, or sponsored links. To do this, we filtered the \u201cType\u201d column and removed the&nbsp;rows.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1051\" height=\"715\" class=\"wp-image-38657\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Recording-2020-07-17-at-05.29-pm.gif\" alt=\"Screen Recording 2020 07 17 at 05.29 pm\"><\/p>\n<p>The final step was to exclude websites without a lot of traffic. To do this, we pulled domain-level traffic for all prospects using the <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/api\">Ahrefs API<\/a>&nbsp;and the script editor in Google Sheets.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re following along and don\u2019t have an API subscription, you can use our <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/batch-analysis\">Batch Analysis tool<\/a>&nbsp;instead. Just paste in up to 200 domains at a time and set the target mode to <em>domain with all its subdomain<\/em>s.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1033\" height=\"657\" class=\"wp-image-38667\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Recording-2020-07-17-at-05.31-pm.gif\" alt=\"Screen Recording 2020 07 17 at 05.31 pm\"><\/p>\n<p>You can then export the file and run a VLOOKUP against the root domains.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of this process, we had 902 prospects remaining in our&nbsp;sheet.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 4. Create the statistics page<\/h3>\n<p>The reality of statistics pages is that it\u2019s tough to make one that stands out from the crowd. However, we did three main things to make ours the \u201cbest\u201d SEO statistics page:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Included popular statistics from other&nbsp;pages<\/li>\n<li>Included other interesting statistics<\/li>\n<li>Grouped statistics by category<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Let\u2019s go through why these things are important.<\/p>\n<h4>Including&nbsp;popular statistics from other&nbsp;pages<\/h4>\n<p>We included each statistic that helped other similar pages earn lots of links in our post. If the statistic was outdated, we found and added a more recent one.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the reason we did this was to tie our page back to our link building campaign. However, we also realized that these were the statistics people found most useful. How do we know? Because they\u2019re the ones that bloggers and journalists frequently cited in their&nbsp;posts.<\/p>\n<h4>Including other interesting statistics<\/h4>\n<p>The statistics on our page didn\u2019t all tie back to our link building campaign. We made an effort to find and include others that seemed interesting.<\/p>\n<p>However, we didn\u2019t want to include any outdated statistics, so we made an effort to hunt down the original source for each statistic we wanted to include. If we couldn\u2019t find the source or realized that it was outdated, we looked for an updated one.<\/p>\n<p>This might sound like a small thing, but it\u2019s actually a huge issue with most lists of statistics.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the \u201c93%\u201d statistic we found earlier comes from a 2006 report.<\/p>\n<h4>Grouped stats by category<\/h4>\n<p>People don\u2019t consume lists of statistics like they would a regular blog post. Most are just looking for curated information to add to their posts to support their claims. For that reason, we needed to make our post organized and easy to digest.<\/p>\n<p>To do this, we grouped the statistics into categories and added jump links to the introduction.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1327\" class=\"wp-image-38653\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/20-seo-statistics-page-grouping.jpg\" alt=\"20 seo statistics page grouping\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/20-seo-statistics-page-grouping.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/20-seo-statistics-page-grouping-512x425.jpg 512w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/20-seo-statistics-page-grouping-768x637.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/20-seo-statistics-page-grouping-1536x1274.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>We also listed the most cited SEO statistics under the \u201ctop SEO statistics\u201d section at the start of the post. This made it easier for people to find the most frequently cited and interesting statistics.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 5. Find contact information and vet prospects<\/h3>\n<p>Having published our list of SEO statistics (and noindexed the page), we were almost ready to do some outreach and build some links. But first, we needed to <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/find-email-address\/\">find contact information<\/a>&nbsp;for our prospects.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve read our <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/fast-link-building\/\">guide to link building at scale<\/a>&nbsp;or watched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HyIXvIaUlLk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">our video<\/a>&nbsp;on the same topic, then you\u2019ll know that we\u2019re fans of using APIs and automation for&nbsp;this.<\/p>\n<p>With that in mind, here\u2019s what we&nbsp;did:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>We ran all the URLs through a custom tool to scrape as many author names as possible. <\/strong>It was far from perfect, but we ended up with 741 names nonetheless.<\/li>\n<li><strong>We took those names and ran them through Hunter\u2019s API to search for an email address.<\/strong>&nbsp;Hunter sent back 452 email addresses. That\u2019s around a 60% hit&nbsp;rate.<\/li>\n<li><strong>We ran these email addresses through NeverBounce\u2019s API<\/strong>&nbsp;to see which of them were deliverable.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>After around 30 minutes of automation, we had 168 valid emails, 92 catchalls that needed some manual intervention, and 178 emails that were not deliverable.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"715\" class=\"wp-image-38645\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/01-link-building-case-study.png\" alt=\"01 link building case study\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/01-link-building-case-study.png 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/01-link-building-case-study-535x425.png 535w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/01-link-building-case-study-768x610.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<p>For valid emails, all we had to do was check that the pages were of decent quality. Vlad, one of our team members, handled this process. He spent a few hours each week vetting prospects and finding missing contact information.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a simplified version of the vetting process he went through:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"1253\" class=\"wp-image-38670\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/02-link-building-case-study.png\" alt=\"02 link building case study\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/02-link-building-case-study.png 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/02-link-building-case-study-305x425.png 305w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/02-link-building-case-study-768x1069.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<p>He then tagged all prospects in the spreadsheet, which left us with 515 sites ready to&nbsp;pitch.<\/p>\n<p>He also made a note of what the linking pages were&nbsp;about.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"606\" class=\"wp-image-38644\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/21-page-topic-notes.jpg\" alt=\"21 page topic notes\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/21-page-topic-notes.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/21-page-topic-notes-680x258.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/21-page-topic-notes-768x291.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/21-page-topic-notes-1536x582.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<h3>Step 6. Write and send the outreach emails<\/h3>\n<p>Before hitting send, the final step of the process was to write our outreach templates and create personalization fields for each prospect.<\/p>\n<p>Our idea here was to personalize emails based on the statistic referenced by each prospect.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what we came up&nbsp;with:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hi <strong>[First name]<\/strong>,<\/p>\n<p>I saw you&nbsp;mentioned how <strong>[Stat]<\/strong>&nbsp;on your page about <strong>[Page topic]<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Pitch]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We published this and a few other fresh SEO stats here:<strong>&nbsp;https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/57-seo-statistics-for-2020\/<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not sure if you\u2019re actively editing posts, but might be worth an update if you are? No pressure&nbsp;\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<br>\nVlad<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The first three personalization fields were simple enough as we already had this information in our spreadsheet.<\/p>\n<p>For the pitch, we wrote eight custom paragraphs based on the mentioned statistics.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"953\" class=\"wp-image-38654\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/22-custom-pitches.jpg\" alt=\"22 custom pitches\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/22-custom-pitches.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/22-custom-pitches-680x405.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/22-custom-pitches-768x457.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/22-custom-pitches-1536x915.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\"><\/p>\n<p>Finally, we put everything together in one sheet and imported that into our outreach tool: PitchBox. The result was a simple and personalized email for every prospect.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an example of the final result:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hi <strong>Josh<\/strong>,<\/p>\n<p>I saw you mentioned how <strong>93% of online experiences begin with a search engine<\/strong>&nbsp;on your page about <strong>ecommerce SEO<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>That stat is actually 14 years old. More recent research (2019) suggests that this number has gone down to 68%. I think it\u2019s lower because social and other sources now account for around 1\/3 of traffic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We published this and a few other fresh SEO stats here: <strong>https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/57-seo-statistics-for-2020\/<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Not sure if you\u2019re actively editing posts, but might be worth an update if you are? No pressure&nbsp;\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<\/p>\n<p>Vlad<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now all that was left to do was hit&nbsp;send.<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-nav-link clearfix\" id=\"section1\"><a class=\"subhead-anchor\" data-tip=\"tooltip__copielink\" rel=\"#section1\"><svg width=\"19\" height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 14 14\" style><g fill=\"none\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\"><path d=\"M0 0h14v14H0z\" \/><path d=\"M7.45 9.887l-1.62 1.621c-.92.92-2.418.92-3.338 0a2.364 2.364 0 0 1 0-3.339l1.62-1.62-1.273-1.272-1.62 1.62a4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.885 5.884l1.62-1.62L7.45 9.886zM5.527 5.135L7.17 3.492c.92-.92 2.418-.92 3.339 0 .92.92.92 2.418 0 3.339L8.866 8.473l1.272 1.273 1.644-1.643A4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.897 2.22L4.254 3.863l1.272 1.272zm-.66 3.998a.749.749 0 0 1 0-1.06l2.208-2.206a.749.749 0 1 1 1.06 1.06L5.928 9.133a.75.75 0 0 1-1.061 0z\" style \/><\/g><\/svg><\/a><div class=\"link-text\" data-anchor=\"Detailed results from our campaign\" data-section=\"our-results\">\n<h2>Our results<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>In total, we sent 515 emails. 473 were delivered, and 42 bounced.<\/p>\n<p>Based on deliverable emails, that puts our conversion rate at 5.71%, meaning that 27 of the websites we contacted linked to&nbsp;us.<\/p>\n<p>However, two other cool things happened:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>We got links from five sites that we didn\u2019t contact<\/strong>. This is likely because some people found our post from others that linked to us and from the odd social shares. In total, we had 19 shares on Facebook and two on Twitter.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Some websites linked more than once.<\/strong>&nbsp;This was from both new and old&nbsp;pages.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If we take those things into account, our campaign brought us a grand total of 36 editorial links from 32 unique websites.<\/p>\n<p>But, of course, quantity is only half the game. What about quality?<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s break things down by <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/website-authority-checker\">Domain Rating<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"634\" class=\"wp-image-38649\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/04-link-building-case-study.png\" alt=\"04 link building case study\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/04-link-building-case-study.png 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/04-link-building-case-study-603x425.png 603w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/04-link-building-case-study-768x541.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<p>9 of the 32 referring domains had a DR of 70 or greater. 12 had a DR of 40 to 69. And the remaining 11 had DR values of 4 to&nbsp;39.<\/p>\n<p>If we do the same for estimated organic traffic, here\u2019s what we&nbsp;get:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"936\" class=\"wp-image-38642\" src=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/05-link-building-case-study.png\" alt=\"05 link building case study\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/05-link-building-case-study.png 900w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/05-link-building-case-study-409x425.png 409w, https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/05-link-building-case-study-768x799.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<p>1 website gets over 1,000,000 monthly search visits. 6 get between 10,000 and 1,000,000. 6 get between 1,000 to 9,999. 16 get between 100 to 999.&nbsp;And 4 get no search traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Judging by conventional SEO metrics, then, most of the links we got were high-quality. Of course, metrics like these aren\u2019t foolproof, but having checked every link we earned by hand, I would echo this conclusion.<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-nav-link clearfix\" id=\"section1\"><a class=\"subhead-anchor\" data-tip=\"tooltip__copielink\" rel=\"#section1\"><svg width=\"19\" height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 14 14\" style><g fill=\"none\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\"><path d=\"M0 0h14v14H0z\" \/><path d=\"M7.45 9.887l-1.62 1.621c-.92.92-2.418.92-3.338 0a2.364 2.364 0 0 1 0-3.339l1.62-1.62-1.273-1.272-1.62 1.62a4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.885 5.884l1.62-1.62L7.45 9.886zM5.527 5.135L7.17 3.492c.92-.92 2.418-.92 3.339 0 .92.92.92 2.418 0 3.339L8.866 8.473l1.272 1.273 1.644-1.643A4.161 4.161 0 1 0 5.897 2.22L4.254 3.863l1.272 1.272zm-.66 3.998a.749.749 0 0 1 0-1.06l2.208-2.206a.749.749 0 1 1 1.06 1.06L5.928 9.133a.75.75 0 0 1-1.061 0z\" style \/><\/g><\/svg><\/a><div class=\"link-text\" data-anchor=\"How we could have improved these results\" data-section=\"improving-results\">\n<h2>Could we improve these results?<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Despite having success with this campaign, some might argue that a 5.71% conversion rate is nothing special.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, that might have been the case, but outreach is getting harder and more people are asking for money or something else in return.<\/p>\n<p>That said, there are two ways we could almost certainly have increased our conversion rate.<\/p>\n<h3>1. Negotiate with prospects<\/h3>\n<p>The conversion rate for our campaign was 5.71%, but the reply rate was 17.55%. That means 83 people responded to our email, but only 27 linked to us (plus two people we didn\u2019t reach out&nbsp;to).<\/p>\n<p>While some of these were \u201cthanks, but no thanks\u201d type responses, many were requests for link exchanges and other things.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a quick breakdown:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>8 people requested a link exchange;<\/li>\n<li>6 people requested something else in return (e.g., free Ahrefs account, to share their content on social media, etc.);<\/li>\n<li>3 people asked for&nbsp;money<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Buying links is against <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/35769\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google\u2019s Webmaster Guidelines<\/a>, so it\u2019s not something we would ever do or recommend to others. But even if we exclude those people, there were still 14 people who seemed willing to negotiate. With a bit of back and forth, we likely could have come to a mutually beneficial agreement and convinced these folks to link to us. That would have brought our referring domains count to 41, which is an 8.7% conversion rate.<\/p>\n<h3>2. Send follow-ups<\/h3>\n<p>According to Authority Hacker\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.authorityhacker.com\/link-building-outreach\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study<\/a>&nbsp;of over 600,000 outreach emails, sending three follow-ups at least doubled their results. However, we didn\u2019t send any automated follow-ups because we didn\u2019t want to bother people.<\/p>\n<p>That will sound crazy to most link builders, but we only ran this campaign to test our tactic. Our goal wasn\u2019t to get as many links as humanly possible. That\u2019s why we only followed up with people who said they\u2019d link to us but didn\u2019t do so within two&nbsp;weeks.<\/p>\n<p>If we followed Authority Hacker\u2019s advice and sent three follow-ups, our link acquisition rate would likely have been at least 11.42%.<\/p>\n<h2>Final thoughts<\/h2>\n<p>Given that we put a lot of effort into this campaign and only came away with backlinks from 32 websites, you might question whether <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/blogger-outreach\/\">blogger outreach<\/a>&nbsp;is still worth the effort. Luckily, the answer to this question is simple: of course it&nbsp;is.<\/p>\n<p>Backlinks are still an important <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/google-ranking-factors\/\">ranking signal<\/a>, and there\u2019s just no other way to <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/high-quality-backlinks\/\">build high-quality white-hat links<\/a> without outreach. Although we executed this campaign over a few weeks, it\u2019s also worth noting that it wasn\u2019t all that complicated to set up. If we were to do it again, assuming that we had someone vetting prospects and finding contact information, we think we could set up the entire campaign in one working day.<\/p>\n<p>Got questions? Ping me <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joshuachardwick?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It might look like a relatively standard post, but we strategically created it to attract links from an outreach campaign. And it worked. We sent 515 emails and got 36 backlinks from 32 websites. The post now ranks #1 for<span class=\"ellipsis\">\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\">Read more \u203a<\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":38683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414,76],"tags":[],"coauthors":[336],"class_list":["post-38675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-studies","category-link-building","odd"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Link Building Case Study: How We Built Backlinks With a &#039;Stats&#039; Page (And Ranked #1)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this case study, you&#039;ll learn why and how we created a statistics page, how we built links to it, and our results and takeaways from the experiment.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/link-building-case-study\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Link Building Case Study: How We Built Backlinks With a \u2018Stats\u2019 Page\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"515 emails sent, but how many links?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/link-building-case-study\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SEO Blog by Ahrefs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Ahrefs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-18T16:00:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-10-04T16:39:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/fb-link-building-case-study.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"990\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joshua Hardwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Link Building Case Study: How We Built Backlinks With a \u2018Stats\u2019 Page\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"515 emails sent, but how many links?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@JoshuaCHardwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ahrefs\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/link-building-case-study\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/link-building-case-study\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Joshua Hardwick\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e6a89cbde8e750d22996aa26e213e712\"},\"headline\":\"Link Building Case Study: How We Built Backlinks With a \u2018Stats\u2019 Page (And Ranked #1)\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-18T16:00:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-10-04T16:39:35+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/link-building-case-study\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":3320,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/link-building-case-study\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ahrefs.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2020\\\/08\\\/fb-link-building-case-study.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Data &amp; 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