In the previous study, we created infographics based on static metrics and for websites from all niches. In this study, we decided to research a specific niche in dynamics. We looked for an answer how top websites of the niche are optimized and how many changes they made for a month.
So, we decided to start with an SEO niche. Research contains websites of SEO blogs, SEO tools, and SEO agencies. Why we choose this niche? It is interesting to know how websites that teach SEO or do SEO for others work with their own websites.
Research methodology
We chose top 100 websites that ranked by keywords like seo blog, seo tips, seo agency in the USA according to Ahrefs data and started monitoring them in Sitechecker.
However, we didn’t include some brands (Moz, Semrush, Woorank, Seobility, Seositecheckup) that have websites with much more pages than average. We also exclude our website from the sample.
Yes, there are many great SEO blogs that write perfect guides, announcements, and forecasts, but they don’t rank by keywords mentioned above and they weren’t included into the sample. However, this is not our last study. I hope in the future we will make research on top SEO websites based on 1000 websites, not 100.
So, our Site Monitoring tracked changes on chosen top 100 SEO websites from August, 1 to August, 30 daily. Now we know how many changes in meta tags and content these websites made and how their Website Score is changed in 1 month. You can view the raw data in this Google Sheet. Based on this table we built all graphs.
Before going to the infographic, please, read this legend.
Top SEO websites by Traffic, Website Score and Page Efficiency
Let’s start with interesting facts about sites from our sample. All graphs in this paragraph are built based on measurements from August, 30.
Website Score and Traffic
Top 10 websites by Traffic have median Website Score 81 points and median monthly traffic 635k visitors.
Top 10 websites by Website Score have median Website Score 94 points and median monthly traffic 15k visitors.
Website Score and Domain Age
Top 10 websites by Domain Age have median Website Score 83 points and median Domain Age 23 years.
Top 10 websites by Website Score have median Website Score 94 points and median Domain Age 8 years.
Website Score and Linked Domains
Top 10 websites by Linked Domains have median Website Score 81 points and median Linked Domains 42k.
Top 10 websites by Website Score have median Website Score 94 points and median Linked Domains 2k.
Website Score and Page Efficiency
Top 10 websites by Page Efficiency have median Website Score 74 points and median Page Efficiency 474 monthly visitors per each page.
Top 10 websites by Website Score have median Website Score 94 points and median Page Efficiency 58 monthly visitors per each page.
Website Score and number of pages in Google Index
Top 10 websites by number of pages in Google index have median Website Score 77 points and median number of pages in Google index 7500.
Top 10 websites by Website Score have median Website Score 94 points and median number of pages in Google index 345.
Page Efficiency and number of pages in Google Index
Top 10 websites by number of pages in Google index have median Page Efficiency 8 monthly visitors per each page and median number of pages in Google index 7500.
Top 10 websites by Page Efficiency have median Page Efficiency 474 monthly visitors per each page and median number of pages in Google index 257.
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How often top SEO websites update the content
Now, let’s dive into dynamic metrics.
Website Score distribution
- 10% of top 100 SEO websites have Website Score in a range 90-100;
- 76% of top 100 SEO websites have Website Score in a range 50-90;
- 11% of top 100 SEO websites have Website Score in a range 30-50;
- 3% of top 100 SEO websites have Website Score in a range 0-30.
In 30 days 14% of websites increased their Website Score, 26% decreased their Website Score and 60% websites remained the same.
Past Website Score and ∆ Website Score
Median improvement for top 10 websites by Increased Website Score is 19 points.
Median decline for top 10 websites by Decreased Website Score is 11 points.
Number of Total New Pages and Domain Age
Top 10 websites by number of Total New Pages have median Domain Age 15 years and median number of Total New Pages 823.
Top 10 websites by Domain Age have median Domain Age 23 years and median number of Total New Pages 33.
Number of Total New Pages and ∆ Google index
Top 20 SEO websites by positive and negative ∆ Google index
Top 20 SEO websites by positive and negative ∆ Traffic
Top 20 SEO websites by changed title and description tags
Top 20 SEO websites by changed H1 tags and content
Top 20 websites by broken pages
Few interesting changes top SEO websites made in 1 month
Adding new pages
One Click SEO Agency added a page about niche SEO services: real estate SEO.
HighMark SEO Agency added tag pages and images but looks like that there is issue they don’t know about. Some pages on the website refer to search pages on the tag pages. These pages have no value and links to them should be deleted.
First Page Sage SEO Agency also added an interesting niche SEO services: industrial internet of things SEO services.
It seems like Detailed has the same issues as HighMark Agency. Their links refer to unnecessary pages.
Crevand SEO agency added new pages but some of them have content duplicates.
Brian Dean has created Digital Templates Library and added templates in .pdf, .docx, .xlsx format. This is a great addition to his well-known Marketing Hub he created a year ago.
Brian keeps growing SEO Marketing Hub too, but Sitechecker detected some issues with linkhttps://backlinko.com/hub/seo/Google Ads that refer to non-existent page. There is no hyphen at the and of URL and uppercase used in two words.
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Adam Enfroy keeps adding new review pages. He also uses tags to rank by high-volume keywords like coding, wordpress etc.
Here is a list of redirects to affiliate links he added in August too.
Deleting pages
Matt Diggity works on his own blog actively and deletes pages.
Changing in Title and H1 tags
Nathan Gotch changed a Title tag on the academy page. I guess he found data in Google Search Console that many people are interested in the start date of the new course. So he decided to change the Title for increasing CTR in SERP.
Brian Dean detected the typo in H1 tags and changed it. There is no space at the end of the first sentence.
Adam Enfroy also experiments with titles to increase CTR and keep titles relevant to the content.
Changing content
Brian Dean made a few changes in the post descriptions on the blog.
Changing robots.txt
Matt Diggity disallowed in robots.txt archive pages that WordPress often generates automatically.
Conclusion
The changes highlighted above are a small part of all changes website owners made. Only 9 from 100 websites didn’t make any changes during the month. The research leads to the following conclusions:
- Old websites keep growing but, young websites make more changes. They have to move faster to become the first 🙂
- Most of the best websites by domain age, traffic, linked domains have good or perfect Website Score.
- Website owners actively work on their websites but do not notice mistakes they make during SEO work.
You will find the full infographics below. If you find this study useful share, it with your colleagues.
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