What we’re looking for is material that was linked to an abnormally high number of times. Twenty links on a site that no one visits regularly, that doesn’t rank quickly, and that doesn’t get any distribution support indicates that the piece has some valuable lessons to impart.
How to spot these “overachievers” is the subject of this essay. But first, let me demonstrate the significance of setting.
The significance of setting: a metaphor
Let’s pretend we’re compiling a list of the best NBA players ever. By doing so, we can zero in on the attributes that truly matter in a player. Wins will serve as our basic yardstick.
Does that make sense to you? A good starting point would be to find the NBA players (posts) who have the most victories (links).
How come “most linked” listings always feature the same boring articles?
The Forbes article looks to be of greater “quality” due to its higher number of referring domains (51).
Indigenous listeners. Having something on the main page increases the likelihood that millions of people will see it, which in turn increases the number of times that material is viewed.
Solid domain name. Fast-ranking content has a better probability of becoming the go-to link for related references;
Conspicuously present in the online social media world. Every tweet you send out will get at least a few dozen retweets and likes from your 15 million followers.
Money for help. An additional push is provided via a network of compensated distribution.
Finding Outperforming Content in Any Field
One of our customers operates a high-end retirement home. Every month, we run a blog aimed towards well-off middle-agers in the Chicago area.
Individuals who are interested in their personal money and are still a few years away from retirement are the ones who are most likely to conduct research into retirement planning.
Create a sample dataset in Content Explorer
First, we used Content Explorer to search for “retirement planning,” which returned over 77,000 items.
Domain Ratings (DR) start at a minimum of 77 and typically hover around the 90 mark for sites in the top 10.
Even though these posts aren’t horrible per se, I have my doubts that they were promoted solely because of their quality.
Make adjustments to the data in Content Explorer
I was able to narrow down my export set to slightly under 900 very relevant results by adjusting the metrics described below.
Restricting the time frame to the most recent two years allows us to zero in on timely issues.
Since this is a United States-based community, English is the sole language spoken.
Total number of shares: 10 or more for a social success benchmark;
Domain Rating: 15 or higher to establish a minimum standard for quality (without penalising lower-rated sites);
Domains with 5 or more referrals provide a solid foundation for measuring backlink success;
At least 30 and up for interesting search results in organic traffic.
Based on your goals and the overall number of outcomes, you may need to make some adjustments to the aforementioned baseline statistics.
Get a list of sites that each URL is referring traffic to.
URL Profiler and Screaming Frog are useful tools for quickly incorporating Ahrefs domain-level analytics into an existing list of URLs.
Simply add your list of URLs and connect either tool to the Ahrefs API. (Both are efficient, yet URL Profiler saves time because it requires less information from each URL.)
In the fourth stage, you’ll set up an organisational system for your data.
Domain-level information from URL Profiler or Screaming Frog can be added to the Content Explorer export file by adding a column and then using =VLOOKUP.
To find out how many sites are linking to a specific page, you can use the formula: referring domains / total domains.
Pinpoint the High Achievers
The list looks considerably different if you arrange by the percentage of referring domains:
The top 15 posts have an average Domain Rating of just 56.
Though they may not have as many links as the most popular pieces on a certain domain, these articles still contribute to the success of the site as a whole.
That’s why this dataset is so useful for research into the factors that make certain pieces of content on this topic popular.
Finding your competition’s “overachieving” material
Finding the overachieving content of your competitors is a good place to start if you’re at a loss for ideas.
We ran into this problem when trying to come up with ideas for an online store that specialised in making personalised t-shirts. We weren’t finding much when we searched for things like “custom apparel” and “custom t-shirt design” in particular.
The most effective ways to draw in our ideal customer base weren’t always tied to the core competencies of our business.
Identifying the competition
When discussing content marketing, the term “competitors” refers to any website that is vying for the attention of your target audience.
It’s common for this to include both direct rivals and allied companies, as well as well-known media outlets serving the sector.
A Site Explorer That Explores All Of The Competitors’ Sites
If you run the Top Content report, you’ll find that the report has been cleaned up quite well from the inclusion of the top-level pages like the homepage, service pages, etc.
Concluding Ideas
As content analysis involves the interpretation of large amounts of textual information by trained professionals, it will always involve some degree of subjectivity. Yet, if the analysis is based on inaccurate information, it will be useless.
Overachieving posts don’t usually make it to the top of lists of the “most linked” content, but by adding even a little bit of information, you get a new data set than your competitors use.