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6 Best Niches for Affiliate Marketing in 2022 (Profitable and Uncompetitive)

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Everyone knows that niches like fitness, travel and tech are lucrative affiliate marketing opportunities. But big broad niches like this are also fiercely competitive, making it hard for new sites to compete. 

For example, you’re hardly likely to outrank the likes of TechRadar, Wired, and The Verge anytime soon with your generic “tech” affiliate site. 

If you want to stand any chance at competing and getting traffic, you need to go narrower.

Here are a few affiliate niches that I think are crying out for a market leader: 

  1. Vacuum cleaners
  2. Hotels with jacuzzis
  3. Travel car seats
  4. Golf equipment
  5. Headphones and earbuds
  6. Zero waste

You’re probably already thinking that this niche sucks if you hate cleaning as much as I hate cleaning. But with an estimated 69K monthly searches for “best vacuum cleaner” according to Keywords Explorer, one thing’s for sure: this is a high ticket niche with plenty of traffic potential. 

Even better, competition is relatively sparse.

Here’s a DR25 site getting an estimated 37.7K monthly organic visits:

High traffic to a low DR vacuums affiliate site.

Who are the current players?

Most of the obvious keywords like “best vacuum cleaner” and “best robot vacuum” are hypercompetitive, with SERPs dominated by brands like Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, and Good Housekeeping. But there are plenty of sites getting decent traffic from lower competition long-tail queries. 

Here are a few of them: 

Although the monthly organic traffic numbers for these sites aren’t astronomical, it’s mostly affiliate content attracting that traffic. 

For example, ~83% of the organic traffic to Home Vacuum Zone goes to URLs containing the words “best,” “vs,” and “review”:

A vacuum reviews website with 80%+ of its traffic to affiliate posts.A vacuum reviews website with 80%+ of its traffic to affiliate posts.

It’s a similar story for Popular Vacuums, with 84% of traffic going to the same kinds of pages:

Another vacuum reviews website with 80%+ of its traffic to affiliate posts.Another vacuum reviews website with 80%+ of its traffic to affiliate posts.

However, if you look at the sites themselves, you’ll realize that they’re far from anything special. Most of them are ugly and feature typical affiliate content from folks who haven’t used the products. 

Example of a typical, ugly affiliate site in this niche.Example of a typical, ugly affiliate site in this niche.

There’s a serious opportunity to become the go-to resource for vacuum reviews for anyone willing to put in the effort and actually test some of these products. 

How much can you earn?

Most of the affiliate programs for vacuum cleaners offer somewhere between 3-8% commission. 

  • Amazon: 3%
  • Walmart: 4%
  • Bed Bath and Beyond: 7%
  • Target: up to 8%

That might not sound like much, especially at the lower end, but remember that vacuums are high-ticket items typically costing anywhere between $50 and $1,000. As a result, even a measly 3% commission from Amazon would net you between $1.50 and $30 a pop. 

Promote Bed Bath and Beyond’s affiliate program, and that rises to $3.50-$70.

You only have to sell a few vacuums through your affiliate links to make bank here.

How to do keyword research for this niche 

Besides reverse-engineering some of the sites above in Site Explorer, you’ll want to use a keyword research tool like Keywords Explorer to find three types of keywords:

  1. General comparison keywords. These follow the format “best [product type]”. E.g., “best vacuum cleaner,” “best robot vacuum cleaner,” etc.
  2. Branded comparison keywords. These follow the format “product [a] vs product [b]”. E.g., “roomba i3 vs i7,” “dyson hp02 vs hp04,” etc.
  3. Product review keywords. These follow the format “product [review]”. E.g., “dyson v15 review,” “irobot roomba 692 review,” etc.

Here’s how to do it for this niche:

General comparison keywords

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter the terms “vacuum” and “vacuums”
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “best” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
General comparison keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.General comparison keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.

You can also add the word “for” to the Include filter to hone in on keywords aimed at a specific demographic or task—which tend to be low competition. 

Low competition general comparison keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.Low competition general comparison keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.

Branded comparison keywords

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter vacuum cleaner brands like “miele,” “roomba,” “dyson”
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “vs” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
Branded comparison keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.Branded comparison keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.

Product review keywords

The process here is the same as for branded comparison keywords. Just add the word “review” to the Include filter instead. 

Product review keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.Product review keywords for the vacuum cleaner niche.

According to Keywords Explorer, there are an estimated 41K monthly searches for “hotels with jacuzzi in room” in the US. And the top-ranking page for this keyword gets an estimated 150K monthly visits:

Estimated traffic to the top-ranking page for 'hotels with jacuzzi in room.' Estimated traffic to the top-ranking page for 'hotels with jacuzzi in room.'

That’s an awful lot of people looking for hotels with jacuzzis, and there are also many searching for much the same thing in other, less competitive ways.

Who are the current players?

Quite a few low-authority sites are getting decent traffic in this niche:

If we check the Top Pages report for one of these sites, we see that pretty much all traffic goes to pages for specific locations: 

Estimated traffic to location-focused hotels with jacuzzis posts.Estimated traffic to location-focused hotels with jacuzzis posts.

Most of these pages are pretty much the same content-wise. They list a few hotels with hot tubs in the area, show a few photos, give a brief description, and link to an affiliate for “more information and prices.” 

One of the current players in the hotels with jacuzzis niche.One of the current players in the hotels with jacuzzis niche.

Other sites in the niche do almost the same thing:

Another player in the hotels with jacuzzis niche.Another player in the hotels with jacuzzis niche.

As with vacuum reviews, none of these sites look particularly nice or have much of a recognizable brand. They’re about as basic as it gets. This spells opportunity for any ambitious affiliate marketers out there. 

How much can you earn?

Many travel sites are quite secretive about their commission rates, with some simply stating the percentage of commission you get on their commission. This isn’t particularly useful, as who knows what their commission is? 

Nonetheless, here are a few popular travel sites with affiliate programs:

  • Agoda – 5% commission 
  • Expedia – up to 6% commission
  • Hotels.com – 4% commission
  • TripAdvisor – 50% commission (on their commission)
  • Kayak – 50% commission (on their commission)
  • Booking.com – No commission rate is stated, but most of the current players in this niche are promoting this program.

How to do keyword research for this niche

Most of the opportunity in this niche comes from searches for hotels with jacuzzis in various cities and states. Here’s how to find these in Keywords Explorer:

  1. Enter ‘hotel’ and ‘hotels’
  2. Go to Matching Terms report 
  3. Add ‘jacuzzi’ and ‘hot tub’ to the Include filter (make sure to select “Any word”)
  4. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)

It’s then simply a case of skimming the ideas for popular locations:

How to do keyword research for the hotels with jacuzzis niche. How to do keyword research for the hotels with jacuzzis niche.

You can also reverse-engineer current players in Site Explorer, as these have pretty much done the work for you already.

Although this might sound like a super small niche, there are tens of thousands of searches for travel car seats every month. Just look at the traffic potential for “travel car seats” alone: 

Estimated traffic potential for the keyword 'travel car seats' via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.Estimated traffic potential for the keyword 'travel car seats' via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

Who are the current players?

Despite the seemingly limited nature of the niche, quite a few low-authority sites are attracting a good amount of monthly search traffic:

If we check the Top Pages report for the first site (which gets the most traffic), we see that it has fewer than 100 pages in total. Yet it gets over 75K monthly organic visits: 

Estimated traffic to one of the current players in the travel car seats niche. Estimated traffic to one of the current players in the travel car seats niche.

Even more interestingly, over half of this traffic goes to just 29 affiliate pages with the words “best,” “review,” or “vs” in their URLs:

Estimated traffic to affiliate posts for one of the current players in the travel car seats niche.Estimated traffic to affiliate posts for one of the current players in the travel car seats niche.

Most of the other 70 pages are informational guides, such as this list of tips for flying with a car seat. This is a good sign as it means you only need to create a handful of affiliate pages to attract targeted affiliate traffic. 

How much can you earn?

Like in most niches, you can promote Amazon, which gives 3% commissions on baby products. There are also other superstores like Walmart that offer slightly higher commissions. But commissions really jump when you start looking at affiliate programs for specific brands and products. 

Here are a few of the options available: 

  • Amazon – 3% commission for baby products
  • Walmart – 4% commission
  • Saferide4kids.com – 10% commission
  • MiFold – 10% commission (with up to 12% for special offers)
  • Wayb.com – 10% commission

How to do keyword research for this niche

Like with vacuum reviews, you’re looking for three types of keywords to target in this niche: general comparisons, branded comparisons, and product reviews. Let’s look at how to find those in Keywords Explorer.

General comparison keywords

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter terms like “car seat,” “car seats,” “booster seat,” “booster seats,” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “best” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
General comparison keywords for the travel car seats niche.General comparison keywords for the travel car seats niche.

Branded comparisons

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter car seat brands like “uppababy” and “bugaloo”
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “vs” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
Branded comparison keywords for the travel car seat niche.Branded comparison keywords for the travel car seat niche.

Product reviews

The process here is the same as for branded comparison keywords. Just add the word “review” to the Include filter instead. 

Product review keywords for the travel car seats niche.Product review keywords for the travel car seats niche.

The golf equipment market is worth an estimated $6.51 billion, so unsurprisingly, there are hundreds of thousands of monthly searches for the best golf equipment. 

For example, there are 54K monthly searches just for “golf simulator,” and most of the top 10 results are affiliate posts listing top picks. Some are from relatively low-authority sites too: 

Top-ranking pages for 'golf simulator.'Top-ranking pages for 'golf simulator.'

Who are the current players?

Like with previous niches, most of the current players are typical low-to-medium-end affiliate sites with “okay” content at best. Here are a few of them:

Besides Golfalot and MyGolfSpy, none seem to be testing products firsthand but rather researching tech specs and customer reviews.

Excerpt from a top-ranking affiliate post.Excerpt from a top-ranking affiliate post.

There’s nothing wrong with this per se. Golf equipment is seriously expensive so you can hardly expect your average affiliate marketer to review everything firsthand. Nonetheless, it seems there’s an opportunity for someone serious to come in and create the goto site for golf equipment recommendations—either by reviewing products firsthand or going to town on the research. 

How much can you earn?

Like most niches, you can promote Amazon, which offers a 4% commission rate on golf equipment. But commissions are way higher from dedicated online golf stores. Here are just a few of them: 

Remember, golf equipment is expensive, so even commission rates of 4% can result in decent commissions.

How to do keyword research for this niche

Most of the opportunities revolve around the same three types of keywords we already covered. So let’s look at how to find them in this niche.

General comparison keywords

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter words like “golf,” “fairway wood,” “putter,” “putting,” “wedge” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “best” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
General comparison keywords for the golf equipment niche.General comparison keywords for the golf equipment niche.

Branded comparisons

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter golf equipment brands like “callaway,” “pxg,” “srixon,” “taylormade,” “titleist,” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “vs” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
Branded comparison keywords for the golf equipment niche.Branded comparison keywords for the golf equipment niche.

Product reviews

The process here is the same as for branded comparison keywords. Just add the word “review” to the Include filter instead. 

Product review keywords for the golf equipment niche.Product review keywords for the golf equipment niche.

5. Headphones and earbuds

As of 2019, the global earphones and headphones market is worth an estimated $25.1 billion. It’s also expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3% from 2020 to 2027. 

Unfortunately, affiliate marketers often overlook this niche because high-volume keywords like “best bluetooth headphones” are incredibly competitive. This keyword has a Keyword Difficulty (KD) score of 76, and huge brands like TechRadar and Wired dominate the SERP:

Top-ranking pages for 'best bluetooth headphones.'Top-ranking pages for 'best bluetooth headphones.'

But if you dig deeper, there are plenty of lower competition keywords with traffic potential to make this an interesting, low-hanging niche.

Who are the current players?

Most of the players in this niche focus on headphones but also review other audio equipment. Here are a few of them:

If you’re wondering why Headphonesty gets such a huge amount of traffic, it’s because most of its traffic goes to informational guides. This one on how to find a lost or stolen AirPod case gets an estimated 41K monthly search visits alone:

Estimated monthly organic traffic to a top-ranking post from a current player in the headphones niche.Estimated monthly organic traffic to a top-ranking post from a current player in the headphones niche.

However, it also gets plenty of traffic to affiliate pages. 

In fact, URLs containing “best,” “review,” and “vs” get an estimated 209K monthly search visits:

Estimated traffic to affiliate posts for a top-ranking affiliate site in the headphones niche.Estimated traffic to affiliate posts for a top-ranking affiliate site in the headphones niche.

It’s a similar story for the other players. Headphones Pro Review gets an estimated 86K monthly search visits to the same kinds of pages—which is ~60% of its total traffic. And there are only 106 pages attracting this traffic, too.

27-affiliate-posts-traffic-headphone-review-site27-affiliate-posts-traffic-headphone-review-site

However, take a look at these sites and it’s the same old story: they’re nothing special. With the exception of Headphonesty, most of the affiliate content is bog-standard stuff based on research rather than firsthand reviews. (You can always tell when this is the case as the sites use stock product images only).

This isn’t necessarily bad; some of these sites’ articles seem well-researched. But again, it presents an opportunity for an ambitious affiliate marketer to come along and steal the show.

How much can you earn?

Given that I’ve bought my last three pairs of headphones from Amazon, my purchasing habits lead me to believe that this is where most people buy headphones these days. Unfortunately, Amazon’s commission rate on headphones is just 3%. 

Luckily there are a few other affiliate programs with better commissions:

  • Target – up to 8%
  • 1more – 8%
  • B&H Photo Video – 8%
  • Adorama – 2% (yes, this is lower than Amazon, but they have a $500 average order size)
  • Walmart – 4%

Some of these sell other audio equipment too, so there’s plenty of scope to expand beyond headphones further down the line. 

How to do keyword research for this niche

It’s the same old story with this niche; you’re looking at targeting general comparison, branded comparison, and product review keywords. Here’s how to find them.

General comparison keywords

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter words like “earbuds,” “earpods,” “headphones,” “headsets,” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “best” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keyword
General comparison keywords for the headphones niche.General comparison keywords for the headphones niche.

You’ll notice that many of the low-difficulty keywords here relate to the best headphones for a specific task or certain type of person. So you might want to add “for” to the Include filter to hone in on these.

General comparison keywords for the headphones niche including the word 'for.'General comparison keywords for the headphones niche including the word 'for.'

TIP

If you see a lot of keywords like “best buy headphones” and “best buy wireless earbuds,” add the word “buy” to the Exclude filter to clean up the report. 

Branded comparisons

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter headphone brands like “1more,” “airpods,” “beats,” “jabra,” “skullcandy,” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “vs” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
Branded comparison keywords for the headphones niche.Branded comparison keywords for the headphones niche.

Product reviews

The process here is the same as for branded comparison keywords. Just add the word “review” to the Include filter instead. 

Product review keywords for the headphones niche.Product review keywords for the headphones niche.

Interest in living a more sustainable zero-waste lifestyle has ballooned in recent years, and so have searches for zero-waste products. Here’s the trend for “zero waste products” since 2004 via Google Trends:

Google Trends graph for the keyword 'zero waste products.'Google Trends graph for the keyword 'zero waste products.'

That said, this isn’t the biggest niche ever. However, it still has decent earning potential and isn’t overly competitive. 

Who are the current players?

Here are a few of the folks in this niche: 

If we check the Top Pages report for one of these sites, Sustainable Jungle, we see that they’re getting ~75% of their traffic to affiliate pages:

Estimated monthly organic traffic to affiliate posts on a current player in the zero-waste niche.Estimated monthly organic traffic to affiliate posts on a current player in the zero-waste niche.

However, most of that traffic goes to just one page about the best online thrift stores. There are still some affiliate links in this post, but even if we ignore it, the site is still getting ~27K monthly visitors to other affiliate posts.

In terms of the content itself, it’s the same old story: the affiliate reviews are seemingly all based on research rather than firsthand experience. This once again presents an opportunity to easily beat the competition when it comes to content quality by reviewing products yourself. It would probably also be quite easy to get many zero-waste brands to send you products to review for free—especially once you’ve built a bit of a following. 

How much can you earn?

The best thing about this niche is that tons of eco-friendly brands with affiliate programs offer generous commissions. Here are just a few of them:

How to do keyword research for this niche

You guessed it; it’s all about those general comparison, branded comparison, and review keywords.

General comparison keywords

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter words like “eco friendly,” “plastic free,” “zero waste,” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “best” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keyword
General comparison keywords for the zero-waste niche.General comparison keywords for the zero-waste niche.

Branded comparisons

  1. Go to Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter golf equipment brands like “who gives a crap,” “reel,” “cloudpaper,” etc.
  3. Go to Matching Terms report 
  4. Add the word “vs” to the Include filter 
  5. Set the KD filter to a maximum of 20 (optional – this filters for low-difficulty keywords)
Branded comparison keywords for the zero-waste niche.Branded comparison keywords for the zero-waste niche.

Product reviews

The process here is the same as for branded comparison keywords. Just add the word “review” to the Include filter instead. 

Product review keywords for the zero-waste niche.Product review keywords for the zero-waste niche.

How to find more affiliate niches

Most of the niches above were found using Content Explorer, a searchable database of billions of pages. Just search for pages with the word “best” in their titles and add these filters: 

  • English
  • Website traffic: 10K+
  • Website traffic value: 20K+
  • DR: 20 max
  • Filter explicit results
  • Filter for one page per domain

Sidenote.

Thanks to everyone’s favorite YouTuber, Sam Oh, for this tip.

Here’s what the results look like:

Searching for affiliate niches in Content Explorer.Searching for affiliate niches in Content Explorer.

It’s then simply a case of sifting through the results looking for affiliate niches. 

For example, this is how I found the golf equipment niche:

Example of an affiliate niche found in Content Explorer.Example of an affiliate niche found in Content Explorer.

You can find hundreds of lucrative niches using this method; it just takes a bit of time.

Final thoughts

Most of these niches might seem relatively narrow and limiting, but that’s a good thing. It means you won’t be competing with and struggling to outrank the big players. And remember, you can expand and broaden your horizons once you build some authority.

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.

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GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After ‘Unexpected’ Delays

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GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After 'Unexpected' Delays

OpenAI shares its plans for the GPT Store, enhancements to GPT Builder tools, privacy improvements, and updates coming to ChatGPT.

  • OpenAI has scheduled the launch of the GPT Store for early next year, aligning with its ongoing commitment to developing advanced AI technologies.
  • The GPT Builder tools have received substantial updates, including a more intuitive configuration interface and improved file handling capabilities.
  • Anticipation builds for upcoming updates to ChatGPT, highlighting OpenAI’s responsiveness to community feedback and dedication to AI innovation.

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96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here’s How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]

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96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]

It’s no secret that the web is growing by millions, if not billions of pages per day.

Our Content Explorer tool discovers 10 million new pages every 24 hours while being very picky about the pages that qualify for inclusion. The “main” Ahrefs web crawler crawls that number of pages every two minutes. 

But how much of this content gets organic traffic from Google?

To find out, we took the entire database from our Content Explorer tool (around 14 billion pages) and studied how many pages get traffic from organic search and why.

How many web pages get organic search traffic?

96.55% of all pages in our index get zero traffic from Google, and 1.94% get between one and ten monthly visits.

Distribution of pages by traffic from Content Explorer

Before we move on to discussing why the vast majority of pages never get any search traffic from Google (and how to avoid being one of them), it’s important to address two discrepancies with the studied data:

  1. ~14 billion pages may seem like a huge number, but it’s not the most accurate representation of the entire web. Even compared to the size of Site Explorer’s index of 340.8 billion pages, our sample size for this study is quite small and somewhat biased towards the “quality side of the web.”
  2. Our search traffic numbers are estimates. Even though our database of ~651 million keywords in Site Explorer (where our estimates come from) is arguably the largest database of its kind, it doesn’t contain every possible thing people search for in Google. There’s a chance that some of these pages get search traffic from super long-tail keywords that are not popular enough to make it into our database.

That said, these two “inaccuracies” don’t change much in the grand scheme of things: the vast majority of published pages never rank in Google and never get any search traffic. 

But why is this, and how can you be a part of the minority that gets organic search traffic from Google?

Well, there are hundreds of SEO issues that may prevent your pages from ranking well in Google. But if we focus only on the most common scenarios, assuming the page is indexed, there are only three of them.

Reason 1: The topic has no search demand

If nobody is searching for your topic, you won’t get any search traffic—even if you rank #1.

For example, I recently Googled “pull sitemap into google sheets” and clicked the top-ranking page (which solved my problem in seconds, by the way). But if you plug that URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you’ll see that it gets zero estimated organic search traffic:

The top-ranking page for this topic gets no traffic because there's no search demandThe top-ranking page for this topic gets no traffic because there's no search demand

This is because hardly anyone else is searching for this, as data from Keywords Explorer confirms:

Keyword data from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer confirms that this topic has no search demandKeyword data from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer confirms that this topic has no search demand

This is why it’s so important to do keyword research. You can’t just assume that people are searching for whatever you want to talk about. You need to check the data.

Our Traffic Potential (TP) metric in Keywords Explorer can help with this. It estimates how much organic search traffic the current top-ranking page for a keyword gets from all the queries it ranks for. This is a good indicator of the total search demand for a topic.

You’ll see this metric for every keyword in Keywords Explorer, and you can even filter for keywords that meet your minimum criteria (e.g., 500+ monthly traffic potential): 

Filtering for keywords with Traffic Potential (TP) in Ahrefs' Keywords ExplorerFiltering for keywords with Traffic Potential (TP) in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

Reason 2: The page has no backlinks

Backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking factors, so it probably comes as no surprise that there’s a clear correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and its traffic.

Pages with more referring domains get more trafficPages with more referring domains get more traffic
Pages with more referring domains get more traffic

Same goes for the correlation between a page’s traffic and keyword rankings:

Pages with more referring domains rank for more keywordsPages with more referring domains rank for more keywords
Pages with more referring domains rank for more keywords

Does any of this data prove that backlinks help you rank higher in Google?

No, because correlation does not imply causation. However, most SEO professionals will tell you that it’s almost impossible to rank on the first page for competitive keywords without backlinks—an observation that aligns with the data above.

The key word there is “competitive.” Plenty of pages get organic traffic while having no backlinks…

Pages with more referring domains get more trafficPages with more referring domains get more traffic
How much traffic pages with no backlinks get

… but from what I can tell, almost all of them are about low-competition topics.

For example, this lyrics page for a Neil Young song gets an estimated 162 monthly visits with no backlinks: 

Example of a page with traffic but no backlinks, via Ahrefs' Content ExplorerExample of a page with traffic but no backlinks, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer

But if we check the keywords it ranks for, they almost all have Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores in the single figures:

Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks forSome of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for

It’s the same story for this page selling upholstered headboards:

Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks forSome of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for

You might have noticed two other things about these pages:

  • Neither of them get that much traffic. This is pretty typical. Our index contains ~20 million pages with no referring domains, yet only 2,997 of them get more than 1K search visits per month. That’s roughly 1 in every 6,671 pages with no backlinks.
  • Both of the sites they’re on have high Domain Rating (DR) scores. This metric shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. Stronger sites like these have more PageRank that they can pass to pages with internal links to help them rank. 

Bottom line? If you want your pages to get search traffic, you really only have two options:

  1. Target uncompetitive topics that you can rank for with few or no backlinks.
  2. Target competitive topics and build backlinks to rank.

If you want to find uncompetitive topics, try this:

  1. Enter a topic into Keywords Explorer
  2. Go to the Matching terms report
  3. Set the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to max. 20
  4. Set the Lowest DR filter to your site’s DR (this will show you keywords with at least one of the same or lower DR ranking in the top 5)
Filtering for low-competition keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords ExplorerFiltering for low-competition keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

(Remember to keep an eye on the TP column to make sure they have traffic potential.)

To rank for more competitive topics, you’ll need to earn or build high-quality backlinks to your page. If you’re not sure how to do that, start with the guides below. Keep in mind that it’ll be practically impossible to get links unless your content adds something to the conversation. 

Reason 3. The page doesn’t match search intent

Google wants to give users the most relevant results for a query. That’s why the top organic results for “best yoga mat” are blog posts with recommendations, not product pages. 

It's obviously what searchers want when they search for "best yoga mats"It's obviously what searchers want when they search for "best yoga mats"

Basically, Google knows that searchers are in research mode, not buying mode.

It’s also why this page selling yoga mats doesn’t show up, despite it having backlinks from more than six times more websites than any of the top-ranking pages:

Page selling yoga mats that has lots of backlinksPage selling yoga mats that has lots of backlinks
Number of linking websites to the top-ranking pages for "best yoga mats"Number of linking websites to the top-ranking pages for "best yoga mats"

Luckily, the page ranks for thousands of other more relevant keywords and gets tens of thousands of monthly organic visits. So it’s not such a big deal that it doesn’t rank for “best yoga mats.”

Number of keyword rankings for the page selling yoga matsNumber of keyword rankings for the page selling yoga mats

However, if you have pages with lots of backlinks but no organic traffic—and they already target a keyword with traffic potential—another quick SEO win is to re-optimize them for search intent.

We did this in 2018 with our free backlink checker.

It was originally nothing but a boring landing page explaining the benefits of our product and offering a 7-day trial: 

Original landing page for our free backlink checkerOriginal landing page for our free backlink checker

After analyzing search intent, we soon realized the issue:

People weren’t looking for a landing page, but rather a free tool they could use right away. 

So, in September 2018, we created a free tool and published it under the same URL. It ranked #1 pretty much overnight, and has remained there ever since. 

Our rankings over time for the keyword "backlink checker." You can see when we changed the pageOur rankings over time for the keyword "backlink checker." You can see when we changed the page

Organic traffic went through the roof, too. From ~14K monthly organic visits pre-optimization to almost ~200K today. 

Estimated search traffic over time to our free backlink checkerEstimated search traffic over time to our free backlink checker

TLDR

96.55% of pages get no organic traffic. 

Keep your pages in the other 3.45% by building backlinks, choosing topics with organic traffic potential, and matching search intent.

Ping me on Twitter if you have any questions. 🙂



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Firefox URL Tracking Removal – Is This A Trend To Watch?

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Firefox URL Tracking Removal - Is This A Trend To Watch?

Firefox recently announced that they are offering users a choice on whether or not to include tracking information from copied URLs, which comes on the on the heels of iOS 17 blocking user tracking via URLs. The momentum of removing tracking information from URLs appears to be gaining speed. Where is this all going and should marketers be concerned?

Is it possible that blocking URL tracking parameters in the name of privacy will become a trend industrywide?

Firefox Announcement

Firefox recently announced that beginning in the Firefox Browser version 120.0, users will be able to select whether or not they want URLs that they copied to contain tracking parameters.

When users select a link to copy and click to raise the contextual menu for it, Firefox is now giving users a choice as to whether to copy the URL with or without the URL tracking parameters that might be attached to the URL.

Screenshot Of Firefox 120 Contextual Menu

Screenshot of Firefox functionality

According to the Firefox 120 announcement:

“Firefox supports a new “Copy Link Without Site Tracking” feature in the context menu which ensures that copied links no longer contain tracking information.”

Browser Trends For Privacy

All browsers, including Google’s Chrome and Chrome variants, are adding new features that make it harder for websites to track users online through referrer information embedded in a URL when a user clicks from one site and leaves through that click to visit another site.

This trend for privacy has been ongoing for many years but it became more noticeable in 2020 when Chrome made changes to how referrer information was sent when users click links to visit other sites. Firefox and Safari followed with similar referrer behavior.

Whether the current Firefox implementation would be disruptive or if the impact is overblown is kind of besides the point.

What is the point is whether or not what Firefox and Apple did to protect privacy is a trend and if that trend will extend to more blocking of URL parameters that are stronger than what Firefox recently implemented.

I asked Kenny Hyder, CEO of online marketing agency Pixel Main, what his thoughts are about the potential disruptive aspect of what Firefox is doing and whether it’s a trend.

Kenny answered:

“It’s not disruptive from Firefox alone, which only has a 3% market share. If other popular browsers follow suit it could begin to be disruptive to a limited degree, but easily solved from a marketers prospective.

If it became more intrusive and they blocked UTM tags, it would take awhile for them all to catch on if you were to circumvent UTM tags by simply tagging things in a series of sub-directories.. ie. site.com/landing/<tag1>/<tag2> etc.

Also, most savvy marketers are already integrating future proof workarounds for these exact scenarios.

A lot can be done with pixel based integrations rather than cookie based or UTM tracking. When set up properly they can actually provide better and more accurate tracking and attribution. Hence the name of my agency, Pixel Main.”

I think most marketers are aware that privacy is the trend. The good ones have already taken steps to keep it from becoming a problem while still respecting user privacy.”

Some URL Parameters Are Already Affected

For those who are on the periphery of what’s going on with browsers and privacy, it may come as a surprise that some tracking parameters are already affected by actions meant to protect user privacy.

Jonathan Cairo, Lead Solutions Engineer at Elevar shared that there is already a limited amount of tracking related information stripped from URLs.

But he also explained that there are limits to how much information can be stripped from URLs because the resulting negative effects would cause important web browsing functionality to fail.

Jonathan explained:

“So far, we’re seeing a selective trend where some URL parameters, like ‘fbclid’ in Safari’s private browsing, are disappearing, while others, such as TikTok’s ‘ttclid’, remain.

UTM parameters are expected to stay since they focus on user segmentation rather than individual tracking, provided they are used as intended.

The idea of completely removing all URL parameters seems improbable, as it would disrupt key functionalities on numerous websites, including banking services and search capabilities.

Such a drastic move could lead users to switch to alternative browsers.

On the other hand, if only some parameters are eliminated, there’s the possibility of marketers exploiting the remaining ones for tracking purposes.

This raises the question of whether companies like Apple will take it upon themselves to prevent such use.

Regardless, even in a scenario where all parameters are lost, there are still alternative ways to convey click IDs and UTM information to websites.”

Brad Redding of Elevar agreed about the disruptive effect from going too far with removing URL tracking information:

“There is still too much basic internet functionality that relies on query parameters, such as logging in, password resets, etc, which are effectively the same as URL parameters in a full URL path.

So we believe the privacy crackdown is going to continue on known trackers by blocking their tracking scripts, cookies generated from them, and their ability to monitor user’s activity through the browser.

As this grows, the reliance on brands to own their first party data collection and bring consent preferences down to a user-level (vs session based) will be critical so they can backfill gaps in conversion data to their advertising partners outside of the browser or device.”

The Future Of Tracking, Privacy And What Marketers Should Expect

Elevar raises good points about how far browsers can go in terms of how much blocking they can do. Their response that it’s down to brands to own their first party data collection and other strategies to accomplish analytics without compromising user privacy.

Given all the laws governing privacy and Internet tracking that have been enacted around the world it looks like privacy will continue to be a trend.

However, at this point it time, the advice is to keep monitoring how far browsers are going but there is no expectation that things will get out of hand.

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