[Estimated read time: 7 minutes]
As a startup founder myself, it feels weird to talk about startups through the lens of backlinks. After all, there are so many other things to worry about — how’s my cash flow? Are my employees getting paid? How does the deal flow look? Are we going to hit our targets for this month/quarter? Why is the website/app so slow? Did that vendor pay us that huge amount they owe?
What if I told you that I’ve seen (and helped) companies land funding off the back of solid SEO practices, including link acquisition and content creation? By integrating SEO into PR, outreach, and content initiatives, one specific startup has gone on to do great things.
Startups need to care about marketing
Startups should care about marketing, too. While the SF Bay Area, where I live, is all aflutter over “growth hacking” and some well-known investors are telling startups to not focus on marketing, I tend to disagree with them. (Of course, I’m a marketer!)
Whether or not startups should be doing PR and paid acquisition (I’d argue they should be doing a bit of both), SEO is beautiful in that it sits across or is in constant discussion with a lot of the “marketing” activities — PR, content, email, paid. Want to grow your company and get feedback on your new product faster? You need to be thinking about SEO.
A holistic marketing process
But as we all know, the different marketing channels all work together to help with SEO. Gone are the days of putting content online and predicting where it will rank and for which keywords. Your PR efforts can be very effective in building links for SEO as well as driving referral traffic back to your site, increasing those ever-important signups or purchases. As a startup, showing traction can help you get more mentions from sites that help with VC deal intelligence — sites like Mattermark, Tracxn.com, and Pitchbook. And getting mentioned on these sites can drive more mentions, which build links and drive referral traffic. It’s a virtuous cycle!
Because I’m very interested in how startups get traction and build their companies, I wanted to look at where the top 100 startups, according to Pitchbook’s valuation metric (thanks to Rob Toledo for the data), get links from.
My hope for this post is twofold. First, to educate you about how startups build links these days, and second, to show startups where they should be looking to get links. Of course, I’d be remiss to not also point out that you don’t just want to copy what your competitors are doing. Think about the mentions that will actually get you in front of your target audience. We all want to be written up in Techcrunch, but unless your true customers are VCs or other startups, you likely won’t see a bump from this (though you should retarget all of these visitors and try to get their emails so you can qualify them through your marketing funnel).
Ok, with all of that out of the way, let’s begin!
Who are the top startups?
It’s not necessary to list all of the startups I pulled the linking domains for, simply because the list would be long and that’s not what this post is about. The criteria that we used to pull the startups was fairly simple. I didn’t want the huge ones that everyone's heard of (e.g. Uber), but I wanted startups that have shown some traction and were able to close a round of funding. The criteria were:
- The top 100 Angel–Series B companies...
- Sorted by valuation...
- That have raised financing from January 1st 2014–present.
This way, we get current companies that are assumedly still alive and building. This includes companies like Porch.com, Tilt.com, ZipRecruiter, Tune, and Mapbox.
Enough already. Give me the links!
Patience, my friend! Here are the top 55 domains that appear most often within the backlink reports (pulled from Open Site Explorer, of course) of the top 100 startups:
|
Domain |
# of Appearances |
|---|---|
|
techcrunch.com/ |
56 |
|
blogspot.com/ |
42 |
|
xconomy.com/ |
41 |
|
prnewswire.com/ |
40 |
|
vator.tv/ |
40 |
|
businessinsider.com/ |
38 |
|
constantcontact.com/ |
33 |
|
pinterest.com/ |
33 |
|
thenextweb.com/ |
32 |
|
medium.com/ |
31 |
|
huffingtonpost.com/ |
29 |
|
mashable.com/ |
29 |
|
wordpress.com/ |
29 |
|
youtube.com/ |
29 |
|
entrepreneur.com/ |
28 |
|
tumblr.com/ |
28 |
|
businessinsider.com.au/ |
27 |
|
meetup.com/ |
26 |
|
pivotl.com |
26 |
|
weebly.com/ |
26 |
|
fortune.com/ |
25 |
|
inc.com/ |
25 |
|
github.io/ |
24 |
|
yahoo.com/ |
24 |
|
examiner.com/ |
23 |
|
flavors.me/ |
23 |
|
prlog.ru/ |
23 |
|
reddit.com/ |
23 |
|
wsj.com/ |
23 |
|
zdnet.com/ |
23 |
|
buzzfeed.com/ |
22 |
|
eventbrite.com/ |
22 |
|
internetdealbook.com/ |
22 |
|
prweb.net/ |
22 |
|
wired.com/ |
22 |
|
fastcompany.com/ |
21 |
|
tinyletter.com/ |
21 |
|
virtual-strategy.com/ |
21 |
|
allmyfaves.com/ |
20 |
|
itjuzi.com/ |
20 |
|
marketwired.com/ |
20 |
|
stackshare.io/ |
20 |
|
businessinsider.co.id/ |
19 |
|
whogotfunded.com/ |
19 |
|
wmtips.com/ |
19 |
|
hubspot.com/ |
18 |
|
recode.net/ |
18 |
|
socialmediatoday.com/ |
18 |
|
stackoverflow.com/ |
18 |
|
techcrunch.cn/ |
18 |
|
time.com/ |
18 |
|
tracxn.com/ |
18 |
|
trendhunter.com/ |
18 |
|
brit.co/ |
17 |
|
cnbc.com/ |
17 |
You’ve probably heard of many of these sites, as they tend to be the ones that a lot of us in the technology world read (for better or for worse).
I was then curious about the type of links these are. So, I went through and categorized them accordingly. Remember, there are 55 unique domains here so this isn’t quite representative of all of their links, but if you’re looking to build a bed of links for your company this should give you an idea of the channels that work:
As you can tell, by far the most common are from PR, then placed by the startup themselves on their profiles around the web (think Crunchbase), then links that are editorially given. Interestingly, we also see that email providers that by default make the emails sent public (like MailChimp) get crawled and the links counted.
How "normal" are their backlink profiles?
The next question I asked myself was how natural-looking their backlink profiles are. To do this, I graphed the Domain Authorities of all the domains pulled from OSE as linking to these sites. To make it as accurate as possible, I de-duplicated the domains before making this graph.
For many of us who have been in the SEO world for years, this graph should look pretty familiar. Years ago, we would often talk about natural link profiles and point out how many sites who hadn’t engaged in active link building, targeting sites with high Domain Authority, would often see a left-leaning bell curve. This is exactly what we see above. Basically, the reason we expect to see this is that Domain Authority works on an exponential scale. It’s quite easy to go from 0 to 20, but then becomes progressively harder to move that needle. It works a lot like PageRank in that way. So, there are a lot of sites online with a DA under 30–35 and not as many above.
I’ll be honest though when I say that it’s been quite a while since I looked at the link graphs of many sites. So let’s compare the above to a few other sites that have some links. Remember, we’re just looking for directional patterns, not prescriptions.
My personal site, johnfdoherty.com
Uber’s corporate site, uber.com
As you can see, the overall link spread of the top 100 startups is pretty in line with what one could consider "normal." I'm sure you can find anomalies at an individual site level, but at a 10,000-foot view, they’re natural. This is important because it means that at least most of these startups are not actively manipulating the link graph in a way that could hurt them in the future. Basically, don’t pull a Thumbtack.
Do links vary by stage of company?
The final question I had was how each startup’s site varies with domain authority and number of linking root domains by stage of company (seed, Series A, Series B). Intuition tells me that the further along the company is, the more links it will have and the stronger their site will be. But is this what the data tell us?
To get this data, I used the Moz API to pull the metrics via a Google doc cobbled together from many places. The final working one was sent to me by Tim Allen at Distilled London. Thanks man. I pulled the Series level (Angel, Series A, Series B) from Mattermark’s company profile pages. I had to remove two companies, one Series A and one Funding Unknown, because OSE had no link metrics.
Here are the average number of links (not linking root domains) by Funding Series.
This chart is a bit misleading, however, because one Series A company (Crowdrise) and one Series B company (Porch) have exponentially more links than the other sites in the dataset. Porch has, according to Moz, 142k external links, while Crowdrise has 40k. The next highest is Canva at 18.5k, and the average across all the rest after Porch and Crowdrise is 1,695.
When we remove Porch and Crowdrise from the dataset as outliers, we get a much clearer view of the landscape. Series A companies still have more links on average than Series B or C, which may be explained by the increasing proliferation of tech blogs and the recent funding boom that that occurred in 2013–2015 (which now seems to be cooling). Here’s the look:
Takeaways
So what can we take away from all of this? First of all, let’s all remember that links are a lagging indicator of success, but they can also to some degree tell us who's popular. And of course, the more quality and high-authority links you have, the better you will rank.
Second, remember the first graph. The ways that the top startups build links are via:
- PR
- Placed links (profiles, etc.)
- Editorial
- Blogs
It seems that social bookmarking is dead as a linkbuilding tactic for startups. I’m heartened by this, as it seems that startups focus (as they should) on links from places that will also drive them traffic. If you're looking for inspiration and more tactics around how to build links, I definitely recommend checking out the Link Building category of the Moz blog.
What takeaways or further questions do you have?
I know Sam Scott is somewhere smiling broadly after reading this post :D
Effective PR is an all-important element for startups and big brands, and not always for the reasons we assume. From my experience, PR provides serves as a sort of constant "health check" for brands, ensuring that they are committed to creating, sharing and promoting worthwhile products and/or services.
If a brand is committed to those three elements, link building is an afterthought.
The problem, though, is most brands lack empathy for the people on the other end of the link, er, phone, preferring to think that everything they do is worthy of PR mentions or a link. And when either or both are slow in coming, they lose tolerance for PR, seeing it as useful only in certain scenarios.
PR isn't the problem; mindset is the issue.
RS
Well said as always, Ronell, and that's exactly what I was trying to get across. They're doing real marketing (PR) and building something people want. They're not focusing on links, but they're still getting them from great websites!
I'm so glad you talked about this. Useful, helpful quality information will always do more than 'just' linkbuilding.. and if you build worthwhile content, they will come. <insert field of dreams reference>
John, thanks for taking the time to research and write this post! (Ronell, you'll see my initial comment hours ago elsewhere in this thread, LOL.)
I just had one question: Can you clarify the difference between PR / Editorial / Blog links?
In my experience, nearly all of those links are attributable to publicity. There's a branch of PR and publicity called blogger relations, and it's similar but still different from media relations. The goal is to get bloggers to write about you. Often, bloggers will write about you after seeing you mentioned in the mainstream press.
Most of those links will be "editorial" links as well. So, unless I'm misinterpreting things, I'd love to get a clarification when you have time.
Again, great post! I'm actually citing the three Moz Blog posts on publicity this month in a webinar presentation that I'm creating exactly at this moment. :)
Hey Sam -
Sorry, missed your question! Good to know how you think about PR vs blogger outreach/relations. I agree that a lot of bloggers find out about companies through traditional PR mentions, but I also doubt that many startups have a blogger relations person.
Thus, how I broke them down are:
Does that help?
Nice article, I just want to add few things. When I have started digital marketing I was thinking more about PR, backlinks etc. But over the period of time I have realised if you will give love, you will get the link. So focus on reputation building because sometimes you get the backlink but you don't get the real value or benefit of PR.
Good research John. Thanks. :)
This really looks like Start Ups get most of their links from PR rather than from SEO. What are your thoughts for the first 'marketing' hire that a startup should make - PR, SEO or Social? I ask because I work in a tech incubator and most of the startups here have no idea how to market and so they fluff around with 3 posts a day on facebook to their 300 followers...
The first question is not whether you should hire a "PR," "SEO," or "Social Person." The first question is to decide on what you will prioritize in your Promotion Mix. Here's a basic summary.
Direct marketing -- Sending marketing collateral directly to a list of specific people or a targeted audience with the hopes of getting some type of a direct response (a purchase, a download, or something else). Direct marketing includes direct mail, e-mail campaigns, most mobile marketing, and most online "advertising." ***
Personal selling -- Hiring a sales team to persuade people directly to do something.
Advertising -- Building a brand and generating mass awareness through identified placements in mass media outlets. This can lead to more people hearing about and then finding you.
Publicity -- Getting spread organically and subtly over earned and owned media. This can lead to more people hearing about and then finding you.
Sales promotion -- This is not really relevant here (unless you're trying to steal people away from a specific competitor).
*** Yes, most online advertising is actually direct marketing and not advertising.
Each strategy has its pros and cons. But once you decide, you'll need to decide what general channels (offline versus online) and then what specific ones you will use. Then, you'll need to hire an expert in that strategy who knows how to use those channels well.
Very good post, an impressive research. Certainly can help a lot on how design a link building campaign for new startups. Thanks for sharing
Very useful post AND I love Samuel Scott's point on "If you're going to use that type of logic, then every single link that anyone obtains through any manner is "purchased."
Everything in the world costs either time or money (or both). If I pay a few people $1000 total to put a few links on their websites, then I am directly paying $1000 for links. (Not that I would ever recommend doing this.)
But if I pay a publicist $1000 to try to persuade a few journalists to write articles that happen to contain links to my website, then I am not directly paying -- I am paying for the publicist's time andthat is an indirect result because the journalists are the ones who ultimately decide whether to write the articles and whether to include links."
That is a great addendum to the article since it raises the question, how do you "properly" do link building? Even when you build the most creative and useful infographic, you reach out to a strong blog crew aren't you still "paying" to have the infographic shared by your time and effort? Or is that the only white hat version of link building you can do?
It's a tough game for the little guy to get a break in the world where the big fish are using "teams" to link build when a start up is using 16 hours a day, seven days a week with (maybe) a team of maybe two to get things rolling and do white hat link building.
Thanks for sharing.
Informative post.
link building is very very important part of SEO and this Obviously is some help.
I always feel that a backlink from these 9 websites have huge impact on SEO and rankings of website, I have tried examiner, blogspot, pinnterest etc links but they are no game changers when it comes to link building and impact of link building in Search.
Tnx
It's great. Good contribution
This was very informative, was a little shocked to see more backlinks from DA < 20, and that PR was king of the backlink game, it makes sense, but seems like that would changed based on the subject matter being focused on. However I'm curious since this had more to do with technology type companies, which has a much easier taste in the mouth to read / engage in. How would a startup that is in a niche industry such as plumbing sales or countertop sales manage to get other sites to link to them, besides sending out customer based resource links?
If DA / backlinks in general are a popularity game, in these niche industries, the big time manufacturers gain page 1 while the ecommerce sites that sell their wares fight for page 2 - 3. The funny part of that is the manufacturers don't sell to consumers, they sell to the ecommerce sites that then sell to consumers, page 1 in this case seems to be wasted on sites that already are known and often scan passed.
How would you handle niche industries for backlinks?
Hi Deacyde -
First off, it's not just about popularity. It's about relevance.
There are two great resources already on this, so I'm going to link you over there:
Good luck!
Brilliant post John!!
A different idea. Never thought that backlink generation for startups can be analyzed in depth like this.
Appreciate your efforts. Thankful to you!!
Well, startup businesses, for me, will get their links from the target audiences and those around. But the most important thing here is that they must know the way to create alluring and hot stories about their chosen keywords!
Great article. I do agree, though, that links are always an afterthought and is a lagging indicator of success.
Thanks, very interesting post. To market and not have neither product nor process can be very dangerous. your post opens lots of questions about when for each case the moment arrives to put more petrol on PR.... if it is too early it wont´be effective. If it is too late, well, it can already be too late then!
Absolutely amazing study of start-up link profiles! The link graphs look very interesting especially because there's a common perception that one must strives to acquire links only from sites that have DA higher than 40, as they believe getting links from lower authority sites can harm your link profile. I think this post doesn't just set the benchmark for start-ups from their SEO perspective, but shatters quite a myths as well. Waiting more studies like this from you, John!
building natural backlinks are becoming a serious thing in the SEO world. The mentioned domains may provide valuable links, but is that submitting a site to high PR directories will look as natural link or as spammy.
Worth reading post thanks John for the highly research piece of content. I believe this is the era where you earn links by producing something very unique and valuable which adds value to the community.
useful article. Link building for a startup company is very important as it would decide its growth.
Startups can get lost in the noise so having a good Public Relations boost will definitely help to get traction. Thank you for making it clear.
Wanda Halpert
Thanks John for putting too many efforts to create an awesome tip. As as startup marketer, I have seen PR, and Creating resource (it can be creating plugins, guidelines, and tutorials) is the best source to get attention, but at the same time we can not avoid blogging and local citation (placed profile links.) SO overall you had explained very well
Hi John. Congratulations on the research work behind this post. If we think we should be very interesting to get links from these Start Ups.
Thank you very much
Great Post! We are a small business that's always looking for new ways to get natural backlinks so thanks a lot for the backlink listings. We at Epic Interactive Media Inc. will for sure try them out. I also like the takeaway section of the blog, it's a clear way of pointing out the added value of this post. I will incorporate a takeaway section into my blogs as well.
Thanks again for the information!
that great article !! . An excellent information for small and medium businesses that do not have resources to invest a professional seo. Check the various web sites is incredible the PA and DA they have. I have a question: what can occupy another technique to climb ranking of my website ?. Of course I appreciate your willingness . Greetings. Thank you very much.
Backlink is not the only factor to rank well; yeah it poses some importance until unless that comes from high quality contents having good reputation. One should focus on those backlinks that provides traffic also. One thing that bothers is websites you listed like tumbler, weebly all are quality sites from where we can get good amount of backlinks but how to derive good amount of traffic?
One should focus on those backlinks that provides traffic also.
One should not focus on backlinks at all.
One thing I hope we have learned after all of the recent posts on PR and publicity is that we need to stop thinking about links directly at all. Think about how to do good PR and get good publicity, and the links will take care of themselves.*
* Yes, a few links can be gained through direct outreach to things like resource lists, and people should use tools to find out about mentions without links. But publicity campaigns are the only "linkbuilding" technique that is continuously and indefinitely viable over the long-term.
Good research, all us know how important in link building, but most of the companies don't have a real strategy and link building campaign, this study can be very helpful for them
Nice research and post about how to do initial marketing, earning backlink for startup and acquiring backlinks from various source. You post list of 55 unique domain in your blog post that was helpful for many startups and small websites who needs High DA backlinks for their website.
Great research, but no surprises here, would have hoped that startup research would reveal unique findings.
Also it seems links are just part of the story in many startups that focus on apps, as app performance and marketing is key to their performance in that domain
A lot of valuable information and pointers for someone who only just started discovering and dabbled with SEO. Alas, to us it raised more questions than it answered!
1 - Isn't PR equivalent to paying for links - which is a not-recommended practice? At the same time, how would editorial and blog links appear without the initial PR links? An earlier Moz link building tutorial recommended "seeding" links through a handful of key bloggers - would that be considered PR?
2 - Are “Placed” links (i.e. the ones created as part of public profiles e.g. on CrunchBase) treated differently by search engines than backlinks placed in online directories? This is especially important to us because one of the benefits provided by VLADSLIST are the backlinks on the clients' public profile and service ad pages.
3 – Regarding the distribution of the link types – are the type and the corresponding quantities equally beneficial? E.g. do PR links provide more value in terms of affecting DA and PageRank score than Placed links?
Again, thanks for the great info!
Isn't PR equivalent to paying for links - which is a not-recommended practice?
A comment of mine elsewhere in the thread:
If you're going to use that type of logic, then every single link that anyone obtains through any manner is "purchased."
Everything in the world costs either time or money (or both). If I pay a few people $1000 total to put a few links on their websites, then I am directly paying $1000 for links. (Not that I would ever recommend doing this.)
But if I pay a publicist $1000 to try to persuade a few journalists to write articles that happen to contain links to my website, then I am not directly paying -- I am paying for the publicist's time and that is an indirect result because the journalists are the ones who ultimately decide whether to write the articles and whether to include links.
The basic point: If Google would penalize links that are earned through (paid) publicity campaigns, then we would see every single company get hit on organic rankings every single time it gets a lot of media attention. But that is simply not happening.
An earlier Moz link building tutorial recommended "seeding" links through a handful of key bloggers - would that be considered PR?
That's a publicity act (most people say "PR" when they mean "publicity"). You can read more about the topic in my recent Moz post.
Interesting that bulk of links are PR. Obviously Google gives these credence or these start-ups wouldn't being doing well. I would have thought that Google would discount links like that since they are essentially purchased but I guess you get credibility for spending the cash.
Obviously Google gives these credence or these start-ups wouldn't being doing well.
You do know that there is a whole world of marketing out there that is not about Google and links, right? Even if Google did not exist, the publicity that these startups had received would still have been immensely valuable. Not everything is about SEO -- in fact, a lot of marketing is not.
I would have thought that Google would discount links like that since they are essentially purchased
If you're going to use that type of logic, then every single link that anyone obtains through any manner is "purchased."
Everything in the world costs either time or money (or both). If I pay a few people $1000 total to put a few links on their websites, then I am directly paying $1000 for links. (Not that I would ever recommend doing this.)
But if I pay a publicist $1000 to try to persuade a few journalists to write articles that happen to contain links to my website, then I am not directly paying -- I am paying for the publicist's time andthat is an indirect result because the journalists are the ones who ultimately decide whether to write the articles and whether to include links.
This...
But if I pay a publicist $1000 to try to persuade a few journalists to write articles that happen to contain links to my website, then I am not directly paying -- I am paying for the publicist's time and that is an indirect result because the journalists are the ones who ultimately decide whether to write the articles and whether to include links.
*** clears throat ***
Lol
Would love to see the answer to Samuel's question above as well in terms of clarifying between the 3 links mentioned.
Nice breakdown - look at techcrunch up at the top.... going to have to set up more profiles there are part of my routine. Thanks for the info
going to have to set up more profiles there
To do what, exactly?
The goal here isn't to show how to spam Techcrunch and get unearned links. The goal is to show that startups doing great and interesting things are ALSO getting links from places like TC that are driving real traffic and customers back to them. Big difference.
I'm super curious now as to the rest of your "routine".... And how that's working out for you.
Very useful blogs for the startup to get Good link from the High PR website
Nice Post, I agree to many points here.. :)
Nice and very informative post. However i have never tried MOZ pro but will sure try it out.
Businesses won't get anywhere if they don't do some form of marketing and sales. It's finding out what works for the individual business and what avenue is most cost effective.
Brilliant post. I agree most of the valid points that you made.
A great post with a lot of information, one of the best post I've read on the blog MOZ :)
Excellent summary!
Useful post, thank you.
Thank John Doherty so much!
Your post is very helpful!