Links research - Masters of SEO

3 entries

Weak Feb 2026

Pages with an exact-match internal anchor get about 5x the traffic

Cyrus Shepard, Zyppy

URLs with 0 to 4 internal links averaged about 2 Google clicks; URLs with 40 to 44 internal links got roughly 4 times that, after which the effect reversed past about 45 to 50 links. Pages with at least one exact-match internal anchor had at least 5 times more traffic than pages without one. Anchor text variety correlated with traffic so consistently that Shepard re-ran the analysis three times.

Disputed Apr 2025

More backlinks correlate with higher Google rankings

Brian Dean, Backlinko

The number 1 result had on average 3.8x more backlinks than the pages ranking in positions 2 to 10. Backlinko also reported that around 95% of all pages have zero backlinks.

Disputed Dec 2023

Pages with more referring domains correlate with more organic traffic

Ahrefs

Of roughly 20 million pages with no referring domains, only 2,997 get more than 1,000 search visits per month. Ahrefs reports a clear positive relationship between the number of websites linking to a page and its traffic.

Compiled and maintained by James Burfield. Every entry credits the researcher who did the work.