the 37 domains that link to every major SEO tool

we keep running the same experiment on different niches: take a category's biggest players, pull every domain that links to them from common crawl, and keep the ones that link to the whole set. project management tools gave 35, website builders 27, ai writing tools 34. this time we pointed it at the seo tools themselves, and 37 domains link to all eight. reading that list tells you exactly where this niche's links live.

how we pulled this

eight tools: ahrefs, semrush, moz, majestic, serpstat, se ranking, spyfu, and surfer. for each one we pulled its referring domains, ranked by cg_authority from the common crawl webgraph, then intersected the eight lists. the headline numbers, by total referring domains:

backlink overlap is a pyramid (again)

across the eight tools there were 9,687 unique linking domains, and the shape is the same one we have now seen in four unrelated categories:

67 percent of linking domains link to only one of the eight tools. only 37 non-platform domains link to all eight. and among domains that link to four or more tools, 98 percent are real editorial sites, with just 2 percent platform noise. it is the same pattern every time: a wide base of one-off mentions, and a thin tip of a few dozen domains that link to the entire category.

the 37 domains that link to all eight

here is the tip of the pyramid, the domains that link to every one of the eight seo tools, ranked by authority:

domains linking to ALL 8 seo tools, by cg authority:

shopify.com (79)                  hubspot.com (70)
sharethis.com (69)                entrepreneur.com (66)
kinsta.com (60)                   explodingtopics.com (60)
oberlo.com (59)                   marketingprofs.com (59)
searchenginejournal.com (59)      business2community.com (59)
clickup.com (58)                  mention.com (58)
seroundtable.com (58)             coschedule.com (57)
backlinko.com (57)                scoop.it (56)
influencermarketinghub.com (56)   geekflare.com (55)
hongkiat.com (55)                 seoptimer.com (54)
travelpayouts.com (53)            thimpress.com (53)
spocket.co (53)                   plerdy.com (51)
ranktracker.com (51)              digitalinformationworld.com (51)
ipullrank.com (50)                thedigitalprojectmanager.com (49)
agencyanalytics.com (49)          entireweb.com (48)
seonews.ru (48)                   trickyenough.com (47)
wikimint.com (46)                 easkme.com (46)
getsocialguide.com (46)           sitepronews.com (45)
alliai.com (43)

37 domains link to all eight.

the playbook this niche hands you

unlike the ai writing tools, where the linkers were a wall of ai directories, the seo niche's universal linkers split cleanly into three clusters, and each is an instruction:

the seo trade press and influencers (searchenginejournal, seroundtable, backlinko, marketingprofs, influencermarketinghub, ipullrank, sitepronews, business2community, digitalinformationworld). these are the publications that define the niche, and they link to every tool because they cover the whole space. a mention here is both a link and a credibility signal.

the "best seo tools" roundup and affiliate blogs (geekflare, hongkiat, kinsta, oberlo, spocket, travelpayouts, explodingtopics, trickyenough, easkme, wikimint, getsocialguide). these run the listicles people search for, and getting added to an existing "best [category] tools 2026" post is the single fastest link in this niche.

the marketing-tool ecosystem cross-linking itself (hubspot, clickup, coschedule, agencyanalytics, mention, ranktracker, seoptimer, plerdy, alliai). adjacent tools link out to the established names in glossaries, comparisons, and integration pages. partner content and integrations are the way in here, not cold outreach.

the overlap is not guessing for you. it is naming the exact 37 sites where this category's links concentrate, sorted by the authority the webgraph trusts most.

the newcomer proof

here is the part that should matter to anyone launching into a crowded niche. serpstat has 3,282 referring domains and spyfu 5,220, a small fraction of ahrefs' 100,000-plus. yet both sit on the same all-eight list, reached by the same universal linkers. you do not need to match the leader on link volume. you need the few dozen trade publications and roundup pages that link to the category as a habit. that gap is short and specific, not an ocean.

how to do this for your own niche

the method is category-agnostic. pick your two or three closest competitors, pull their referring domains, and keep the ones that link to several of them but not to you, sorted by overlap and then authority. that is exactly what a backlink gap analysis does, and you can run it free on the same common crawl data we used here. enter your domain plus a few competitors and you get the ranked, noise-filtered overlap in seconds. the free tier shows your top gaps; the lifetime plan ($99, one time) unlocks the full list, csv export, and an api.

every one of these studies ends the same way, because the data does: find the domains that link to your competitors but not you, and you have found both your outreach list and the publications that define your niche. for the seo tools, it is 37 names long, and now you have it.