Typeform's SEO strategy to get 106M backlinks!

Link building is single most important thing you'll work on in your SEO journey. Although, traditional processes are effective but they are tedious. So let's learn how Typeform scaled its link building process!

2nd March 2022
3 min read

In a nutshell

Typeform is a master of link buildding. For a company valued at $70M, it has a crazy 106M backlinks!

But, how exactly do they do this? Well, suppose you create a Typeform. You are very likely to
- share it on social media
- add it to your blogs
- embed it on your website.

When you embed this form on the website, the snippet that appears has a text saying "Powered by Typeform".

If you look at the snippet code closely, you can clearly see that there is a link added to the text "Typeform".

So, if you decide to embed this code, your website will essentially link back to Typeform, helping increase its authority!

Now, imagine this at scale. Typeform has thousands of users. They all have probably created multiple forms and surveys. That's thousands of backlinks to Typeform without lifting a finger! Brilliant, right?!


"Google only loves you when everyone else loves you" — is THE golden rule when it comes to SEO.

No matter how well you SEO optimize your pages, at the end of the day, your website's authority will either push you to success or hold you back.

Now, the only way to increase your website's authority is through link building. And, Typeform, is literally, the KING of link building!

Typeform is a relatively small company, but its massive backlinks profile would hint otherwise. Its current valuation is $70M, while it has accumulated a crazy 106M backlinks!

So, how was Typeform able to do this? Read on to find out!

Why link buildd-ing is important?

Before, we get into the specifics of Typeform's strategy, let's first understand why link building is important.

In SEO, link building includes all the actions you take to get quality backlinks.

A backlink refers to links to your page from any other page on the web.

For Google, every link to your website is basically a popularity vote. The more votes you have, the more likely you are to rank at top positions.

While Google doesn’t reveal the exact metric it uses, tools like Ahrefs, Moz etc. have analyzed billions of websites to come up with their own metric. On Ahrefs, it’s called domain rating (DR) and it’s basically a number between 0-100 that's assigned to your website.

Of course, a vote from a high DR website adds much more value than a vote from a lower DR website. By acquiring good quality backlinks, you can increase your website authority.

There are a number of ways to get backlinks. The most effective is to write guest posts and create focused outreach campaigns to high DR websites. But, it's usually a tedious process.

So how exactly did Typeform do this at scale?

How does Typeform buildd links at scale?

Typeform is a simple form builder. It helps you create visually appealing forms & surveys that your customers would enjoy filling.

Once you have created a Typeform, you are likely to share it on social media, add it to your blogs, or embed the form on your website.

When you embed the form on your website, this is how it looks:

Typeform SEO casestudy

Now, what's interesting about this snippet is the bottom part of the form where it says "powered by Typeform". When you look at the code you can clearly see that there is a link added to the text "Typeform".

Typeform SEO casestudy

So, if you decide to embed this code on your website, your website will essentially link back to Typeform, helping increase its authority.

Now, imagine this at scale. Typeform has thousands of users and they probably have created multiple forms and surveys. That's thousands of backlinks to Typeform without lifting a finger!

Brilliant, right?!

Our link buildd-ing strategy at Remote Tools!

We have also implemented a similar tactic to get backlinks on our website Remote Tools. To give you some context, Remote Tools is a repository of tools used for remote collaboration.

Every week we'd select the Top 5 products of the week to share it with our Twitter & newsletter audience. A top product badge would then appear on these product pages.

Typeform SEO casestudy

We would also share the code snippet for these badges with the product maker, so they can add it to their website.

Typeform SEO casestudy

When the badge is added to the product's website, it basically works as a backlink to Remote Tools. Here's how the code snippet looks. You can clearly see that the code includes a link directly to remote tools.

Typeform SEO casestudy

So, from the maker's perspective, these badges work as social proof showcasing the popularity of their product. But for us, it means an extra backlink!

So, what are the results?

Like I mentioned earlier, Typeform has 106M backlinks according to Ahrefs! If you look at the backlinks, you can easily identify the form URL pattern for Typeform.

URL Pattern ➝ [form-name].typeform.com

Typeform SEO casestudy

For example, we have links from sites like:

  1. Dictionary.com → form.typeform.com/to/
  2. Healthifyme.com → myhealthifyme.typeform.com/to/
  3. Sportskeeda → sportskeeda.typeform.com/to/

Owing to these 106M backlinks, Typeform today has a DR of 93 which is in the range of sites like Washington Post, Twitch, Hubspot, Bloomberg, HuffPost & Snapchat!

Typeform SEO casestudy

So clearly, this initiative has helped Typeform increase its domain rating to make it 182nd most popular or linked website on the internet!

What are the key takeaways?

Link building is one of the most important initiatives you’ll work on. If you invest in building links today, it’ll reap you benefits for years to come.

Good domain authority gives you a significant advantage over your competitors & will help you rank for difficult, high-volume keywords.

Overall, the most reliable way to get high-quality links is by writing guest posts. But, it definitely helps to have scalable & creative ways to quickly acquire a massive number of backlinks.

There are many such examples you can come across, where products have successfully scaled their link-building process. All you have to do is figure out a creative way to do this for your own startup :)

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Focus ➝ Topics > Keywords
Here's how you can buildd your site's topical authority!

But, what is topical authority?
Having topical authority means that you are considered an expert in that topic's field.
Meaning, Google will trust you to answer these search queries appropriately.
So, when you publish a blog under this topic you'll be automatically ranked at the top.

How do you gain topical authority?
Ans => You gain topical authority when you provide good quality content on an entire breadth of search queries under a given topic!
Here's how you can approach this:

1) First, choose your target topic.
2) Research all the possible sub-topics under the target topic.

For example,
Target Topic -> content marketing
Subtopics -> content strategy, content trends, etc

3) Next, internally link all the main topic & sub-topic pages together.
4) This signals the search engine that these topics are related.
5) Finally, gaining external links from websites that already have authority on the target topic can give you a great push.

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IRCTC: Breaking down India's top monopoly business by the numbers

IRCTC is an absolute beast. In the Q3 of FY22, IRCTC has:

- Revenue = INR 540 Cr
- Profits = INR 209 Cr
- Profit margin = ~40%

These numbers are totally unreal for an e-commerce company!

Look at Flipkart and Amazon, they lose INR ~1200 Cr every quarter. So, why is IRCTC doing so well?

Well, there is a simple answer - IRCTC is a government-controlled monopoly!

How? Well, for once it is the only company that is authorized to:
- Sell railway tickets online
- Provide catering on trains
- Distribute packaged drinking after at stations.

So, IRCTC has 0 outside competition! So, is IRCTC making a ton of money year over year?

Well, yes and no! IRCTC charges online aggregators like Paytm, MakeMyTrip, etc an INR 12 per ticket. In fact, Paytm, a company that sells 14% of total train tickets, IRCTC gains ~INR 70 Cr from Paytm alone!

But, sadly, IRCTC has to share this revenue with the government, depending on, well, the government's wish. It was a 20% per cent share till 2014, then in 2015, it changed to 50%. In 2016, the government mandated IRCTC to waive off the convenience fee entirely.

But, in 2019, they reinstated the fees back! In 2021, they went back to the 50% revenue sharing model. These random changes caused a lot of problems for IRCTC!

The government filed for IRCTC's IPO in 2019 and sold 12.5% of its stake!

So, when in 2021, the government suddenly announced that it will take 50% of convenience fees revenue from IRCTC, the share price crashed by over 20%.

With the government holding 67.5% of stake in IRCTC at the time, they ended up losing ~INR 14,000 crores in the process!

Seems like the monology situation has 2 sides, and IRCTC while benefiting from it, also faces quite a few problems.