How to use the Top Content report

In this report, we rank all content pages on a target website, subdomain (e.g., blog.domain.com) or subfolder (e.g., domain.com/blog/) by total shares across Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Below are some actionable ways to use this report.

See your competitors’ most-shared content

Enter a competitor’s domain into Site Explorer and go to the Top Content report.

If we analyze nerdwallet.com’s top content, we can see that their article on the best credit cards has the highest “Social Power” (the median number of social shares across Twitter and Pinterest.)

Skim the titles and look for commonalities among the most-shared content. This is a great way to find topics that have performed well on social.

Hit any of the three social media icons to sort the results by that platform. For example, NerdWallet’s article on the U.S president’s student loan plan is their most shared page on Twitter.

See your competitors’ most linked-to content

Enter a competitor’s domain into Site Explorer, go to the Top Content report, and sort by “Referring Domains” (RDs.)

This is useful for understanding the type of content that attracts links in your industry.

Looking at our own site, we can see that data studies seem to perform well in the SEO niche. If you’re in this industry, you might want to consider creating and promoting a data study.

You can also use this report to find Skyscraper link building opportunities. For example, NerdWallet’s study on the 2020 household credit card debt is their 5th most linked-to article with 2,400 referring domains.

You could potentially create something more up-to-date (e.g. for 2021), then reach out to those linking to NerdWallet’s post and ask them to link to you instead.

To see the linking sites, click Details, then Backlinks.

Watch this video to learn more about the Skyscraper Technique:

Keep learning

Check out some of our guides on the Ahrefs blog:

• How to Execute the Skyscraper Technique (and Get Results)
• Deconstructing Linkbait: How to Create Content That Attracts Backlinks
• 6 Linkable Asset Types (And EXACTLY How to Earn Links With Them)