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Dofollow Digest #10: Just got my hands on Similarweb's Digital 100 list

Author

Eric Carrell
January 24, 2025

Hey, it's Eric đź‘‹

Just got my hands on Similarweb's Digital 100 list, and it reveals something fascinating about organic growth in 2025: the websites seeing massive traffic gains aren't winning through technical SEO tricks or huge content budgets.

These sites dominate search by fundamentally changing how they approach expertise and authority building. There are some powerful lessons here about how SaaS companies should think about their link building strategy. Let’s dig in.

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🔍 DEEP DIVE: What 2024's Fastest-Growing Websites Tell Us About Building Authority

The numbers are in from Similarweb's Digital 100, and they tell a compelling story about what's actually moving the needle in search right now.

JustAnswer.com saw an 81% jump in traffic (from 11.6M to 21M monthly visitors). Why? They've built an entire platform around connecting real experts with people seeking specialized knowledge. This could indicate (and likely does, imo) a shift toward expertise-driven content.

Substack grew 37% to 18.9M monthly visitors, and they have a similar focus: enabling subject matter experts to build and monetize their audiences. It’s an ecosystem of high-quality, specialized content that naturally attracts links and engagement, and they’re also winning.

Here's what's fascinating for SaaS companies: these aren't isolated success stories. They reveal a pattern about what drives sustainable search visibility in 2025:

  1. Expert-driven content is winning the authority game. JustAnswer's massive growth shows that Google increasingly favors content from verified experts. For SaaS companies, this means your product team, engineers, and customer success managers could be a very strong way to unlock serious organic traffic.

  2. Authority comes from facilitating expertise. Substack isn't just publishing content – they're building a network of authoritative voices. Your SaaS company already has a network of customers, partners, and industry connections. The opportunity is to become the platform that amplifies their collective expertise.

  3. Real-world validation drives rankings. Look at Quince.com in the retail space – they grew 176% by putting customer experiences front and center. For SaaS, this means transforming customer success stories and use cases into content that naturally attracts backlinks.

What this means for SaaS companies:

The biggest opportunity I'm seeing is what I call "expertise amplification." You already have the subject matter experts. You already have the customer success stories. The win is in packaging and distributing that expertise in ways that naturally attract high-quality links.

We're seeing this work incredibly well with our SaaS clients. The companies seeing the best results are:

  • Turning customer success calls into authoritative case studies that industry publications want to reference

  • Converting internal documentation into comprehensive resources that become go-to citations

  • Transforming product team insights into technical content that naturally attracts links from within your industry

None of this requires a massive content budget or complicated technical SEO. It's about leveraging the expertise you already have in ways that naturally build authority.

đź”— LINK ROUNDUP

Til next time,

Eric