3 great research pieces and how they got links
Getting links can be a tricky part of SEO and doing it in an organic way means that you need to have good quality content that attracts the links in the first place, content that you are proud to send out to potential publications.
One of the great things about link building is the wide variety of tactics that are out there that could help you generate interest for your site. In this week’s instalment of the Varn blog, we look at 3 research tactics we used for 2 of our clients and our agency to gain relevant backlinks to the target sites.
1. HSE Network: Survey on the awareness of mental health support in the UK workplaces

HSE Network is one of our publishing clients that has been operating within the health and safety publishing and event sphere for over 3 years now alongside the HSE Global Series. To try and generate some links and position themselves as research specialists, they ran a survey that looked at the awareness of mental health support within UK workplaces. The findings returned that over half of workers were unaware of mental health support.
The survey got great coverage and helped the client gain valuable links back to their site.
2. Varn: Survey on the degree to which Google Ads are recognisable in the SERPs
At Varn, we run a survey every 6 months asking users on the internet the degree to which they recognise Google Ads within their search results. The findings are always interesting, with most surveys showing that most users do not recognise the results, and of the ones that do, most intentionally avoid clicking on them. From this page, we then linked to the relevant landing pages we were looking to drive SEO value to, creating a win-win for our readers and our SEO.
3: Timbersource: Google Trends data on the rising popularity of timber in the pandemic
Timbersource is one of the UK’s leading timber specialists, and they saw a big increase in demand throughout the pandemic. To try and better understand why, and which timbers were seeing the best demand, they took a dive into some Google Trends data which showed that timber as a search term had seen a steep increase in traffic in 2020 and 2021. They then linked this to some data around the timber they were finding easiest to source for clients and again links on from the content onto some of their higher value landing pages.
Why were these surveys good for SEO?
Many do not see the value in these surveys when it comes to SEO, however, provided they are getting good links back from relevant sites, they will be doing wonders for SEO. The secret is to host the results survey as content on the site in the form of an article. We are currently working on a great research piece with BLB which focuses on the lack of awareness around CRPS, aimed at medical and health-based publications.
This gives the publications something to link back to when you are reaching out to them. When you have the links back to the content, make sure you link back to some of the relevant pages you are trying to drive SEO value to, this will help you get a good balance of links between your content and your products.
Honourable Mentions
In addition to the above great research pieces, we also ran a survey with sustainable clothing specialists Thought Clothing around Black Friday and whether the UK public actually liked the holiday or found it all a bit of a fad. The data showed that only 28% liked Black Friday indicating that popularity for the holiday may be fading.
BLB ran a great survey to the public in 2022 which focused on the chronic condition Fibromyalgia and the awareness of the condition within the UK. The data showed that 37 of the UK knew what the condition was despite an increase in searches indicating a potential increase in the number of Fibromyalgia compensation claims.
Get in touch to harness the power of surveys for SEO
If you want to find out more about the powers of survey and primary/secondary research for SEO, then get in touch with a member of the Varn team. We are a Bristol-based SEO agency with tonnes of experience in link building and technical SEO.