How to rank #1 for "apples": an SEO case study

A local grocer's blog post ranks #1 on Google for "apples". It has one backlink.

On 4 Nov 2026, Rob LaBonne posted on X asking people to search "apples" on Google. His family's grocery store, labonnes.com, showed up near the top for almost everyone. Hundreds of people confirmed it from the US, the UK, France, Brazil and Nigeria.

Nobody in the thread could explain it. Rob said he had "no idea why the google gods are in love with it". So we pulled the data.

The page is Types of Apples Guide + Sweetness Chart & Uses. Here is the short version of what we found.

• It has one backlink. A backlink is a link from another website. This page has one, from a small Greek site that cited it after it was already ranking.
• It won the specific searches first. It was top 3 for "types of apples" by July, months before it ranked for "apples".
• A rewrite came two weeks before #1. On 16 Oct someone added labels, a pick list and a proper chart heading. No paragraph changed. The page went from #8 to #1 by 5 Nov.
• The competition is weak. No big publisher has a strong page for "apples". A thorough grocery store guide was the best answer on offer.

How The Page Climbed From #14 To #1

The domain is old. Everything else happened in 2026.

Date	What happened
Mar 1999	labonnes.com is registered.
8 Apr	The apples guide goes live.
~11 May	The guide starts ranking, five weeks after going live.
~1 Jul	It reaches the top 3 for "types of apples".
4 Sep	It gets its only backlink, from prefer.gr.
5 Sep	It first ranks for "apples" in the US, at #14.
7 Oct	It jumps from #11 to #7 for "apples". Google's September spam update finishes the same day.
16 Oct	The post is rewritten. Same title, same paragraphs. New labels, pick lists and links.
~20 Oct	It takes #1 for "tart apples" and "chart types of apples", two searches that match the new labels.
31 Oct	It is #8 for "apples".
4 Nov	Rob posts on X.
5 Nov	It is #1 for "apples" in the US, ahead of Wikipedia. It is top 10 in 12 countries.

Dates marked ~ come from Ahrefs charts and may be off by two or three days. Positions come from the Ahrefs position history for "apples" in the US.

Add A Skimmable Layer Like The 16 Oct Rewrite

We compared the page before and after the rewrite. We used the Wayback Machine, which is the Internet Archive's record of old web pages. It saved a copy the night before the edit.

Nobody had touched the page since April. The rewrite kept every paragraph word for word. It also kept the URL, the title, the main heading and all 12 images.

Here is what the rewrite added.

• A real heading for the chart. "Apple Sweetness Chart: From Tart to Sweet" used to be bold text inside a paragraph. It became an H2, which is a section heading that Google reads as a topic.
• A tart to sweet scale. A simple graphic that ranks the varieties from sour to sweet.
• A "Quick picks" box. It answers "what are you making?" in one glance. Pie and baking gets Granny Smith, Braeburn and Pink Lady. Snacking gets Honeycrisp, Gala and Fuji.
• Labels on every variety. Each apple got a sweetness rating like "Very Tart" and "Best for" tags like apple pie or caramel apples.
• Storage tips. Short lines like "3 to 6 weeks in the crisper drawer".
• More links. The page went from 12 links to 50. Most point to the store's shop, recipes and delivery apps.

The rewrite did not add new facts. Every label repeats something the paragraphs already said. It just made the answers easier to find.

Microsoft gives the same advice in its AI content optimization guide. Clear headings and short, labeled answers help search engines and AI tools pull out the right part of your page.

Why We Think It Ranks

This section is our hypothesis. We do not have access to the store's Google Search Console, so we cannot prove the cause. Here are the explanations that best fit the data, strongest first.

1. It is the best answer on a weak results page

Most people searching "apples" want to know which apple to buy and what to use it for. This page answers that with varieties, a sweetness chart, uses and storage tips.

The pages it competes with are thin. The usapple.org varieties page is 195 words. A Substack post with links from only 2 websites ranks #3.

2. The rewrite pushed it from #8 to #1

Within a few days of the rewrite, the site ranked in the top 10 for about 230 more keywords. The new #1 rankings match the new labels exactly. Three weeks later it was #1 for "apples".

The page was already climbing before the rewrite, though. That is why we call this likely, not proven.

3. Searchers liked it, so Google moved it up

Google re-ranks results using click data. It looks at whether people click a result and stay on it. Google called this system NavBoost in its antitrust trial.

The page had been top 2 for "types of apples" since summer. Many people who search "apples" go on to search exactly that. Its slow climb from #14 to #1 looks like Google testing it higher and searchers responding well.

4. Google's spam update cleared some space

The page jumped from #11 to #7 on 7 Oct. That was the day Google finished its September spam update. HelloFresh, Walmart and UVM dropped out of the results during the update and came back lower.

5. It is a real business with an old domain

The domain is 27 years old. It belongs to a four-store family business with real press coverage. That does not make the page rank, but it gives Google no reason to hold it back.

What we ruled out

• Backlinks. Only 3 of the site's 3,527 backlinks point at the blog. About 87% of the sites linking to labonnes.com are spam pages that Ahrefs flags. They link to the homepage, not the guide, and Google almost certainly ignores them. Off-page SEO matters for most pages, but it did not drive this one.
• Topical authority. This is when Google trusts a site on a subject because it has many related pages. My first guess on X was topical authority, but the data says no. We crawled all 281 pages on the site and found 4 apple recipes. None of them link to the guide.
• Personalization. People confirmed the ranking in private browsing windows across six countries. Ahrefs shows it in the top 10 in 12 countries.
• A marketing stunt. Some replies said the thread was staged. But Ahrefs had the page at #8 on 31 Oct, before anyone posted. The thread did not cause the ranking.
• Squarespace. The site has clean technical basics. David Solheim's teardown makes the same point. These basics help, but they are not what sets the page apart.

How To Rank #1 For A Broad Keyword

A broad keyword is a short, general search like "apples" or "running shoes". These steps are what we would copy from this case.

1. Find a broad keyword with a weak results page. Look at the top 10 results. If you see short pages, blog posts and sites with very few backlinks, you have a real chance.
2. Rank for the specific searches first. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific searches like "types of apples". This page owned them for months before it ranked for "apples". Google seems to test pages that already win the related searches.
3. Answer what the searcher actually wants. Nobody searching "apples" wants a history lesson. They want to know which apple to buy. Give them a chart, a pick list and a label on every item.
4. Add a skimmable layer on top of your text. Use real headings, labels, short lists and jump links. The 16 Oct rewrite added no new facts and the page reached #1 three weeks later.
5. Do not chase backlinks for this kind of keyword. This page has one, and it arrived after the page already ranked.

The position is fragile. One good guide from a big publisher could push it back down.

Ranking on Google also matters for AI search. ChatGPT and other AI tools often find pages through regular search results. Google's AI Overviews now sit above many results too, which cuts the clicks the top result gets.

What We Still Do Not Know

• Whether the rewrite caused the jump. The page was already climbing. Making the same changes to another page would test it.
• Whether clicks explain the climb. The store's Search Console data would show if the page gets more clicks than its position predicts.
• Who wrote the original April version. Rob called it "the first blog post we've done" with his new one-person SEO agency. The agency likely did the October rewrite. The thread does not say who wrote the original.
• Whether it holds. The thread sent a flood of clicks to the page. We will check the ranking again in two to three weeks.

New to some of these terms? Our AI SEO glossary explains them in plain English.

Sources

• Ahrefs Site Explorer and Keywords Explorer exports, taken on 5 Nov 2026.
• The labonnes.com sitemap and the post's page code, which list the publish date (8 Apr) and the last edit (16 Oct).
• The Wayback Machine copy of the post, saved on 16 Oct 2026 at 02:01 UTC.
• The Google Search Status Dashboard list of 2026 ranking updates.
• Rob LaBonne's X thread (about 384 replies, 4 to 5 Nov 2026).
• The WHOIS record for labonnes.com, which shows it was registered on 23 Mar 1999.

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