Top 5 most optimized websites

[DRTBA]

Throwing this question out to the community but was wondering if anyone can direct me on how I can find the top 5 or 10 ten sites that have been most optimized for search engines.

Meaning which web sites have the best reputation when it comes to website optimization for search engines or is there a resource where I can read about websites that have been ranked as the best when it comes to following best practices and have constantly ranked well within their industry?

Figured it's always a good idea to learn from the best by looking at what they are doing.

Thank you.

[Thos003]

I hate to bust your bubble on this, but I don't think you will find such a list, especially with the added criteria of white hat. It's really difficult to fully understand a website's entire optimization and strategy from an outside view. Plus, are we speaking of strictly site structure or all aspects of SEO? Wikipedia kills the SEO game by being so massive and having so many inbound links. Tough one to list off.

But if I had to suggest 5 sites to start with I believe that these sites would be great to study:

Zappos.com - Good site. They do a lot of SEO work on their website. I trust their team.

Logitech.com - A well built site. They try to follow all the white label stuff as well.

SEOmoz.org- Maybe it's a bit of a cop out, but the reason you are here is because they are recognized as an authority on the subject.

http://www.mattcutts.com/ < With the exception that you will want to navigate to his blog. But other than that, his site should follow all the white guidelines.

And per Avinash, http://lds.org does good SEO work. I've also run into them at a SEO conference or two.

Of course, all the above are well trafficked sites and very large. Matt's is probably the smallest of the group. If you are looking for smaller websites then I'd just refer to the search engine and who ranks well for any given term.

[nyanainc]

you are absolutelty right Thomas!

[Churchill1]

@Thomas

I did check Zappos.com but I can see that they have no internal links at all. Is this an MOZ bug or their secret of trade?