How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Rank

Is the concept of using quality backlinks to improve your website’s search engine visibility still valid today? Do the world’s leading search engines still take this into account since it has become an easy task to buy dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of artificial links? And if they do still pay attention, how many backlinks do you need to rank your site in the search results?

Before we dive into all these questions, let’s make sure we understand what a backlink really is for a web page.

What Is A Backlink?

A backlink is any hyperlink between your website and another. For example, if you write a blog post about parakeets, and then your friend who runs a pet shop puts a link to your post onto their website, those are high-quality links from their site to yours.

Backlinks: What Are The Main Types?

There are two main types of backlink: the Nofollow backlink and the Dofollow backlink.

In the first case, the person linking gives an explicit command to a search engine to pay no attention to a link. This kind of link won’t help your site’s visibility or ranking at all.

The Dofollow backlink, on the other hand, is exactly what you need and instructs the search engine to follow the link thereby ascribing value to the destination.

If Google thinks you are gaming the system by creating your own backlinks or paying for them, then your site will be in trouble and may even be de-indexed completely, making it essentially invisible unless your customers have the exact address of your page. In this case, no links at all would be better than a multitude of sketchy or paid-for Dofollow links.

High Quality Backlinks: Where Do I Get Them?

On-page SEO can promote organic growth, which occurs as a result of the information you provide being useful in some way. But is there any way to speed up the process of gaining traction?

Here are some great ways to get the ball rolling:

• Guest posts.
• Reach out to other website owners in your field and ask if you can write an article with a link back to your site.
• Create link friendly posts.
• Embedded video, how-to posts, and listicles are all more likely to garner organic backlinks than regular article-style posts.
• Social media.
• Link back to your website from all of your own social media profiles.
• Reach out to influencers in your niche letting them know you have written an article relative to their industry and asking if they would like to comment on it or link to it.
• Understanding how many backlinks to rank takes time and hard work, so you could plan to outsource it, or get cracking on providing good quality information to your audience in long-form posts as soon as you can.
• Utilise SEO tools to improve your on-page SEO.

If you are a little more SEO savvy, you could use a tool like SEMrush to snoop on your competitors (down below you will find my latest video on how you can research your competitors) to see where their best links come from and then reach out to these sources directly.

Backlinks: Quantity Vs Quality

I noted earlier that in general, one high-quality backlink, or even no link, was better than a thousand low-quality links. While that remains true, 2 high-quality backlinks are better than 1.

But is there an optimal point? Are 4 better than 2 and if so, does it double the page’s authority, or is there a fall-off in value as you gain more links?

Let’s take a look.

First off, it should be noted that just because a backlink is from a high-quality, high-authority website, exclusively targeting these may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Link building, although it sounds fairly easy, is a complicated link building strategy. For instance, trying to get traction from a very large website, let’s say the Nike brand (an extremely high domain authority website), for example, will be extremely hard, so often your time is better spent on smaller businesses with high-authority sites within your niche.

This will give you the right balance of quality, with ease of acquisition. The speed with which you can build up visibility for your site will be much faster than if you are beating on the door of the biggest players in town.

How Many Backlinks Does It Take To Rank High In Search Results?

Google directly relates the number of referring domains to your website with how high it will rank it and therefore, how close it will be to the top of page 1 in the search results.

It calculates this by comparing websites with similar content to each other. It isn’t a question, therefore, of seeking a fixed number of links, but rather of outperforming the top-ranking competitors in your field.

While this may seem like more is always better, the danger is that if you focus too much on quantity, you may end up with any number of sketchy, spammy websites linking to you which you really can’t afford to let happen.

How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Rank On Page One?

While there can never be a single, ironclad, definitive way to guarantee a number one result, there are some reliable tools to calculate how many high-quality links will take to get you seen.

Some great examples of these include Moz and SEMrush, but there are plenty of others out there and whichever tool you are using, the basic premise will be the same.

Enter the keywords you wish to rank for into the tool and you will get an average of the number of links for the top pages. This will be different for each niche and industry and it will not be an exact number, but rather a ballpark figure to aim for.

Some of these tools will also allow you to snoop on the competition to see just how many links have enabled them to top the rankings. Some of these tools will help you in SEO rankings by delivering a proper and helpful SEO metric and make your internal page rank just better.

Importance Of Link Building Strategy

Link building can be defined as the process of acquiring links from other websites. These connections are used to improve visibility and increase the authority of a website in the eyes of search engines.

While link building is not necessary for every web page, it is important for sites with high search visibility.

Link building helps improve your website’s visibility and can help to increase traffic and drive more leads.

The most common way to build links is by submitting content to relevant directories, articles, social media sites, and forums. Some people also use bots to find and submit links automatically.

The importance of link building cannot be overstated. A strong online presence will attract more visitors and drive more conversions. Therefore, it is critical that you invest in a link building strategy that fits your business goals.

How Many Quality Backlinks Do I Need To Rank Per Month?

Now that you have an idea of how many backlinks you need to rank and you have a game plan of how you will get them, should you just go ahead and add in all your links at once?

While it is hard to find hard data on this, the consensus is that while there is no one-size-fits-all in terms of how many new links a website should add each month, there is a very real dislike of ‘spiky’ growth by the Google algorithm.

This means that if you have added five links this month, and then you add another 5 links two months later, this will register as a sudden 100% spike in the growth of links to your site.

Google may mistake this as paid traffic or spam sites. While 5 links may be nothing for a larger site that already has hundreds of links, it could be damaging to a small site.

The best way to approach this is to add in your links gradually over time. As your site continues to grow it will begin to rank higher, and as it ranks higher it will organically gain more links without any effort on your part. This is exactly the kind of organic growth that search engine crawlers love to see.

B2B Cold Email Template Outreach For Building Backlinks (Bonus)

Creating effective cold email link building campaigns is a challenge for both inexperienced digital marketers and experienced veterans. In this section, we will look at how a cold email template should look.

Three general pieces of advice

Before even thinking about getting high-quality backlinks, you should write and improve your cold email template. Here are some general pieces of advice:

Use a strong subject line to grab their attention

Did you know that the average office worker gets 121 emails daily? Webmasters, in turn, are undoubtedly bombarded with various demands. How do you ensure that your message gets noticed? The solution is to construct a captivating and individualized subject line. For example:

• Guest Blogging: Guest Blog – “[suggested article title to fit their niche]”
• Hey [“Name of the owner/member”] I can help you increase organic traffic to your website within [days/months]
• Broken link: Found an issue on [enter site name] – hello?
• Brand mention: Feedback on Article – “[article title]”

Articles should be worth reading (no backlink mention!)

Posting high-quality content regularly is crucial if you want to increase your backlink count and domain authority. People won’t notice it if they don’t know about it. People don’t trust non-high-quality sites. You can combine content and building links to boost your audience reach.

Unique value proposition and human call to action message

Be sure to emphasise the value of your content in your email. Believe it or not, this is not about building backlinks (in general backlink strategy); it is about providing your audience with valuable information.

Make sure to clarify how the content will benefit the prospect’s audience in the outreach email.

• What makes the content distinct from what is listed on the page?
• Why should they add this content to their site?
• What value does this content bring to their viewers?
• How might it bring more organic traffic to their website?

Don’t ask about how many links our brand will acquire; in fact, don’t mention anything about backlinks in the first message. If this is a big company, they know what SEO tools are and how to build backlinks to increase domain authority.

They know, and you should know this too. Include a clear call to action at the end of the email. Make sure there is no room for misinterpretation.

Ask the webmaster if they would be willing to include this resource on the page if you conclude the email.

The example:

Dear [name],

I am a big fan of your company, I love your purpose and idea. I wanted to share some of my work with you – please take a look when you are free.

Recently, I published a blog post entitled [blog post name]. In it, I discuss a variety of strategies for [the topic]. The blog has [views/clicks/shares etc.] so far.

If you have a minute, I would love for you to read the post and let me know your thoughts. It is always nice to receive feedback from somebody with as much industry experience as yourself.

Thank you,

Regards,

[your name, phone number, and link to your business]

As you can see we are not talking about backlinks, SEO performance, off-page SEO services, improvement of user search intent – none. We are focusing on their name and we are giving our value proposition (in terms of shares, visits, views, comments, etc.) so they can benefit from our article. Link building is difficult and requires a lot of work.

A Big Number Of Backlinks Or Fewer Links?

The number of backlinks is an important factor to consider when analysing your site’s SEO performance. There are a few reasons why we recommend high-quality links rather than just quantity.

1. First, having more high-quality backlinks means that more people have seen your site and are more likely to trust it.
2. Second, the more pages on your site that are indexed by search engines, the higher your visibility will be in search results.
3. Third, having more links will increase the chances that Googlebot will crawl and index your site properly.

Another common misconception about backlinks is that you need lots of them to rank well in search engines. In fact, many sites with low rankings have only a small number of backlinks pointing to them.

What matters most is quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks. Actually, fewer backlinks can make your website rank higher (internal SEO signals correctly done). It is proven that fewer backlinks (with a good ratio like do follow/no follow) can increase site rank and main keyword phrase itself.

Overall, old domain authority with a matching user search intent and just good content written for human beings can make your website top 1 in search results.

How To Check How Many Backlinks Do I Have Now?

Using backlink checker tools, you can see who is linking to your website so that you can take advantage of those connections and establish relationships with websites that link to your page. Here is our free and paid recommendation:

Paid Backlinks Checker: Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the best backlink checkers in terms of quality. It is also one of the most popular backlink checkers among companies seeking to employ an efficient backlink checking tool. Ahrefs backlink checker can provide you with an enormous quantity of data that may assist you in acquiring and building backlinks.

Free Backlinks Checker: Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free backlink checking tool that allows you to monitor and maintain your website’s presence on the search engine results page (SERP). This program helps you identify and repair indexing problems, which might have prevented your site from being found and linked to. If you are looking for more search traffic, internal links, or just want to see how many links are being indexed in Google, then this tool is for you. It doesn’t have a domain authority checker or more advanced link building views but it’s definitely a great tool for any webmasters.

Can Too Many Backlinks Hurt My Domain Authority?

Yes. Toxic backlinks can make your web page rank lower. However, there is a big difference between a general backlink strategy and fluctuation.

Domain authority can change at any time, and that’s perfectly fine. While we all strive to post the most relevant material to raise our authority, we may see it decrease from time to time. That’s OK! Whenever Google recalibrates or updates its index, you’ll see a change.

Google’s indexing algorithm doesn’t always work with SEO testing regarding the individual web page. More high-quality links won’t hurt your site but they must come from trusted websites.

The Final Words

The truth is that Google and other search engine crawlers are looking for organic growth and their ranking algorithms work relative to other sites within your industry. There is no simple answer to how many quality backlinks to rank on the number one spot and it is better to have a long-term outlook that if you consistently post high-quality content with a steady, organic growth in reputable back-links, you will eventually rank higher in the search engine results.

Now over to you. What methods have worked best for you in your business? Have you had any SEO disasters? The best method to learn how many backlinks to rank is by studying various articles that we present on our site.

And of course, if you have any questions or need any help with ranking, don’t hesitate to contact us. I’d love to hear from you. We know exactly how many backlinks are enough for our business and if you need to rank your online business then we are happy to help you.