How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Rank My Website?
Bloggers, have you heard of link building? Link building is the practice of acquiring links to your website from other websites. In SEO, these links are called backlinks. Although not an exact science, this guide endeavours to take you through how to calculate how many backlinks you need to rank a website.
Let us begin with the most used question
“How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Rank My Website?”
So, there’s no definite answer to this question. Some websites can increase their search engine rankings with just a few backlinks. However, this practice can potentially hurt the site’s ability to draw adequate traffic because you’d be ranking with low volume search terms.
Add Backlinks Carefully
Very generally speaking, a small business can rank on the first page of search engines for around 5 terms of average competition with around 50 backlinks. That said, it doesn’t mean stuffing your site with numerous backlinks; you need to add them carefully to avoid attracting penalties.
Consistency is key with building links, and it’s advisable not to set a target number of backlinks or a deadline to achieve them. Link building should be an ongoing process. Something you work on every single month to ensure a consistent level of high-quality backlinks are being added.
Optimise Your Website Before You Add Backlinks
A well-optimised site needs fewer backlinks than a poorly optimised one. For instance, poorly optimised sites tend to dilute and reduce the relevance of a high-quality backlink. As such, the first step is to ensure your website is well-optimised for ranking before adding backlinks.
- Eliminate unnecessary outbound links
- Add internal links to the most important pages
- Ensure the most important pages as easily accessible, e.g., one or two clicks away
- Eliminate broken links
- Merge or remove pages that do not have useful content
- Eye Up Your Competition
- Finally, count the number of backlinks your competitors have got for specific keywords.
The Quality Of Backlinks
Focus on the quality of the link; not quantity. It’s understood that one high-quality backlink is often worth hundreds of low-quality backlinks. The links shouldn’t be few; the key is in finding the perfect balance between the number of backlinks you want to use and their quality.
How Can You Tell If A Link Is Of High Quality?
To ascertain whether you’re adding a high-quality backlink, you should be aiming to tick off AT LEAST HALF of these factors with each link you add:
- Is the link from a trusted source?
- Check spam score and trust flow metrics with sites like Moz and Ahrefs.
- Does the site attract significant traffic?
- Check traffic levels with sites like SEMrush.
- Is the link from a relevant site?
- Is the site within a similar niche or industry?
- Build relationships and avoid free links on spam sites.
- Is the link naturally within the content?
- Make sure your link location makes sense and benefits the reader.
- Is the link on a page with page rank?
- There is a lot of value placed on links on pages that are already ranking.
- Is brand anchor text being used?
- The occasional link with your brand name is good.
- Are Exact keyword match anchors used?
- Are there other authority links?
- Is the link on a site with da50+? (The higher the Domain Authority, the higher the backline value.)
How Many Backlinks Do I Need To Rank My Website?
Just these few points should help you determine the number of backlinks your site needs, and will set you on your way to achieving a solid link building strategy. Competitor analysis for specific keywords will help you ascertain how to compete for rankings amongst your peers and competition, and don’t forget to optimise your site for ranking.
In conclusion, link building is about quality, diversity, and building relationships. Creating a good website with good content is just the first step.
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