How can you secure that coveted spot on the first page of Google search results? It’s a quest every content creator embarks upon, hoping to decipher the mysterious algorithms that govern search engine optimization (SEO). Among the myriad factors influencing website rankings, backlinks stand out as a crucial component. This guide delves into the perennial question: “How many backlinks do I need to rank?”
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks are more like votes that search engines use to check if a particular site is trustworthy and if the content on the site is credible, valuable, and useful. This means the more links you have, the higher your chances of ranking in Google and other search engines. Therefore, earning these backlinks can positively affect ranking or search visibility.
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Additionally, backlinking will increase your site visitors through referral traffic. Individuals who read a popular page may click on your backlinks, redirecting them to your page to find more information about a particular topic.
How Many Backlinks Do You Need to Build to Rank?
Unfortunately, there is no specific number of backlinks all businesses should chase when attempting to build their domain authority (DA). Mostly, the number of backlinks you need to rank on page 1 of Google depends on how much competition there is in your niche and how reliable your website is.
Generally, you will need more backlinks if your site is in a highly competitive niche. Therefore, if you are in a less competitive industry, you will only need fewer backlinks. Additionally, if your site is not authoritative, you will need more backlinks; if it is authoritative, you will need fewer backlinks.
To be competitive for SEO, a site should have at least 40 to 50 backlinks to the homepage and between 0 and 100 backlinks to each web page. For a low-competitive niche, you will need at least 20 backlinks to rank and between 50 and 100 for highly competitive keywords.
However, the exact number of backlinks required to rank a web page also depends on your site’s domain authority and the page rank of the incoming backlinks. Instead of worrying about the exact number, you should focus on creating high-quality content, building rapport with other people in your industry, earning high-quality backlinks organically, or getting the best niche edit backlinks every month to boost your efforts.
According to studies, the average number of backlinks a site needs to rank on the first page of Google search results is around 203, and to rank in the top 3, you will need close to 521 backlinks. This indicates that the more backlinks you have, the better your website’s SEO is. However, this only counts if you have high-quality backlinks.
How Many Backlinks Per Day Is Safe?
One of the most common link-building myths is that search engines penalize businesses for building too many backlinks in one day. However, you can use as many links as you wish as long as they come from an authoritative site and your anchor text profile feels natural.
Besides the fact that the anchor text looks natural, you must also remember that you can only build a few backlinks to web pages that should only get a few backlinks. For instance, a non-promotional power page is content-heavy with fantastic content, usually goes in-depth to solve a problem, and can accommodate more backlinks than a site that only offers services.
Factors That Affect the Number of Backlinks You need in your Site To Rank
As we have stated, the number of backlinks you need depends mainly on the SEO competition for the keywords you want to rank for and the current domain authority in your industry.
Read Also: The Keyword Research Checklist For Ranking
Nevertheless, some factors can help you estimate how many backlinks you need to build so that you can see results. Even so, it is necessary to note that Google is always re-crawling pages on the web, making search rankings. To keep high rankings solidified, you need to continue building backlinks to pages even after the initial results are achieved.
Let’s now look at these factors:
1. Domain Authority and Domain Rating
Domain Authority is SEO merit that measures the strength of a domain and shows the power of your site’s backlink profile. Small businesses and new sites in the early stages of growing traffic usually need more domain authority. So when high domain authority sites link to your page, it tells the search engine crawlers that your site is valuable.
Your current domain authority will give you an understanding of your starting point. If you have a new site, you are starting from zero. This means you will need a solid backlinking strategy to build authority. If you have high domain authority, ranking for more difficult terms will take fewer backlinks per page.
2. Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is another factor affecting your page’s chances of ranking at the top of search engines. Most SEO tools use keyword difficulty to determine how to rank a page for a target keyword.
Several factors influence keyword difficulty scores. Some of these factors include domain authority, which is the strength of the domain; page authority, which is the strength of a particular web page; citation Flow, which is the total number of backlinks to an individual page; and trust flow, which is the overall quality of the backlinks to the individual page.
The number of links measures the keyword complex SEO tools predict you need to outrank other sites. For instance, if you target a keyword with an SEO difficulty of 20, you will probably need between 25 to 40 links to rank. Consequently, if you desire to rank at the top with a keyword with a difficulty of 50, you will need more relevant backlinks.
3. On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimization is another factor affecting your search engine ranking. If your website is well-optimized, you will only need a few backlinks. Conversely, poorly optimized sites will waste the relevance, trust, and authority of backlinks.
To ultimately optimize your website, there are some crucial steps you need to follow, including:
- Position the most significant pages one or two clicks from the homepage
- Ensure all the pages are located more than five steps from the homepage.
- Check for and fix any broken links
- Add content to the most important pages
- Remove any unnecessary outbound links.
4. Internal Linking
The internal linking strategy you use can significantly affect the strength of a web page. The stronger the web page, the stronger the backlinks from that page. Internal links will help increase a web page’s ranking in the SERPs. On average, three internal links are equivalent to one external backlink.
Read Also: Best SEO Practices to Dominate the SERPs
The more internal links you have on your web page, the more search engine crawlers will recognize your site. This means your page will be more visible in the SERPs.
5. Content Quality
Another way to build links and rank on Google is to publish high-quality content on your website. Search engines want the most relevant and genuine results at the top of their results. If you have high-quality and relevant content, you will rank higher and get more high-quality organic links.
Read Also: How to Remove Outdated Content from Your Website
Consequently, sites with blogs get more links than non-blogging businesses. Therefore, you must give other site owners a reason to link to your website. If you provide low-quality content, even with a high domain authority site, it won’t rank at the top.
Also, if your competitors publish more high-quality content than you but have yet to have all types of backlinks compared to your site, Google will still prefer to rank them higher. Therefore, it is paramount to pay attention to how your content performs.
Final words
So, How many backlinks do I need to rank my site on page 1 of Google? As you can tell by now, the answer is quite nuanced. Several factors determine whether or not a particular web page will rank for a keyword. First, however, there are a few specific factors.
You can comfortably earn as many backlinks every month or even daily as long as you do so ethically. However, You should remember that search engines concentrate more on quality than quantity.
High-quality and reputable backlinks will help you grow faster, while smaller links will help you grow consistently. If you want to master SEO and a quality backlink strategy, a healthy mix of links from different sources is your key to success.
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