Every content creator wants to know what it takes to rank on page 1 on Google. The only issue is there is too much conflicting SEO information, and finding good backlink strategies that work can be hard. With backlinks being one of the most significant aspects of SEO that greatly influence a site’s rankings, this guide will answer the question, “how many backlinks do I need to rank?”. Read on to find out more!
What's on this page?
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 the chances to rank in Google and other search engines. Therefore, earning these backlinks can positively affect a site’s ranking position or search visibility.
Additionally, backlinking will provide you with more site visitors through referral traffic. Individuals who read a popular page may click on your backlinks which will redirect them to your page to find more information about a particular topic.
How Many Backlinks Do You Need to Build to Rank?
Generally, 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.
As a general rule, if your site is in a highly competitive niche, you will need more backlinks. 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, and if it is authoritative, you will need fewer backlinks.
A site should at least have 40 to 50 backlinks to the homepage and between 0 to 100 backlinks to each web page to be competitive for SEO. For a low, competitive niche, you will need at least 20 backlinks to rank and between 50 to 100 for highly competitive keywords.
However, it’s necessary to note that the exact number of backlinks you require to rank a web page also depends on your site’s domain authority and the PageRank of the incoming backlinks. So 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 basically indicates that the more backlinks you have, the better the SEO of your website 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 anchor text looking natural, you will also need to remember that you can not build many backlinks to web pages that should not get a lot of backlinks. For instance, a power page that is non-promotional is content-heavy with amazing content and 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 mainly depends on the SEO competition for keywords you want to rank for and the current domain authority in your industry.
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 have low 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 that affects the chances of your page 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 difficult 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 how you rank on search engines. If your website is well-optimized, then you will not need to get very many backlinks. Conversely, poorly optimized sites will waste backlinks’ relevance, trust, and authority.
To ultimately optimize your website, there are some important 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 away from the homepage.
- Check for and fix any broken links
- Add in content t 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 pages, the stronger the backlinks from that page. Basically, internal links will help increase the ranking of a web page in the SERPs. On average, three internal links are equivalent to one external backlink.
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 given higher visibility 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.
Consequently, sites with blogs get more links than non-blogging businesses. Therefore, you need to give other site owners a reason to link to your website. If you provide low-quality content, even if you have a high domain authority site, it won’t rank at the top.
Also, if your competitors publish more high-quality content than you but do not have all types of backlinks as 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 probably tell by now, the answer to this is quite nuanced. Several factors go into determining whether or not a particular web page will rank for a keyword. First, however, there are a few certain factors.
You can comfortably earn as many backlinks every month or even every day as long as you do so ethically. However, You should keep in mind that search engines concentrate more on quality than quantity.
High-quality and reputable backlinks will help you grow much faster, while smaller links will come in handy for consistent growth. 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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