Backlinks are essential for rankings on search engine results pages. It serves as the primary way for search engines like Google to pick one content over another.
If your website has quality backlinks, you are likely to outrank your competitors.
But you may ask yourself, how many backlinks do I need to rank?
Luckily for you, by the end of this article, you’ll have an accurate answer to your question.
Do You Need Backlinks to Rank on Google?
Google considers backlinks as one of its 200 ranking factors. Therefore, backlinks are essential for rankings on Google.
However, not all backlinks are created equal. That’s why some websites may have 20+ high-quality backlinks but rank higher than a website with 100 low-quality backlinks.
For links to affect your website’s rankings, they should be relevant to your website and come from websites with high authority and trustworthiness.
Building backlinks takes time and effort.
You need to be patient and use the right strategies to build links that’ll increase your rankings on SERPs. You also need to check your backlink profile to eliminate links that hurt your website.
Start With Backlink Analysis
A proper backlink analysis will help you answer the question of how many links I need to rank on SERPs.
The best way to do it is to focus on the following:
1. How Many Backlinks Does My Site Have?
To compete with other websites in your niche, it is essential to know how many backlinks your website has. The information you acquire at this stage will help you in the subsequent steps.
You can easily find out the backlinks to your website from Google Webmaster Tools and from any other SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
2. Check the Backlinks of Your Competitor’s Website
The number of backlinks your competitors have is a perfect indicator of how many you may need to rank on page one. The number of backlinks for competitors’ websites differs by niche.
For more competitive niches, you’ll realize that your competitors have more backlinks, this will require a more aggressive strategy from you to compete with them.
3. Determine How Many Backlinks I Need to Rank Page 1
At this point, you already have information about the current backlinks to your website and to your competitor’s site.
For example, if your website has 25 backlinks at present and you can see that your competitor’s site has 90 backlinks, you need at least 50 more high-quality backlinks to outrank your competitor.
*Note: When we check backlinks, we consider only guest posts and contextual backlinks that are do-follow.
Once you know the number of backlinks you need to outrank your competitor’s site, the next thing is to figure out how many links you should have for your home page and inner pages (blog posts or product or service pages) for your website.
A) How many backlinks should a website have for the homepage?
There is no definite answer to this question, however, it depends on factors such as;
- The target keywords and competitiveness of your niche
- The quantity and relevance of your domain
- Authority and trustworthiness
Websites that dominate SERPs build backlinks consistently to their homepage.
Amazon, for example, has over 1.5 billion backlinks and 1 million referring domains to its homepage. Netflix has over 200 million backlinks with over 300 thousand referring domains to its homepage.
B) How many backlinks should each page have?
The link-building strategy for inner pages is different. It varies depending on the niche, keyword difficulty, domain authority, and content of the page.
If you have very informative content, then you might not need any backlinks to rank your first page on Google.
We do content planning for many sites and are able to rank on the first page of Google without doing any link building. You can read the case study.
If your website already has some authority and good backlinks to its home page, you might only need a few links for its inner pages.
If you still want to know the exact numbers, I can divide them into three categories:
- You should target 1 to 5 backlinks for the inner page if your site is in a low-competitive industry.
- Five to ten links will be sufficient for the inner page if your site is in a medium-competitive industry.
- For the inner page of a site in a highly competitive industry, 10 to 30 backlinks might be required.
However, some basic recommendations include prioritizing quality over quantity, employing descriptive and pertinent anchor text, varying the backlink sources, and routinely checking the backlink profile.
Start Safely Building Links to Your Website
Now that you have done a perfect backlink analysis and know more about how many backlinks I need to rank on page one, you can start building your backlinks.
How Many Backlinks per Month is Safe?
As part of building a reputable website, creating backlinks is very essential. However, you must be wary of creating too many backlinks within a short period of time. If you do so, you may be penalized by Google for trying to game the system.
Regarding the number of backlinks you can build per month, I’d say it depends on your niche. For example, in a less competitive niche, you could try to build at least one high-quality backlink per week.
How many backlinks should I create per day?
In my opinion, when building backlinks, your focus should be to ensure that you don’t get spammed or penalized by Google. However, there are scenarios where you could have thousands of backlinks to your website per day; for example, a trending blog post or video. I don’t think you’ll be penalized by Google for acquiring backlinks in this way.
How to Achieve Better Ranking Results With Fewer Backlinks?
While Google considers backlinks as its top requirement for search engine rankings, you can still rank on page one for your target keyword with fewer backlinks. Google’s main purpose is to deliver excellent results to searchers.
Therefore, there may be websites with thousands of backlinks but with mediocre content. Believe it or not, you can outrank them by focusing on the following:
- Concentrate on producing top-notch, pertinent content that draws in and engages your target audience.
- Contact reputable and respected websites in your niche and request links by providing them with useful information or material.
- Utilize social media to spread the word about your content and to encourage other people to share and connect to it.
- For your goal keywords and search intent, optimize your page headers, meta descriptions, and pictures.
- Examine the backlink profiles of your rivals to identify possibilities to match or outperform their links.
Does Google Care About How Many Backlinks a Website Has?
Google is interested in how many backlinks a website has, but not in a straightforward sense. Backlinks are not simply a quantity; they also serve as metrics for trustworthiness, relevancy, and quality. Google counts backlinks as “votes” for a particular website, but it also takes into account the links’ anchor text, source, and context.
As a result, having more backlinks does not guarantee higher ranks, particularly if they are low-quality or spammy. A website requires high-quality, pertinent backlinks from reliable, trustworthy websites that match the users’ search intent in order to rank effectively on Google.
What is the best backlink checker tool?
The best backlink checker tool is a matter of personal preference and needs. Different tools may have different features, databases, and prices that suit different users. However, based on some common criteria, such as accuracy, usability, and functionality, here are some of the most popular and widely used backlink checker tools:
- Ahrefs
- Semrush
- MozPro
- Majestic
How many days does Google Need to Crawl Backlinks?
Backlinks are not crawled by Google on a set timetable. The popularity, authority, and freshness of the linking page, the quantity and caliber of the links on the page, the crawl budget allotted to the site, and any technological concerns that could interfere with crawling and indexing all impact the frequency and speed of crawling.
As a result, the time it takes Google to crawl backlinks may range from a few hours to a few weeks.
Conclusion
To answer your question “How many backlinks do I need to rank on page one of Google”, I’ll say it depends on your niche and how competitive the keyword you target is.
Nevertheless, in most cases, you’ll need backlinks to improve your website’s rankings.
Traffickite is a professional link-building agency that can help you effortlessly and safely build backlinks that’ll ensure your website can easily rank on page one.
