How many backlinks do I have to rank well?
I’ve been recently asked by many people wondering how many backlinks do I have for my own website. What makes this simple question so difficult to answer? I believe there are too many variables to be individually considered for each specific case. How many backlinks do I have? Well, once again - that depends. And every single website should be assessed to get a full picture first. In fact, your own backlink count will always depend on many different aspects. I mean that apart from your primary business objectives, setting any precise targets for your backlinks is definitely a not-to-do thing. No need to set any goals there, as any proper link building strategy should be consistent, i.e., to be driven as steadily and naturally as possible.
Quality vs. Quantity
Putting it in plain English, it doesn’t make any actual sense how many backlinks do I have. Of course, my backlink count in-part depends on what I’m going to achieve with my website, namely concerning the keyword, ranking, and visitor count targets. In fact, it’s a somewhat very typical situation when a business website is ranked quite well - having just a few backlinks.
Of course, given that there is no tight keyword competition, accompanied by quite low search volumes. That way, however, such a website would apparently get not too many user visits. Nevertheless, we can have at least more or less accurate estimate on the average count of backlinks. In general terms, a relatively small online business should start with about 50 quality backlinks. Moving on with its SEO campaign and overall development, I can reasonably say that this project would expect its ranking position to be seen somewhere around top five search results.
Quality Control
So, instead of wondering how many backlinks do I have, you’d better make sure your existing backlink profile meets at least half of the most important quality criteria. Here is a list of bullet points about top quality backlinks:
- every backlink is purely relevant
- comes from a trusted website with high PR
- anchor text should have an exact phrase or keyword match
- backlinks are incorporated to on-page content as organically as possible
- diverse backlink portfolio (i.e., coming from many different places)
- quality backlinks should be neither reciprocal, nor the paid ones
Thus, you should never focus on backlink number, rather than their quality. Nevertheless, it’s a widespread deception to believe all backlink have got an equal value. In fact, having one organic quality backlink can often be more reasonable against hundreds of irrelevant or low-quality ones. That’s why all you need about your backlink count is to maintain a healthy balance between their common number against the actual value.
On-site Check
After all, given that every backlink you passed through the previously mentioned verification procedure, I recommend checking your on-site optimization. Of course, there is a vast range of actions to be taken, but you can quickly check at least the most critical ones, which directly affect your backlink count. First of all, remove all unnecessary outbound links, as well as 301 redirects. Next, make sure you have no pages located over five clicks away from your home or landing page. Also, work on adding inbound links to your web pages of top importance. After all, don’t forget to have a scheduled check-in procedure to have a quick-fix on every broken link in a timely manner.
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