How Many Backlinks Do You Need?

[chagen]

I know the importance of getting backlinks to help with pagerank. But how many do you need?

I recently got tired of manually submitting my blog to online directories so I used this website here: http://www.submit-a-site.com. For just $12, they submit your website to over a thousand online search engines and directories.

After that, I continued to submit my site to blog directories to get more backlinks. The thing is, it is tedious and time-consuming. There are hundreds of blog directories that I've found, and I've only submitted to about 20 or so. How necessary is this? Should I continue to submit my site to these directories, or is 1,000 enough? I've got statcounter and I'm seeing where my website is coming up in certain search terms. But I'm still not getting much traffic, only 4 hits a day or so.

I'm also doing article marketing, that hasn't been a big hit yet.

Thanks,
Christine

[Andrew Dillon]

Unfortunately it is like asking how long is a piece of string really. Yes back links are great but there is no way to determine how many you need to make a difference. For example I put five hundred articles up and saw little results but on another occasion I put just one article up and got to the number one spot on Google.

Here is what I do and maybe this might help but bare in mind it does take time to build any decent amount of back links to any site; I split my day into hours and then I allocate a different task to each hour and I do this every day making sure that I spend 90% of my time on advertising and driving traffic to my sign up pages and websites.

By doing this every day religiously you soon manage to build up a regular stream of traffic but not just from one source but many and as each day passes your back links or traffic increases building and building as each day passes.

I now have websites that I no longer have to market because they are able to stand on there own two feet and apart from the odd bit of TLC now and again they make reasonable amounts of money and I am able to concentrate on creating other similar sites.

[chagen]

So maybe I should just keep making backlinks until my site gets a decent amount of traffic?

[jhongren]

For me, I will rephrase the question to : "How many QUALITY backlinks do I need?"

As many as you can!

How do you define quality?

It depends on some of these factors:
1. traffic => Alexa the Web Information Company

2. niche (is it related?) => MyBlogLog

3. frequency of update for that blog or site => check out the RSS feed or subscribe to it => MyBlogLog

4. it is based on community (with a lot of discussion and comments going on) => Technorati: Front Page

5. alexa (which can tell you the traffic) => Alexa the Web Information Company

6. profile of readers => Quantcast

My 2 cents,
John

[VinceNouvel]

Until you rank no.1 for the keyword that you are targeting..

[chagen]

Thanks guys. That was helpful!

[Terry Hatfield]

How many backlinks need?

Simple answer . . .one more than you competition. Ok, that is over simplifying it a bit.

But just keep building them. Results will follow eventually and you will be a happy camper.

Terry

[logosi]

Geez it tedious isn't it! But you MUST do it, at least in the beginning. I'm currently using a VA (virtual assistant) to help me with the task, takes a load off. But the thing with links is this... if you were to actually get 500 or 1000 links (over time) they wouldn't just stop at that number would they? Of course not, that in itself would be fishy. The more links you get, the more you'll continue to get.

So how many do you need.... like the previous poster said... "one more than your competition" and I'll add... and one more (or 10 or 100) tomorrow and the next day.

It will payoff, but 1000 QUALITY links will take some time.

[Quentin]

Google says 2,700 quality backlinks will get you almost a permanent no 1 position.

Quentin

[GaryHarvey]

One of the faster ways to get back links is via RSS feeds. Assuming you have a blog, that is.

The submitter I use posts your RSS feed to around 50 RSS feed directories which feed out to who-knows-how-many other sites.

And it only takes a minute to add another site and get it out to the whole 50 or so sites.

If you're interested, PM me for the link.

Cheers
Gary

[Simon_Sezs]

Originally Posted by GaryHarvey

One of the faster ways to get back links is via RSS feeds. Assuming you have a blog, that is.

The submitter I use posts your RSS feed to around 50 RSS feed directories which feed out to who-knows-how-many other sites.

And it only takes a minute to add another site and get it out to the whole 50 or so sites.

If you're interested, PM me for the link.

Cheers
Gary

There is actually software that you can use RSS on a static site as well. I use it for backlinks and it does okay, considering that I don't do much to get the backlinks.

[Gunter Eibl]

Submitting your site to thousands of directories is a complete waste of time and only triggers spam filters big time. That's year 2000 marketing.

Gunter

[Mark Brian]

This simplest way is to determine first the number of backlinks of the competitor you want to defeat have. Then out number their backlinks. But don't forget that your backlinks should come from relevant sites.

There are lots of tools for determining a site's backlink, one is Yahoo's site explorer.

[GaryHarvey]

Originally Posted by Simon_Sezs

There is actually software that you can use RSS on a static site as well. I use it for backlinks and it does okay, considering that I don't do much to get the backlinks.

Simon, I'm interested.

Feel free to PM me if you would prefer.

Gary

[saar2222000]

Yeah, I checked my competition to see how many backlinks they have. I only have about a year of backlink building to go........until i make a dent.

[dburk]

Hi Christine,

When it comes to backlinks ,you should never think of it in terms of quantity, it's quality that counts. One high quality backlink can be worth more than 10,000 of those free-for-all links.

So you could easily need thousands of links to try to compete with a single link garnered by a savvy competitor. One of you is working hard, the other, smart.

Another thing to consider is how many natural backlinks you are getting. If your natural backlinks are coming very slow, then your time might be better spent improving your content. With really great content, all you need is a single backlink to get the ball rolling.

Here's a tip for choosing the best kind of backlinks to go for. Forget what everyone else tells you and focus on a single factor when evaluating a potential link. Focus solely on how much referral traffic that link is likely to send you.

Don't worry about nofollow attributes or the page rank of the site. Those are just things that will send you down a path of disappointment. What you really want is targeted traffic. Don't get distracted by little green bars and links from pages that aren't likely to send you traffic.

Backlinks that send you targeted traffic make your site bulletproof from ranking changes due to algorithm updates. Real traffic will get you natural backlinks, the kind the search engines value the most.

[Terrybear]

That's no use if you get tons of farm backlink and it wouldnt help you much. Always look for the quality backlink, the more quality backlink you have, the better PR / traffic you get.

[naonline]

Hi Christine,

Ok, I'm a bit of a newbie but it also has a lot to do with the niche you're in and the keywords you're targeting. If it's a competitive keyword and niche then you can backlink forever and never rank well. I set up 2 blogs last week and submitted them to Digg with no other backlinking. Within 2 hours they were, and still are at #14 and #15 for the search terms I'm targeting.

I'd like to know Warriors opinions on this. If you have a good description of your site in Digg is it almost as good as having your actual site ranking that high?

I'm not sure what other tools there are but I'm using Market Samurai and it tells you straight away which niche keywords you haven't got a hope in hell of ranking on page 1 for, saving a great deal of pain and effort.

it might also be worth running a PPC to actually see if there's traffic at all.

Nick

[Ride_the_lightning]

The number of links is one of the factors that really mean. There are tons of others that make your site promote in Google SERP. And sometimes your routine work of sending your site description may even bring harm to your results.
I wouldn't really recommend you to submit your site to directories unless it's possible to succeed with Dmoz
Most of free directories provide your backlink such kind of neighborhood that make your work useless (Viagra and other affiliates, you know what I mean...). Instead you should concentrate on trying to get a backlink from reliable resources, articles, blogs on your theme and other content valuable sites.
It's always good to have your site digged, furled and bookmarked.
Try to work with sociable networks.
Anyway this kind of work is mostly manual. Remember you're trying to show Google that many Internet users is doing this And Google is getting smarter with every update...

[sriseshan]

The aim should be to collect as many relevant links possible. Try to avoid using automated packages for submission. Howver, manual submission is a tedious procoess,if there is no pain no gain. Even while submitting to directories, make sure the category page of the directory is indexed by google. Every day spend atleast couple of hrs for link campaign. Over a period of time you will the result yourself.

[cms418]

digg will not last that long from my experience.

[Sirric]

i have been trying to get ranked for like a month now, im on page 5 of google, but still have page rank 0... i think it has to do with the time it takes google to update.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Sirric

i have been trying to get ranked for like a month now, im on page 5 of google, but still have page rank 0... i think it has to do with the time it takes google to update.

Toolbar pagerank is not important when it comes to SEO. My advice would be to ignore it. The only thing that matters is SERP rankings but even that is secondary to actual targeted traffic.

• Website A has a Toolbar PR of 5
• Website B has number 1 listing on certain keywords
• Website C has tons of targeted traffic that converts to business.

Now if website A & B have little traffic and website C has 0 PR and doesn't show up #1 for any keyword, which site would you rather own?

In the end, targeted traffic is the only worthwhile goal. Don't get distracted!

[Solidsnake]

Originally Posted by Sirric

i have been trying to get ranked for like a month now, im on page 5 of google, but still have page rank 0... i think it has to do with the time it takes google to update.

Google PR is updated around every quarter so if you are working for more than a month already, you should see the result on next month or around november.

[countonuspr]

Just keep working at it. Try and get smart backlinks. There is a tool that a friend of mine developed called TrafficMarks.com (no affiliate link) that you can use to track down the links shared by the top 10 websites in any niche. So for example if your website is in sports memorabilia out of the 10 websites in the top 10, 5 of them may share the exact same backlink. This tool will show you where they got the backlink so you can try and go after that link. Basically what it does is track down high quality and relevant backlinks that your competition is getting and you go after those same links so that way you are focusing on links shared by the top websites, meaning more than likely that Google puts more weights on those backlinks. I have used this and it really does work.

[freeair]

agree with you guys, no one can give the exact number of how many backlinks d you need..just keep building links

[eukristian]

The more quality links , the better . If you want to be the first in Google , supposing that your site is well optimized and has lots of unique articles , than you would need 10 or maybe more quality links to succeed . If you don't have quality content than you would need a lot more links .

[kittyluver]

Submitting thousands of directory within a week will ask the Google to smell something fishy. I think it is better enough to build the links slowly than getting millions in minutes...

[johnymartin11]

Seems to me that you have got only crap backlinks so far and mate if you are into buying and selling backlinks than there is high chances that google penalise your website.

Just to remind you that there is one box which called SAND BOX.

[countonuspr]

I personally don't believe in the Google sandbox because I have several niche websites that are brand new and already ranking ahead of much older websites. If you focus on building good links into new websites you don't have to worry about the sandbox.

[MaxineKelly]

Just build your backlinks with the good and reputed websites and directories. This is the mantras and there is no limit. You just have to judge your competitor backlinks and just try to get that much at least and rest job will be done by your quality contain

Best of luck

[trade queen]

Keep going until you are rich enough to retire from online bussines :-)

[Eluku]

You have to do anything and every until you get there. However, you dont need to spend too much to get backlinks, you only need education and action. You can check out, EasyOnlineBiz.

Lots of luck...

[Rob Baker]

The amount of backlinks you will need will depend purely on the competition. If you're trying to rank for "biometric roadrunner philosophy," one backlink ought to do just fine. If you're trying to rank high for the search term "porn," you'll probably want somewhere in the neighborhood of 212,000,000 backlinks.

[devidmark]

HI
Quality back link are most important rather then quantity back link if u have good quality back link then u get good result and also u get good PR for your web site.