How many backlinks is good?

13 years ago

Im interested in knowing myself. Although I'm sure there will be those who say it all depends on this and that, so most likely I don't see any specific answers coming from this question. :/

But I look forward to seeing.

Should be interesting indeed.

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AFI

13 years ago

Originally Posted by RasiFranks

Im interested in knowing myself. Although I'm sure there will be those who say it all depends on this and that, so most likely I don't see any specific answers coming from this question.

Yep and I know it does too, but I just want a very general broad ballpark figure.

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Alexa Smith Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by AFI

I just want a very general broad ballpark figure.

I don't think you'll get a figure (from anyone whom one ought to trust)!

If you intend selling the authoritative recipe-book on international recipes for "snail and absynthe soup", and register the .com to match, you won't need one single backlink to rank at the top of Google for the niche's major keyword: you just need to get your site indexed by Google.

Ok, it's a fatuous, obvious observation, I admit; but I think it explains why this question doesn't lend itself to a meaningful numerical answer, in abstract?
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JohnHuizinga

13 years ago

I don't think anybody is going to be able to answer your question.

I can tell you from personal experience that 100 relatively decent quality backlinks (Angela style) can be way more effective than 20,000 backlinks blasted to old, spam-filled sites.

But YMMV...

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AFI

13 years ago

And what is the most accurate way to judge how many backlinks you have? Yahoo?

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Tyrus Antas 13 years ago

Originally Posted by AFI

And what is the most accurate way to judge how many backlinks you have? Yahoo?

Get an account with Google's Webmaster Central.
They'll tell you how many links you have.

Google Webmaster Central. Get data about crawling, indexing and search traffic. Increase traffic to your site.

For competitor links you need something like Seomoz Pro or
Majestic SEO.

Tyrus
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Slade556

13 years ago

You can use yahoo site explorer to check your backlinks, bear in mind its not an exact number. It takes a long time for certain links to show up. You sort of answered your own question in the sense that it really does just depend on your competition. I know you're asking for a number but let me give you an example, one of my sites has 150 backlinks tops (that's nothing) and consistently ranks in the top 3 for its optimized keyword in Google. It is because the competition I am up against is weak. If I were trying to rank for a more competitive keyword I'd be lucky if that many backlinks got me showing up on page 200! Other sites will need 20,000 links just to make the top 10. It's all relative.

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AFI

13 years ago

*runs to register snailandabsynthe.com*......

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just my 2 cents worth

13 years ago

I have a website ranked on page 2 of Google with no backlinks, the higher the competition the more links you'll probably need. There are websites and software that can give you the information on what is linking to your site to get a better picture.

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AFI 13 years ago

Originally Posted by just my 2 cents worth

There are websites and software that can give you the information on what is linking to your site to get a better picture.

URLS please?
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Alexa Smith

Banned 13 years ago

To rank in the number one spot on Google is trivially easy. Unfortunately, to rank there for search terms for which significant numbers of people are actually looking is a whole different ball-game. :p

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AFI

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

To rank in the number one spot on Google is trivially easy. Unfortunately, to rank there for search terms for which significant numbers of people are actually looking is a whole different ball-game. :p

Of course.

My snail and absynthe site just ranked #1 on Google 5 minutes ago.

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just my 2 cents worth

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

To rank in the number one spot on Google is trivially easy. Unfortunately, to rank there for search terms for which significant numbers of people are actually looking is a whole different ball-game. :p

Depends on the competition, my site has 6000 ish monthly searches, not massive but enough to work with and has very little competition hence I can rank goodly but I agree it normally takes a fair bit of work.

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Alexa Smith Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by just my 2 cents worth

Depends on the competition

Exactly my point. Shouldn't it be your two pence worth, though, if you live up North in the UK? :confused:
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- just my 2 cents worth 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Alexa Smith
  
  Exactly my point. Shouldn't it be your two pence worth, though, if you live up North in the UK? :confused:
  
  Yes it should but it sounds rubbish:rolleyes:
  
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excuzemee

13 years ago

I know the answer!

As many as it takes!

Get your exact match keywords, pick the top three sites and put them into the yahoo site explorer. Then check their sites against Alexia, and now you have a ballpark number on how many baclinks AND the kind you will need for the average site.

Is there an average site? Probably need an average number then.

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Migdolas

13 years ago

Originally Posted by excuzemee

I know the answer!

As many as it takes!

Get your exact match keywords, pick the top three sites and put them into the yahoo site explorer. Then check their sites against Alexia, and now you have a ballpark number on how many baclinks AND the kind you will need for the average site.

Is there an average site? Probably need an average number then.

I would have to agree, that for anyone rather new in the SEO game, the basic understanding of the amount of work needed to be done is calculated rather easily:

You now what your website is offering
You define that with 10-20 keywords
Do search on google for these keywords
Write down top 5 competitors
Check their backlinks via siteexplorer . search . yahoo
You get the average number of backlinks required for your market.

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Shane N

13 years ago

Great question!

It all depends. I do offline consulting for a major hotel near Miami Beach... And our competitors on the top page of Google have upwards of 500,000 incoming links to their site.

Hotels on the beach in Florida is a very competitive niche of course... But again, it all depends. You can check to see how many backlinks your competitors' websites have and go from there...

I don't think it's possible to provide a ball-park figure or generic number for backlinking in general -- since every niche, every keyword phrase combination, etc. will be different and require a different amount of incoming links to compete with the top dogs.

Best,
Shane

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LetsGoViral

13 years ago

Depends on PR and sites as well as competition. Some backlinks can be harmful. For example, if you have backlinks linking from heavily spammed sites this can have a NEGATIVE affect on your serp rating.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by LetsGoViral

if you have backlinks linking from heavily spammed sites this can have a NEGATIVE affect on your serp rating.

Oh dear: yet another of the "urban myths of internet marketing" rears its ugly head.

This can't be true, if you think about it, instead of just repeating it. If it were true, it would be the easiest thing in the world for people to use it as a way of disabling their competitors' sites, wouldn't it? Now, we all know that Google has one or two little eccentricities, but it's very far-fetched indeed to suppose that they'd tolerate the resultant chaos that incentivising that would cause their algorithms and SERP's, isn't it?

As explained so clearly in the book "SEO For Dummies" (and in 100 other places), Google knows that whereas you can control to which sites you link from your site, you can't necessarily control from which sites your site receives links, and they won't therefore penalise you for that.

And then, of course, for the icing on the cake, there's also the little matter that Google's own Matt Cutts has explained so unambiguously, so many times, that it isn't true. Though I suppose someone absolutely determined to believe in and propagate these myths as "advice" to people, rather than thinking them through, could try to make out that he's been lying all this time ... :rolleyes:

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LetsGoViral

13 years ago

Now that I checked...yes, actually you are right. Disregard my earlier post fellow warriors!

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Oh dear: yet another of the "urban myths of internet marketing" rears its ugly head.

This can't be true, if you think about it, instead of just repeating it. If it were true, it would be the easiest thing in the world for people to use it as a way of disabling their competitors' sites, wouldn't it? Now, we all know that Google has one or two little eccentricities, but it's very far-fetched indeed to suppose that they'd tolerate the resultant chaos that incentivising that would cause their algorithms and SERP's, isn't it?

As explained so clearly in the book "SEO For Dummies" (and in 100 other places), Google knows that whereas you can control to which sites you link from your site, you can't necessarily control from which sites your site receives links, and they won't therefore penalise you for that.

And then, of course, for the icing on the cake, there's also the little matter that Google's own Matt Cutts has explained so unambiguously, so many times, that it isn't true. Though I suppose someone absolutely determined to believe in and propagate these myths as "advice" to people, rather than thinking them through, could try to make out that he's been lying all this time ... :rolleyes:

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J Bold

13 years ago

Just one backlink, from the homepage of Google, and I think that will be enough.

So, just one...

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genietoast 13 years ago

Until you rank on page 1.
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johan_malmo

13 years ago

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Alexa Smith Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by johan_malmo

Try and get .gov or .edu backlinks, they tend to have higher value than others

The ones that are also authority sites have higher value, yes. There are also some .gov and especially .edu sites that aren't authority sites at all, and they don't have higher value.

It's not "being a .edu/.gov" site that gives them higher value. It's being an authority site. It's just that .edu/.gov sites are more likely to be authority sites.

Correlation is not causation.
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How many backlinks is good?

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