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	How many backlinks do you need? Posted 9 November 2009

Having already established that backlinks are an important part of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process, naturally the next question is "How many do I need?" This makes things easier to quantify, and so put a budget on. As with many aspects of SEO though, it sadly isn't as easy as that...

Quality over Quantity

Having lots of backlinks is great, but despite having thousands, you can still be outranked by competitors with a handful How so? Well, excluding other SEO factors (content, internal linking and age domain to name a few), the quality of your backlinks are more important than the overall amount.

Defining a 'quality' backlink is difficult, but a simple example is that a blog comment link would be poor quality because they are generally 'spammy.' It's easy for anyone to comment on a blog, which means search engines do not rate their links as particularly impartial. However, a link from the BBC website would be considered very high quality. An established, high PageRank website like the BBC's has experienced, impartial professionals creating content. The link would be considered trustworthy, and therefore would count for more than hundreds of blog comment links.

What are you aiming for?

When it comes to backlinks, you need only outperform your competition. The most important task when deciding an amount of backlinks to aim for is to check out your rivals first. Type in the keyword phrases you want to turn up for in Google and take note of the following:

PageRank

You can view a website's Google PageRank by downloading the Google Toolbar. This gives a quick indication of the quality and quantity of links a website has.

Ranked out of 10, the higher the PageRank, the better quality and quantity of links the competitor has. It is unusual to see websites above a PageRank of 8, but anything above 4 will require some hard work to surpass.

Backward Links

The Google Toolbar allows you to see what kind of backlinks a website has. Please note, this isn't the overall quantity, as Google only shows a sample. However, if Google only shows a few backlinks, you can be assured a site doesn't have that many.

Yahoo has a similar service called the Yahoo! Site Explorer. This tends to show a larger sample of backlinks.

Once you've checked out your main competitors (the top 10 results for each keyword phrase you are targeting), you will soon see a picture of what types of backilnks you need in adidition to the amount. Just remember, if some competitors have lots of backlinks, they probably take SEO quite seriously so bear in mind the total is a constantly growing figure.

Be Realistic

Some markets are very competitive. There are also keyword phrases that are dominated by results such as Wikipedia or Government departments. Being websites with a high PageRank, these are almost impossible to overcome without a sustained, long-term SEO strategy. Unless you are a large organisation yourself, the sad reality is that you will probably never have enough money or time to topple them.

The answer to this predicament is to find a niche to thrive in. For example, do you specialise in a sub-sector, or only deliver in a particular location? Trust us, it's better to be a big fish in small pond when it comes to search engine rankings.

Links mean prizes.

Generating backlinks is time consuming Not only do you need to create content worthy of being linked to, you then have put your self promotion hat on and try and sell what you're doing to as many websites as possible. There is also the mind-numbingly boring task of submitting your site to the hundreds of directories out there. Have faith though, as there is reward.

The more backlinks you receive, the higher your website's pages will rank. As your levels of exposure increases, the more people will see your hard work. After a while, without obligation, other websites will start linking to you and then the snowball starts. The key is to keep them interested with constant, fresh content.

Don't cut corners

Just as with a building, backlinks may form your SEO foundations, but there is still a long way until the project is completed. When building backlinks, the text you use should have obsessive continuity with your website and it's associated keywords. There are many factors to SEO and not one of them can be left if you're in a competitive market.

It's best to spread the link building task over a period of time too. Manipulation of search engines isn't considered good practice, so a sudden increase of low quality backlinks may be a flag to the likes of Google that you're up to know good. Spend time going after higher quality backlinks and writing good content.

Keeping Track

You can see what backlinks you have indexed by using Google Webmaster. The other search engines have similar webmaster focused products, such as the recent Bing Webmaster Centre. Again, these systems don't necessarily reveal all of your backlinks, but ones that are more likely to be worth something.
 

You may also be interested in reading....
 

	The guide to getting more backlinks
	What is link weight?
	Should I exchange links?

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