How Many Backlinks Should I Have?
According to SEO experts, you should aim to have 40-50 backlinks to your site’s homepage and up to 100 on your subpages. In general, you shouldn’t try to go too high above those figures, as it can make it appear that you’re using unethical practices for link-building.
Bear in mind that those numbers are only a broad generalization. You can only determine the actual number of how many backlinks you need to have by analyzing your industry, your existing domain authority, and how many links your competitors have.
Concentrate on outperforming your competition in quality more than quantity. If your domain authority is low despite having as many links as your competition or more, that’s a good sign that you need to improve the quality of your backlinks instead of focusing on how many you have.
What Kind of Backlinks Are Good for SEO?
You can’t have too many high-quality backlinks. Develop a strategy that attracts links with the following characteristics.
Links From Top-Notch Sites
High-quality hyperlinks add value to the visitor. When doing SEO, you need to understand Google’s E-E-A-T philosophy to understand which pages the search engine sees as bringing that value.
Its algorithm tries to highly rank sites that demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Sites that are high in E-E-A-T can confer some of that prestige to you by association, i.e., through backlinks.
Use your SEO link-building tools to determine how many backlinks you have coming from sites with lots of E-E-A-T. If you don’t have many, start targeting those kind of sites.
Dofollow Links
“Dofollow” links contribute the most to link-building. All backlinks are dofollow links by default; however, a site’s webmaster can assign a “nofollow” tag to any link on their site. This attribute tells the web crawler to ignore the link, denying it the benefits of the site’s E-E-A-T.
Why do this? Well, a company could intrusively leave its URLs in comments and message boards around the web to build backlinks. This is the kind of spammy tactic that Google doesn’t care for. Therefore, sites usually put a nofollow tag in these sections for any links that show up there.
Also, sponsored and UGC tags function like nofollow links. These tell the bot that the URL is either a paid link or user-generated content, respectively. While nofollow links are still able to build site traffic, they don’t accomplish as much as dofollow links. Pay attention to how many backlinks you have in the dofollow category.
Relevant Links
Links that come from a related vertical are more valuable than those that don’t. For example, a link to a site that sells makeup fits well on a page that promotes hair care or apparel. That link probably won’t do so well on a page about commercial electrical repair.
Google tends to ignore irrelevant links and rightly so. Pursue getting backlinks on pages that make sense — not just any and everywhere you can get them.
The relevance and quality of the anchor text matters, too. The hyperlink should be in a word or phrase that deals with the subject of the landing page and gives the reader a reason to click. If links are unnatural, you’ll get fewer clicks anyway, and search engines might devalue those links and your website, no matter how many backlinks you have.
Does It Take Long for Backlinks To Help My SEO?
Practically every aspect of SEO involves playing the “long game” to achieve success. Therefore, you need patience to wait for the real results.
In the case of backlinks, you could start seeing results in as few as three months, but it might take a year to make a full impact, especially in a competitive market. That fact highlights the importance of starting your link-building strategy as soon as you can to begin reaping the benefits.
Who Can Help Me Get as Many Backlinks as I Should Have?
Link-building and other SEO practices are key to a successful digital marketing strategy but require a steady grind. Making it happen demands continuous content and persistent outreach.
If you want results sooner rather than later, our crew is at the ready. Talk to our SEO experts at BKA Content to see how our white hat link-building services can help you determine how many backlinks you currently have, as well as enhance your site’s relevancy, engagement, and domain authority.
