The Ultimate Link Building Guide

For any agency out there looking to improve their client’s organic search engine rankings and traffic, building links will be one of the most effective methods to significantly increase authority and ranking on the SERPs. Putting the actual work in to build relevant and high-quality links may put your agency in control of how your client ranks and could be more impactful than any other aspect of SEO.

This, however, requires research, proper targeting, and an effective link acquisition strategy. There are specific parameters to be met related to complex link relationships, which ultimately impact how the search engine sees a particular website. When these parameters aren’t met, the link-building strategy becomes ineffective, and the ranking declines.

While it can be hard to navigate link building, we’re here to help. After all, links are our specialty. This comprehensive link guide will help you effectively build links and begin to see noticeable changes in how the search engine sees your client’s site. Read more below on links, how they benefit SEO, and how to build them.

What Are Links?

Hyperlinks or links are HTML elements that allow users to jump to a new location/website after clicking on them. They can be attached to text, images or other HTML elements and are composed of:

Anchor tag – This is an element in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) used to create hyperlinks. These hyperlinks can lead to other websites, different sections of the same webpage, or can trigger actions like opening an email client. The anchor tag is represented by the <a> element and it typically has an href attribute which stands for “hypertext reference” and represents the target URL of the link.
URL or href – The link referral location. This shows the crawler the URL to go to.
Anchor text – The clickable textual element that contains the hyperlink.
Link tag close – The HTML element that signals the search engine about the end of the link.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of using various link acquisition methods to acquire hyperlinks websites, while increasing authority, ranking, and visibility. Through link-building, websites can reach broader audiences because links are the primary navigational tool that the audience uses to jump from one.

Links can also be built organically, meaning website owners will naturally link to a specific site because it is highly relevant or necessary in explaining a specific idea. There are many reasons why organic link building happens, and even though SEO has nothing to do with this, it still counts as link building.

Crawlers also navigate the web through internal and external links. These can impact indexation rates, as well as other factors.

How Search Engines Use Links

Search engines have programmed bots called crawlers that “crawl” or scan the website contents and index it in a database accessible by algorithms that match search queries typed in the search bar by users.

These crawlers also scan links and what’s on the other side of those links to give algorithms a better understanding of website relations. Since these algorithms only get better and constantly evolve, their ability to understand complex links has made the quality and relevance of links essential in SEO.

Types Of Links According To Their Intended Use

In general, there are three different types of links that can be built:

Inbound Links
Links on another website that lead to your client’s website. They work as recommendations to your client’s site and will generally have the biggest impact on ranking and site authority.
Outbound Links
Links on your client’s website that lead to other websites.
Internal Links
Links that connect the pages of your client’s website.

Natural Editorial Links: These links come from other site owners or content creators who naturally choose to link to your content because they find it useful, informative, or valuable in some other way. These are the best types of links, but also the hardest to acquire, as they require producing high-quality, link-worthy content.
Manual Outreach Links: You acquire these links by personally reaching out to other site owners, bloggers, or journalists and asking them to link to your content. This often involves explaining why your content would be valuable or relevant to their audience.
Guest Posting Links: These links come from articles you write for other websites or blogs. In your guest post, you can typically include a link back to your own website. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: the site owner gets free, high-quality content, and you get a backlink.
Business Profile Links: These links come from business directory sites or social media profiles. When you create a profile for your business on these sites, you can usually include a link back to your website.
Forum and Blog Comments Links: These links come from comments you leave on other people’s blogs or forums. However, you should be careful with this method, as spammy or irrelevant comments can harm your reputation and SEO performance.
Press Release Links: When you publish a press release about your company’s news or events through a distribution service, you can include a link back to your website. Some of these press release links can be nofollow links which might not provide direct SEO value but can still generate traffic to your site.

Private Blog Network (PBN) Links: These are links from a network of websites owned by a single entity, designed for the purpose of creating backlinks. This is a black hat SEO strategy and is generally not recommended, as it can lead to severe penalties from search engines.
Infographics and Other Visual Content Links: Visual content like infographics, charts, graphs, or other visual data can be great for earning links. People love to share visual content, and when they do, they’ll often link back to your site.

Why You Need to Build Links

If you don’t build links, you won’t rank. While there are many influential factors in SEO, links are arguably the most important. Links increase brand mentions, authority, and relevance, which optimizes your online brand to increase rankings. Trust us, it will be an uphill battle trying to rank without actively building links. But it’s not just the number of links, you also need high quality.

The more authoritative and quality links to your site, the more search engines will be inclined to link to your website. You can think of these links as recommendations, where each recommendation helps you to climb higher in the rankings.

Links not only boost authority and rankings, but they also can expand relevance based on the referring site (the domain linking to you). In order to rank for any keyword, a website must be relevant to the topic. One way to establish relevance is with links from other sites. For example, let’s say you get links from local directories and organizations in your city. This will create stronger local relevance based on the associated sites.

The ultimate goal is to publish high-quality content, products, services, and offerings that naturally attract links without asking. But this doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to be link-worthy and organically increase links. You have to build up your brand and content. In the meantime, there is a way to supplement – building links.

Terminology

Now that you the types of links, let’s explain the technical aspects of link building and your link profile.

Specific terms are used when talking about links or link building. Knowing these terms will make the link-building process easier to understand, and that’s why we have compiled some of the more important terms on the list below.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the copy used to link a page in content. For example, in the sentence, “The instructions to book the appointment are here.” Here would be the anchor text. Anchor text can have a HUGE impact on the effectiveness of a link, especially if it is over optimized.

It is an element in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) used to create hyperlinks. These hyperlinks can lead to other websites, different sections of the same webpage, or can trigger actions like opening an email client. The anchor tag is represented by the <a> element and it typically has an href attribute which stands for “hypertext reference” and represents the target URL of the link.

DoFollow Link

An HTML tag applied to links that tell the search engine to crawl the link. The search engine will then create an association between the two linked sites and gain additional information on the relevancy of content and UX.

Indexed Link/Link Indexation

A link that has already been crawled and indexed by the search engine.

Indexed links are actively used in Google’s index of information, making them more impactful. Links that are not in the index are essentially not counted. They don’t have the same weight. Link indexation is the act of getting links indexed. There are some link indexation techniques for higher rates of indexation.

Link Co-Occurrence

The words and phrases around the link. It’s very likely that crawlers use these cp-occurrences as “baby anchor text” for improved relevancy.

Link Profile

Also called a link graph, this is all the links to your client’s site that make their backlink profile. The link profile impacts authority and trustworthiness and gives search engines an understanding of the content that your client’s site provides. Usually, the more high quality and diverse the link profile is, the better your client’s site ranks.

NoFollow Link

An HTML tag applied to links that tell the search engine to not crawl the link. This does not impact rankings but can still bring in traffic and increase brand mentions and relevance

Referral Traffic

The traffic that comes from other websites linking to your clients. High referral traffic coming from a domain or link is usually an indication of relevant content.

Referring Domains

The number of websites that link to your client’s site. Sites that link to you multiple times will still count as one referring domain, so it’s good to ensure that there is a good balance between the number of links and the number of referring domains. A low number of referring domains and a high number of links will negatively impact website authority.

White Hat v. Black Hat

White Hat is a type of SEO that uses strategies and tactics following Google’s guidelines. These strategies are safe and do not pose a risk for negative impact.

In contrast, black hat is a type of SEO that uses tactics violating the terms of service or generally unsafe practices. Google My Business provides specific terms of service and if you’re using strategies that go against these, that would be black hat SEO.

Don’t forget the grey hat. Yes, there’s a 3rd type of SEO that is a mix of both. In reality, manually building links isn’t a white hat strategy.

The Importance of Link Building

Links are the most influential factor in SEO. They increase authority and relevance and work as a direct brand mention which inevitably increases rankings. Actively building high-quality, authoritative inbound links influences the search engine to link your client’s site on the SERPs more often and gives it higher overall placement. The expanded relevancy that links provide, when paired with supportive, relevant content and a relevant referring site, will boost the authority of the website and increase the audience and targeted traffic.

Links are great when it comes to building trust with the search engine and building your client’s brand. Links are direct or indirect brand mentions that increase the prominence and create relationships with other websites during outreach.

The idea is to publish high-quality content to back up your client’s services or products so that links get built organically. However, this is a long process that takes a lot of brand building and an efficient link acquisition strategy.

What Links Are Considered High Quality

Not all links are equal. The quality of each link will differ and so will the impact it has on your SEO. There are some features to consider before reaching out to websites to build inbound links. First, links differ in quality, and search engines are becoming better at fileting out low-quality ones.

While various SEO tools can help determine how effective a link can be, they cannot accurately account for relevance and quality. Do not rely heavily on tools – especially their 3rd party metrics like domain authority and domain rating. This is where relevant research is needed.

Your focus when building links needs to be on quality above all else. Keep in mind, a link does not need to have all the below features to be high quality.Some of the features that indicate that a link is high quality include;

Relevance

One of the primary and most important factors to take into account when link building is relevance. While most link resources focus on authority, relevance is equally, if not more important.

If the link is niche-relevant, it carries more weight with search engines than a link not relevant to your site. Relevance can come in many forms, including niche or industry relevance, audience relevance, and local relevance.

Authority

The more authoritative a link is, the higher the trust level with search engines and your audience. The more you can connect your site with authoritative and trusted resources, the more that authority will trickle down to your domain. Inbound links from trusted/authoritative sources will impact and grow your client’s website authority. An authoritative source could be an inbound link with high PageRank or an authoritative site such as big news portals, which are generally harder to build links to.

Good User Experience

Search engines value a good user experience (UX). After all, Google is in the business of providing the best user experience possible to searchers. That means search engines need to rank the best quality content to answer the searcher’s question the best. You want to be linked to quality content so search engines associate your site with a positive UX.

Being linked to quality content will end up in the search engine associating your client’s site with a positive user experience. This means that going for link farms or sites that publish spammy content when link building will negatively impact SEO.

In the end, a link with all these factors will have the biggest impact. But if you have to choose just one, relevance can make the biggest impact.

How to Build Links

Common Link Building Methods

There are various link-building methods that you may use to enhance your client’s link profile and build their authority. As we discuss how to build links, we’ll go through the types of links, as well as strategies to acquire them…

Guest Posts

This is a popular link-building method that publishes content on another site, which links back to your site. First, you need to find relevant sites that accept content submissions. Some will have a form for submitting content, while others will ask for an email pitch. This is one of the easier ways to get your clients content published and linked.

Search online for industry sites using terms like industry + “guest post” or “contribute”. Then, get to work creating high quality, helpful content. When submitting the content, we recommend adding a personal touch to your message, such as how the content will help their audience.

Be aware though, not all guest post links have the same impact. You can’t just publish a guest post on an irrelevant or general site with high authority and expect that link to make a big impact. You need guest posts on highly relevant websites.

Manual Outreach

This is an older, but still effective link building strategy. All you need to do is find content, preferably higher ranking, where your brand and content fits. Then, determine the exact place where your link would make the most sense.

This is important because specific, actionable outreach is more effective than simply saying, “my link would be helpful if added to this piece of content.” It’s too general and requires effort from the referring domain. The less effort it takes to add the link, the better.

Next, you need to find the site email. You can look at the contact us page, in the footer, or on the about us page. But if you don’t find contact info in any of those places, there are tools like Hunter.io where you can easily find the email (usually).

All that’s left is to send the email. Be sure to be short and appealing, yet specific. We also recommend highlighting the value of the link to the users and the site owners.

It is best to find likely link opportunities through a link analysis tool, grab the contact email and send them a personalized message. The email is preferred to be short and highlight your link’s value to the users and site owner.

Broken Link Building

This method is pretty simple – find broken links on relevant sites. Then, reach out to the site owner to replace the broken link with your link. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Broken links negatively impact rankings and user experience, so the site owner improves the experience with your live link and you build a new relevant link. We recommend finding highly relevant blog posts for the topic and proposing those as the new link. Don’t try to link to your service pages.

Broken Link Reclamation

You can also use link tools to find your broken and lost links. Simply filter your backlink profile and the tool will show you exactly which links you’ve lost or are no longer working. Links to your site could be broken for a number of reasons – the page was deleted without a 301 redirect or the link is incorrect for example. Once you know why the link is broken or lost, reach out to the webmaster with the updated link.

Unlinked Brand Mentions

Once you’ve built a strong brand, your business will be mentioned across the internet. Many of these mentions will not be linked. Therefore, you can reach out and ask for a linked mention. The site already mentions your brand so they are aware of who you are and respect what you do. You just have to reach out and ask for the credit.

To find unlinked mentions, Google Alerts can be an effective strategy. Simply set up brand monitoring with many different variations of your brand name, then checking the email report each day or week. You’ll get a list of everywhere your brand was mentioned online that week. It’s like a link building report for sites that already know your brand.

Citations

You probably think of citation links as directory links. In reality, a citation is any time your business is cited with NAP and a product, service, idea, etc. Citations are great for building up prominence (one of the top 3 local ranking factors) AND authoritative links at the same time.

While many citation links are NoFollow, you still need a healthy mix for a strong backlink profile. Additionally, many directories are high authority so you can build authority quickly. You can also increase relevance for different services and niches with niche relevant citations.

We recommend leveraging Ranking Directories for the strongest impact. Just simply Google a top ranking competitor’s brand name and start scrolling. Note all the directories and profile links that are ranking in the SERPs. Then, go build all those citations for your own site.

Directory Links

Similar to citations, directory links are NAP mentions but on directory websites. These are websites that list specific businesses and are great for building authority and relevance.

Review Links

If a website or person reviews your product or service, they will oftentimes link to your brand. Reach out to authoritative sites and influencers when you have a new product or service. It will help you to build your brand awareness, while also building links.

There are also many product and service review sites that can help you build links. But there are other benefits to these sites. First, third party reviews are becoming increasingly important in SEO. Additionally, you increase brand mentions and prominence the more your brand is talked about online.

Niche Edits

These are links that are placed in already published content. They can be impactful because the sites generally have traffic and authority already built up. Generally, you can purchase these edits or perform manual outreach to have site owners add your link.

Link Roundups

This type of link building gathers up many helpful links to feature on one page. Site owners want this content to guide and help their audience. For our industry, examples include Top 10 Link Building Companies, Best SEO Resources, and you can find link roundups with tools like HARO.

One benefit of link roundups is there can be some link reciprocity. The other brands mentioned in the content will also share the roundup with their audience, further expanding your reach.

Resource Pages

Many websites will have a Resources page on their website that links to helpful industry websites, tools, and other resources. Sites will usually have one resource page, but some sites may not have one – it will depend on your industry.

If you find a relevant website with a quality resource page, manually reach out to the site owner and ask to be included. We recommend personalizing the email and highlighting how your link will benefit their audience. You can also offer to link to their content and/or promote it to your audience.

Podcast Links

An easy method of building links from podcasts that your client’s business appears on by asking to be linked to when the business or services are mentioned.

However, all the same rules apply here as well, and relevancy is an important factor in any link-building method. You wouldn’t want to publish content on a website that is spammy or irrelevant to your client’s content, as this will have a very little or negative impact on rankings.

Don’t do podcasts yet? It’s easy to be a guest! While it may not be the most notable podcast, you can start building your podcast reputation and links.

Building Links Organically

When it comes to building links without using any outreach methods, where links get built organically without the owner’s request, the type of content being served matters the most. Serving top-tier informative and helpful content should be the top priority when trying to build links organically.

There are 4 types of content that work great for generating links organically:

Virtual Assets – Images, diagrams, infographics, or other visual-oriented pieces of content that are super easy to link to. They usually provide helpful information in a visually appealing manner, which also increases readability and ease of understanding.
List Posts – Numbered list of tips, techniques, reasons, or anything else that packs a lot of information into easily digestible chunks of content.
Original Research/Data – Content that brings new insights from industry studies or original research. This could be statistical data that are highly linkable due to the information they provide.
In-Depth Ultimate Guides – Comprehensive resources that cover everything there is to know about a given topic. These resources generate a lot of links because they pack a lot of information in one place.

The Link Building Process

Analyze Current Backlink Profile

Before you begin building links, you need to understand your current situation. Every site will have a different link profile, which means the best links will vary from client to client. You can use SEO tools that will automatically analyze your backlink profile and provide a bunch of information:

Number of Backlinks
Referring Domain Counts
Link to Referring Domain Ratios
Authority & Quality Metrics of Individual Links
Lost Backlinks
Broken Backlinks
DoFollow v. NoFollow
Anchor Text Used
Anchor Text Ratios
Types of Links
Referral Traffic

And that’s not even everything these tools can show you. We recommend using either SEMRush or Ahrefs to analyze backlinks.

Create a Link Plan

Once you have a good idea of your client’s link profile and various ratios, it’s time to plan out the link-building strategy. Don’t just start building links. Use the insights from your analysis to guide your link-building efforts. There are many questions to ask yourself while planning:

What types of links will you go after?
What content will you link to and what is the value?
Should you build new content?
What types of anchor text should be used?
How will you perform outreach or find the link opportunities?
How many links should you build each month?

That last question is important. You want to ensure consistency when building links. Otherwise, this signals to search engines aggressive, manual link building. While you do not need to build the exact same number each month, you should aim to stay within a range. Don’t build 100 links one month then only four the following month.

Try not to signal the search engine about aggressive link building by consistently building links throughout each month. If there isn’t consistency from one month to the other, ranking might be impacted negatively.

Ensure that the end goal is having a diverse link profile for your client. Don’t just build one type of link, as this might signal unnatural link building. Go for both DoFollow and NoFollow links together with a healthy mix of anchor texts to emulate natural link building and not go against search engine guidelines. A common way to do this is by researching competitors on similarities in the link profile. .

Build The Links

Once you’ve conducted research and planned the link-building strategy, it’s time to build the links. We suggest leveraging as many link-building strategies as possible for the best results possible. This way, you can figure out what works best for your client. For further data-driven decisions and easier planning, try to go back to the links you’ve built and check their performance. This will give you even more insights into the best strategies to build links.

Ensure to position the links “above the fold,” meaning the user sees the link before scrolling. Link placement regarding the position of the link on the page’s contents impacts the weight of the link in ranking. Placing the link on the page’s footer will reduce its impact and worth. Also, tag the links with NoFollow or DoFollow HTML elements for increased impact and reduced chances of de-ranking.

If you’re looking for more Link Building Tactics or need help with finding the correct links to use for your client, we are more than happy to help. We offer free Link Recommendations with guaranteed traffic to streamline the process of planning and buying links. Also, take a look at our SEO blogs for similar helpful content.

Re-Analyze the Links

After you’ve built links, don’t forget to check back on their performance. Did they move the needle? Were they less effective than you hoped? Analyzing your links can help make data-driven decisions to identify what actually works and what doesn’t. There’s a lot of link theories out there, but not everything theory works in practice. We recommend analyzing your link profile at least every quarter. But if you are building a significant number of links, we would recommend it more frequently.

How to Create Natural Link Building

While it is widely known that sites build backlinks through manual outreach and purchases, the appearance of natural link building is still crucial. If you have spikes in links, this can be a red flag of manual link building, something Google isn’t the biggest fan of.

All backlinks don’t need to be built naturally, but it must appear in a natural pattern. This natural link pattern is a big part of why link velocity is analyzed.

Don’t Forget Link Diversity

While relevant, DoFollow links can make a big impact, you cannot just build one type of link. It can signal unnatural link building and reduce the effectiveness of your link profile. You want a healthy mix of both DoFollow and NoFollow links.

But you also want a mix of link types and anchor text. Google’s strict link building guidelines mean you want to emulate as natural of a link profile as possible. The best way to do this is to analyze the link graphs of top ranking competitors and identify commonalities between them. Then, use that as your guide.

Avoid Unnatural Link Velocity

Link velocity is how quickly a domain builds links. Most SEO tools will show you link velocity graphs – Ahrefs & SEMRush show both page link velocity and domain link velocity. You do not want to have drastically different link velocity than the competitor average.

Don't Use Exact Match Anchor Text

When talking about anchor text, there are many conflicting ideas on what the best anchor text is. There are many types of anchor text, so we understand why it could be confusing. Especially since the answer is actually different for every site – it depends on what your current anchor text profile is. You don’t want to overuse any one type.

Many people think exact match anchors (exactly matching your keyword) or partial match anchors (partial keywords) are the best. However, that is usually not the case. Generally branded anchors or naked anchors are best. These are the safest types of anchor text to use, and the ones we use the most often.

Oftentimes, when you hear of a link hurting a website it is not the link itself, but the anchor text being used. This is why it is so important to understand how to use safe anchors – like branded and naked. Just think about it, if you were going to link to another brand, more often than not you would use their brand name or URL.

Naked URLs & Branded Anchors

Consider for a moment what you would use as an anchor if you were naturally linking to an external site. Would you use their target keywords or the brand name/URL?

While there are instances to naturally use keywords as your anchor text, the majority of naturally-placed links use the brand name, employee name, or naked URLs. For this reason, is it important you don’t overuse exact match or partial match anchors.

In reality, exact and partial match anchors should be a small portion of your anchor text ratio. About 5% give or take…

Overusing keyword rich anchors is one of the biggest mistakes a site can make when building links. Rankings can drop quickly if search engines spot unnatural link patterns or over optimized anchor text.

Check your anchor text ratios regularly with backlink tools. You can see each type of anchor text. This allows you to know exactly what type of anchor you need to use. Again, you want to have competitor parity, so watch what others ranking high in your industry are doing.

How Many Backlinks Do You Need?

Back when SEO was the wild west, the more links you built, the higher your rankings would be. Quality and relevance weren’t fully understood by algorithms. However, that’s no longer the case – algorithms understand the complexity of links.

One of the most common SEO questions is, How many links do you need to rank #1?

Our answer is usually, “it depends.” Such a helpful answer right?

The truth is, there are a variety of factors that impact link recommendations. There is no set-in-stone number of links that will get you to page 1. It’s more like a range that will vary by industry, market, and competition level. To determine the number of links to get to page 1, you must understand the factors that impact it. Then you can identify a target number of links for your industry and area. Factors include:

Competitor Analysis
Type of Page
Type of Link
Industry
Market Size & Saturation

Competitor Parity & Analysis

To determine the number of links you need to get on page one, you first need to look at competitors. Search the term you want to rank for and note the top ranking 4-6 pages. Run each of those URLs through a backlink tool in order to analyze the link count and anchor text ratios. You will come up with a range for the top ranking pages.

Then, look at their overall backlink profile and anchor text ratios. The sites probably have the majority of links built to the homepage, but you need to get an idea of the overarching profiles. Do the majority of top-ranking pages have complex link profiles and/or strong domain authority?

Here are the competitor factors to analyze:

Type of Page

Top level pages are different from blog posts. The type of page will matter. Inner pages will generally require less backlinks than a homepage, but don’t make any assumptions.

Homepage

In general, the homepage will have more links than most pages. Press releases, sponsorship links, directory links, social links, and brand mentions nearly always link to the homepage. Guest posts can also link to the homepage, but they often link to other deeper pages as well.

Inner Pages

Not all inner pages are the same. It will depend on content subject, format, and other factors. For example, in-depth guides on helpful topics could potentially attract hundreds of backlinks. The main services page on the site not so much.

Type of Link

If you build a lot of government or .org links, these can possibly have more impact than a .net link. There isn’t a weight you can use to measure, which makes it hard to give a specific number of links needed to rank high.

Competition Level

Competition comes in many forms. Usually, as competition increases, so does the need for SEO. As brands more aggressively optimize, more links will be built. While the actual number will vary by industry, the theory holds true.

Industry

Consider high-value industries like medicine, law, and commercial services. These industries spend more money on marketing as their transaction value is high. However, an ice cream shop is much less likely to invest a lot in marketing since each customer spends much less.

While building trust and authority are important, there are also varying backlink profiles depending on the industry. Many competitive niches require more backlinks because there’s simply more investment in SEO. One of those industries is personal injury lawyers. When every company is pumping money into their digital marketing and SEO, chances are there’s more aggressive backlinking going on. After all, you need to stay in line with your competitors, so if a handful are continually building backlinks, you’ll need to stay in line with them to maintain rankings.

Conversely, consider an ice cream shop or hair stylist. These niches aren’t going to invest the same as lawyers, so the average backlink count of top-rankers is much lower.

Market Size & Saturation

For local businesses, you should consider the area’s population and how saturated the area is with options like yours. NYC and Wichita, KS have completely different competition levels. While that is a stark contrast, it illustrates the large variance in recommended link counts.

The larger the target population and/or more saturated your area is with brands like yours If you’re an online brand, consider your target population as at least national.

Identify Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

You don’t want to have the biggest backlink profile, because that could raise red flags. However, you also don’t want to have the lowest number. You want to fall within a range.

Look at all sites ranking on page 1 and evaluate all the metrics we’ve mentioned above. What is the lowest number amongst them? This is the minimum number of links you need to build in order to rank for that keyword phrase.

Let’s do some analysis to give you an idea of what to look for….

Let’s say you want to rank for personal injury attorney Austin. This is a high-value, technical/professional industry in a large metropolitan area. Chances are, this is one of the most competitive industries and markets. Compare that to a local florist in St. Augustine, FL. This is a much smaller industry in a less competitive city. The number of backlinks you would need are significantly less.

The numbers aren’t all that matter. Links must be relevant and/or quality – oftentimes this can make a bigger impact than the number of links.

Relevance is Impactful

In every backlink there are two major factors, how relevant is the link to your brand and what is the quality (trust factor) of that page (& domain).

Relevance can come in many forms – locally relevant, industry relevant, and brand relevance are just a few.

Broad v. Specific

There can be different types of relevance for your backlinks. Broad relevance links aren’t specifically about what you do, but The more niche-specific your links are, the better Google will understand your brand.

The more niched down your site is, the more focused content you have. You aren’t spreading your backlinks around. Think about a car website, if the website is generally about all cars, there are a variety of topics. However, if the site is only covering Subuarus, their content will be much more focused around Subarus. So will their keyword focus, backlinks, and relevance.

Quality & Authority Aren’t the Same

There are many quality sites with average authority. There are also some sites with above average authority, but aren’t the highest quality in relation to your niche…

Therefore, we recommend identifying highly relevant, quality links.

Other Factors that Impact Page 1:

How Much Content Does the Site Have?

Sites range from a single page to thousands of pages. Therefore, the optimal number of backlinks will vary greatly from site to site, even in the same industry. That’s why there can be a wide range of backlinks for the top-ranking sites.

When doing competitive analysis, try to find sites in similar size to yours. This will not always be possible, but try. It provides the best insight into your industry SERPs, as well as your site’s size.

Content Type Matters

We talk a lot about “natural” link building. In order to appear natural, the number of backlinks must make sense in relation to the type of content. Not all content is going to attract links at the same rate.

An in-depth guide on DIY HVAC maintenance is going to naturally attract more links than your HVAC service page. Therefore, it would appear unnatural if you’re building hundreds of links to your service page, but not your helpful guide. It is logical that a significant number of links would be built to helpful content.

Look at the range of backlinks the top-ranking service pages have. That’s where you need to be.

Build Trust through Homepage Linking

Authority and trust go hand-in-hand. Authority signals search engines and searchers trust your brand. One of the biggest impacts of SEO is trust. From search engines to a user’s experience, SEO relies on trust.

We recommend building the majority of your backlinks to the homepage. Then, use branded anchors to further strengthen brand trust and practice “natural-looking” link building.

Inner Linking Workaround

If you can’t build tons of links to a page you want to rank, leverage inner linking. Build links to your homepage and most valuable content, then ensure your service pages are directly linked from the pages you’ve built links to. Link juice will trickle down to the subpage even if you don’t build links directly to them.

Competitive Analysis

While being in line with competitors is vital, the amount of content your site publishes matters too.

It wouldn’t appear natural if a site with 10 pages of content had 10,000 links. Your content and backlinks should increase in step with each other (as much as you can).

Completeness of Content

You’ve probably heard that you need X amount of words in order to rank on page 1, which simply isn’t true. However, there are some correlations between content length, backlinks, and rankings.

In general, longer content provides more information, which probably better answers the query. Google rewards in-depth content that fully answers the query.

Too Many Links

It’s also possible to build so many links that you far surpass your competitors. If your link profile has significantly more than the rest of the top-rankers it can be a signal to Google that manual link building is occurring – something they don’t like. This can cause you to rank lower.

The honest answer to how many backlinks you need to rank on page 1 is, “it depends.” We’ve laid out what to evaluate to determine the best course of action for your brand’s specific needs.

The most important thing to remember is to analyze a handful of the top-ranking competitors. Determine a range of link count and use the lowest number as the minimum to compete. If you want to rank for this keyword, you need to have at least the minimum you’ve set.

Benefits of Link Building

In addition to ranking higher and increasing traffic, there are many other benefits. You have to think beyond just rankings…

Increase Audience & Targeted Traffic

When your link is published on another site, this exposes your brand to an audience that may not be familiar with you. Referral Traffic can expand your reach far beyond its current limits. Getting a link from a highly trafficked site can directly correlate to increases in traffic and leads to your website. Consider the New York Times linking to your website. How many new website visitors do you think you’d have after that link is live?

If the links come from websites relevant to your niche or area, these links can bring in targeted traffic that’s interested in your offers. Website visitors who are invested in your niche can convert MUCH higher than general traffic.

Build Trust

Google and other search engines will not rank brands that are untrustworthy. If you do not have a strong link graph, this is a signal of a lower level of trust. Not something you want when trying to achieve high rankings.

The more you acquire links from relevant and trusted sites, the stronger your domain’s trust will become. This creates a more future-proof SEO strategy that will maintain effectiveness in future algorithm updates.

Build Your Brand (& Authority)

Google ranks brands. And this statement is only becoming more true as algorithms mature. Search engines are using brand strength as a way to weed out spam and low quality sites. A great way to build your brand is by establishing your authority with links. Additionally, getting links from others in your niche can be a huge vote of confidence.

Links = brand mentions. Brand mentions can help increase prominence for local rankings too!

To build brand and authority, content creation is an effective avenue that demonstrates your expertise. Not only do you get links and Google recognizes the endorsement and brand mention, but you’re also building the brand with your consumers. The more your audience is exposed to your content, the stronger brand awareness your business will have.

While you can build links to your homepage or service page, we recommend also creating resources specifically for attracting links – infographics, blog posts, reports, white papers, tools, or studies. This content is linkable and will net you more. You must earn the link. You can’t just ask and expect to get it.

Creating linkable content will make for easy link building.

Create Relationships

Take our word for it, relationships matter, especially in SEO. Every site is sent requests for guest opportunities or links to be added to their content. You’ll get lost in the shuffle.

When doing manual outreach, you’re likely to rub elbows with others in your industry. Invest the time to nurture these relationships, which can lead to better opportunities, higher trust, and more linking. You could also leverage these relationships to find podcast speakers, journalists who need sources (the provide links), guest post contributors, knowledgeable resources, and even friends.

Don't Have Time to Build Links?

Work with us! We offer a variety of link options to fit any brand and niche. offers many link options that guarantee quality. You don’t have to worry about low quality links or spammy practices. Our core focus is safety and effectiveness, so you can trust us with your link building.

You can explore all our link options in our link-buying guide. We also offer monthly managed link building for consistent link building without all the work. No matter what type of link you need, we’ve got you covered with quality options you can count on.