Backlinks are a fundamental component of the SEO strategy of any website. They’re other websites referring to your website, a vote of confidence and trust in the search engine’s eyes. The more credible and influential backlinks that you have, the higher your website will rank on search engine result pages. How many backlinks does a site have? How many should one have? That answer comes down to a few things—ranging from quality, domain authority, and competition environment.
Quality Over Quantity
Quality will always beat quantity when it comes to backlinks. It is more desirable to have a few high-authority, high-quality sites pointing to your site than hundreds of spam or low-quality sites. Search engines such as Google care about the relevance and trust of each link. A citation from a top publication in your niche tells search engines that your site is authoritative and deserves the highest ranks. Or, many poor-quality citations can damage and may ultimately penalize your site.
How many backlinks is good? To find out how many backlinks you require, start by creating a high-quality website in your niche. Guest blogging, creating quality content that other sites will link to, and commenting on forums in your industry are some proven methods of getting quality backlinks.
How Domain Authority Impacts Backlink Needs
Domain Authority (DA) is used to determine the quality of a website. And this helps answer our question today of how many backlinks should a website have? Domain Authority is a score measuring the likelihood a website will rank with search engines, usually in the range from 1-100. Smaller or new websites require additional backlinks to keep or continue to improve on their rankings more than older, more authoritative domains.
For example, such a very powerful page with DA 80 could keep its ranking due to the strength even of just a few outstanding backlinks. On the other hand, there is a relatively new page with DA of only 10 that can take dozens—or even a hundred—backlinks just in order to dominate tough competition search rankings. What you will discover here is that the more domain authority you have, the fewer backlinks it takes to rank well.
Employing Competitor Analysis to Make Backlink Estimates
How many backlinks do you need? One of the most effective ways to find out is to research your competitors. Check your primary competing sites under your category in the target search keywords. Web scrape their backlink profiles using Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz tools.
By studying the number of backlinks your competitors have, as well as the quality of those links, you’ll gain valuable insights into what’s needed to compete or outperform them in search rankings. If the top-ranking websites for your desired keywords have an average of 200 quality backlinks, then that number becomes a viable benchmark to aim for.
Keep in mind, however, that it’s not a case of merely mimicking your competition’s backlinks—it’s a case of beating them by producing more quality links. Your strategy, then, must be value, relevance, and long-term result-driven. If you’re working with a digital marketing company, they can help you streamline this process and refine your strategy.
Building a Smarter Backlink Strategy
The number of backlinks your website needs is not a fixed figure but a quality variable proportion, such as domain rank and competition. Do not overanalyze in terms of having a specific figure, but rather focus on creating a portfolio of high-quality, diversified backlinks from strong sites. Filter through your backlink profile from time to time to keep it as high-quality as possible, and track competitors for additional benchmarking.
With a good backlink strategy, you will be able to rank your site more in search engines, get more traffic, and establish your online reputation. Quality over quantity, begin small, and rankings will improve over time.
