Is there a relation between number of backlink and SERP?
-
I want to calculate that how many backlinks i need, in order to get in higher SERPs? is there a way to calculate? One is obvious that check number of backlinks of websites that are ranking in top 5 positions. But i guess it is not true any more...
So please help
-
Excellent Tom, very useful comments.
-
Oh I completely see your point - it's a frustrating conversation I myself have had a number of times with previous clients.
I mean, you could say that with 20 high authority links, you should expect to see movement in the SERP after 2-3 months. But again, that's so dependent on a number of factors, such as how authoritative your competitors' links are, where you get those links from (associated niches etc.) and so on. It might take more links, it might take less links, it might not be the defining influence at all.
What I'd do is audit your competitors and compare their Moz metrics with your site and see how far apart you may be. Then approach it to your CEO with how much work you can do month on month. So if you say, I will be able to do x number of articles, y infographics, z number of press releases, x number of doc shares and y high quality directory submissions in 1/3/6 months.
It simplifies things massively and doesn't take into account any Google updates that might come our way and slam certain sites - which may require you to do a whole bunch of link cleaning due to the previous SEO's efforts.
The reason why content marketing is so popular is that it allows you to earn links from a number of places, hopefully influencing your SERPs, but if not - at the very least you've developed great contacts and have hopefully introduced great content for relevant users, increasing your brand awareness and maybe even referral traffic via links to your site.
With that in mind, it may be the place to start with your CEO.
-
Hi Tom,
Thanks for your answer and i completely understand your point. The real problem is when you try to educate your CEO about this; they get all confused and start asking some frustrating questions. So i was looking for an answer that, OK, this is how many links i would try to get and then there will be X change in SERP as a result of those links.
I hope you got my point?
-
Hi Andrew
Well, there is some sort of correlation between backlinks and SERPs position. More specifically, there is some correlation between high quality, authority backlinks and SERPs.
However, it should always be remembered that correlation =/= causation.
Don't approach link building in the sense that "If I get x links, I will get y" - it simply does not work that, well, simply, and you'll only end up being frustrated.
Instead, ask yourself the kind of authority sites that people in your industry are getting links from and think "How can I get those links too?" - Maybe it's producing a quality blog post, producing an infographic, some white-label documents. The possibilities are endless.
I'd have a good look at the SEOMoz guide found here, as it can explain how the algorithm works in much more detail, while helping to build your all-round SEO knowledge.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website has a barrage of comment backlinks from 2011
When Google rolled out Panda and Penguin, I assume these links have been discounted and any site punishment has already happened. The website is performing well, however, just recently these comment backlinks have started popping up again as "new" backlinks on Ahrefs. Being "newly-found", will this have a negative impact on the website? Should we be worried about these and start disavowing or is it OK to ignore them? Thanks.
Link Building | | nhhernandez0 -
A lot of backlinks from outside of niche – bad?
We have received a lot of backlinks over the years by users putting links on their websites to their home pages on our site, eg: our.domain/user1 our.domain/user2 … our.domain/user100000 There are 10’s of thousands of these backlinks, all natural, but many of them come from blogs that are completely outside of our niche. Only a small percentage of our backlinks 1% to 5% could actually be coming from pages related to our niche, the other 95%+ could be users just linking to their home pages. Could this really hurt us..? We have 1000’s of backlinks related to our niche, yet we’ve noticed that some competitors with less than 50 backlinks can outrank us for certain keywords.. Also related, we’ve noticed these user links popping up on a lot of spammy sites, directories, etc. We didn’t create them but we’re disavowing them now to be safe. So this could also be hitting our rankings.
Link Building | | dsumter0 -
Backlinks and PDFs
Hi, we are trying to improve on the number of links to our website. A supplier has added a PDF file which is case study to their website. In the PDF it has a link to our website, will this count as a link or not? Thanks
Link Building | | danieldunn100 -
Should I remove links that are not related to my niche and could be spammy?
Our site ranks #2 for our primary search term. Compared to our competition in position #1, we out score them in all of moz metrics except in Moz trust- which we only trail by .3. I've read a lot about Google reducing the impact of backlinks and specifically the influence of anchor text for keyword ranking. However, many state that to increase domain authority you need to get more quality backlinks. Here is my dilemma: Do we remove backlinks from our link profile that are not in our niche in an effort to increase our moz trust score. Some of our backlinks are from unrelated businesses that could be considered spammy like a poker site - even though the page still has a high page authority. Currently, we have a significantly higher number of linking domains compared to our competition. Would it be beneficial to "clean up" our link profile or do we risk losing domain authority from a reduced number of links?
Link Building | | ffreesr0 -
What is the best way to go about building backlinks?
I'm a newbie here and my head is spinning because I don't know where or how to start the backlink building process. My website is 1 month old and I don't have any backlinks yet. what is the best way to go about it? Should I study my competition's backlinks and go from there? I'm so confused I need help! Please help! Any information will be greatly appreciated!!
Link Building | | allie741 -
Will Google penalize for backlinks on non-indexed pages?
Have a client who has a bunch of links from spammy sites that aren't even indexed by Google. Will Google penalize (i.e. Penguin) for backlinks from spammy sites that aren't indexed? I'm guessing "Yes, Google still crawls non-indexed sites and may penalize the sites linked to from the banned site." Anyone have any data or experience with this? Anyone have a non-indexed or banned site? Does Google still crawl it?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
Why is a website with no backlinks beating me?
In Sydney we have an import car dealership and even though it does not show any backlinks to it: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.edwardlees.com.au%2F (make sure to search on Google.com.au for any relevant keywords I mention) However this website is ranking at the top for many competitive keywords, for example: 'japanese imports' It is dominating. Our website has many backlinks: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.sportsautogroup.com.au But no keyword rankings. I understand we need to fix up our on Page SEO, but how does our EdwardLee's rank top with no backlinks?? Or is the tool just missing data?
Link Building | | HeadStud0 -
How good is a backlink that's in the footer
Hello, The strongest site in our industry (according to domain authority and excluding wikipedia) said that they would put a sitewide link to us in their footer. We're good friends with them. It would be right next to the copyright. Our site is nlpca (dot) com The partner site is nlpu (dot) com The link will say something like "More NLP Training" with the "NLP" as the link. We're targeting the keyword "NLP" How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"? Right now we're on the 3rd page for that term. I also want to make sure that it's a white hat move. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0