Which number is important for backlinks?

[Bua]

I'm getting very confused.  What is the important number regarding backlinks to my site?

The Moz number vs. Hubspot grader spits out vastly different numbers. For the particular site I'm trying to improve, I don't have Webmaster Tools installed yet (waiting for webmaster to do as it doesn't have asynchronous code on it).

Also apologies for novice question but I remember once being told that offpage SEO and specifically the amount of external backlinks is responsible for 75% of your SERP.  Is that still the case?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy,

Great question. A couple of metrics that I like to focus on are "# of unique linking root domains" to a site, and also overall Domain Authority and Moz Trust.

It's not really about the pure number of links. Even a spam blog can generate millions of backlinks without moving the rankings. Instead, it's more about the breadth, quality, trust and topical relevance of the sites linking to you.

If there's one metric that most agencies use for benchmarking, it's Domain Authority, but I'd be careful with this as it can fluctuate from month-to-month and should be thought of in broad terms instead of as a precise number that you track from week to week.

I think this blog post by Dr. Pete perfectly answers your question better than I could myself. It's well worth a read.

http://moz.com/blog/whats-better-on-page-seo-or-link-building

Let us know if you have any questions. Best of luck with your SEO!

[DougRoberts]

I'm not sure what number you're referring to, but would suggest that you need to be a little cautious in these post-penguin days.

I'll answer the simpler part of your question first. You asked if external backlinks were responsible for 75% of your SERP.

I'd suggest taking a look at the following Whiteboard Friday with Rand on the latest Ranking Factors survey:

http://moz.com/blog/weighting-the-clusters-of-ranking-factors-in-google-analytics-whiteboard-friday

Domain + Page level link features account for just under 40% according to the survey which suggests that while they are still the dominant factors, their influence is diminishing.

You really should resist the temptation to see link building as a numbers game. The days of being able to throw a whole bunch of cheap links at a page and watch it rank have gone - at least where you want a sustainable ranking.

Try to think about quality, over quantity, and think about the context and relevance of the linking site to your own. Try to think of it as building relationships rather than just links for the sake of links.

Keep your target audience in mind when you look for link opportunities and find those links that are likely to provide you with relevant traffic.

Hundreds of links with exact match anchor text from loads of rubbish sites are unlikely to do you any favours.

[Linda-Vassily]

The number of links can be looked at as the total number of links, the number of links from a domain (one domain can have many links to your site) or the number of C Blocks (which suggest whether IP addresses are linked). Make sure you are comparing the same unit of measurement.

Another good backlink resource besides the ones you are using is MajesticSeo (they have a free tool you can try).

Links are very important, but there is no set value (at least that Google will tell).  Moz and SearchMetrics have recently released ranking factors; you might be interested in taking a look at those.