How Many Links Does it Take to Rank High in Search Results?

How Many Links Does it Take to Rank High in Search Results?

Farzad Rashidi

Farzad Rashidi

Lead Innovator at Respona

How Many Links Does it Take to Rank High in Search Results?

Backlinks as a ranking factor are so deeply ingrained in Google’s algorithm that they’ll always be important. 

But how many do you actually need? 

I wish there was an easy answer like “You need 100 backlinks to get on page one.” 

But that would be a lie. 

In this article, we’ll discuss:

  • How to determine how many links each page needs to rank high in search engine results
  • What makes a good backlink
  • How to get high quality backlinks using 5 strategies
Link building cheat sheet

Link building cheat sheet

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It depends entirely on how many backlinks other pages ranking for the same keyword have. 

For a low-difficulty keyword, only a handful of links will be enough to get to the top 3. 

For a high-difficulty keyword like “SEO”, it may take literal hundreds. 

To figure out how many links a web page would need to rank, you’ll need the help of a backlink monitoring tool like Ahrefs or Semrush. 

Let’s take a look at other articles targeting the same question as this blog post as an example. 

competing articles for our target keyword

Editorial.Link’s article (that’s ranking at #2 as of the moment of writing this article) has 11 backlinks from 10 unique referring domains

And 8 of these links are coming from very highly-authoritative domains:

high dr backlinks of a competitor

So, in order for the article you’re reading right now to outrank them (if it hasn’t at the time of you reading), it would take 10-20 similar quality backlinks. 

BIG emphasis on quality here. 

Not every backlink has the same SEO value, so let’s break it down. 

Referring Domain Quality

The first thing that determines how valuable an incoming link is is the site it’s placed on. 

Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA) are common metrics that estimate a website’s overall strength. 

domain rating example

Higher scores generally indicate a more powerful backlink. 

The logic is simple – DR and DA are calculated based on the site’s own link profile. 

More links = higher DR/DA = more “link juice” sent your way.

However, keep in mind that these are third-party metrics made up by SEO monitoring tools and shouldn’t be the sole indicator. 

You should also look at how much traffic a site is getting.

More traffic means more tangible exposure and clicks. 

Look at the traffic history, though, as link farms with inflated metrics are super common. 

This is the traffic chart of a link farm: 

link farm traffic chart example

An authoritative website wouldn’t be “spiky” – it would have consistently increasing (or at least plateauing) traffic. 

Referring Page Quality

Next, take a look at the linking page. 

Even if the site is amazing and gets millions of traffic, but the linking page has 0, how much referral traffic are you going to get? 

Exactly. 

Besides page traffic, the content needs to be of high quality, and, of course, topically relevant to yours. 

Links placed higher on the page tend to have a higher CTR. 

Check for other external links – too many on the same page dilutes the link juice value passed to each one. 

1-2 are fine, but something like this is not:

page with too many outgoing links

Dofollow or Nofollow

This refers to the link’s HTML attribute. 

Dofollow links pass on ranking signals, while nofollow links do not. 

To rank higher, you want more dofollow links – but nofollow ones are still good for exposure and generating targeted traffic.

nofollow link example

Reciprocity

The way a link is acquired influences its value. 

Direct link exchanges qualify as a link scheme and are easily picked up by search engines. 

You probably won’t get penalized, but the links will be devalued and lose all their value.

If you’re doing link exchanges, make them A-B-C, or indirect. 

Anchor Text

The text used for the link also plays a role. 

The anchor text should be relevant to the linked page and provide context for users. 

While including keywords can be helpful, avoid over-optimization.

Partial-match keywords are perfect for this. 

Don’t be that one guy who tries to cram “best PR agency Houston” everywhere even if it obviously disrupts the flow of text. 

Of course, you can still use exact match keywords (like we did just a couple of lines above) where it sounds natural. 

Links are important, yes, but they’re not a magic bullet for easy rankings. 

Google aims to provide the best user experience for users and rewards websites that strive for the same. 

And what provides a good user experience? 

Quality content – so focus on it first. 

But you’ve heard this a million times before, so let’s move on to how to get backlinks in the real world, not just in theory. 

To get backlinks, you’re going to need to do some outreach – most of it through email. 

Link building involves four steps:

  • Finding link opportunities  – aka prospecting
  • Preparing your email sequence 
  • Personalizing individual emails 
  • Managing replies, establishing partnerships, writing guest posts, etc

As you can imagine, doing all of that manually takes a long time. 

Way too long to be effective, so you’ll need the help of a link building tool like Respona.

To learn more about each individual step and how to do it effectively, feel free to watch our free link building video course:

In our experience, link building is at its peak effectiveness when you use multiple strategies at once. 

Let’s run through each one and how to carry them out with Respona. 

Guest Posting

Guest posting is the process of writing and publishing guest articles on other websites. 

Usually, writers leave a link back to their own site in the author bio section.

But, guest posts are much more valuable when you use them as a way to set up indirect link exchanges since most websites allow you to cite supporting sources in the content. 

So you write for one site, and include links to your link partners in the post. 

In return, they do the same for you, or offer insertions on other resources as well. 

Aka the Skyscraper Technique

It involves extracting your competitors’ backlink profiles, and winning over their backlinks. 

Your links don’t necessarily need to replace the competitors’ – the whole point of this is to close the backlink gap between you and your competition. 

It’s also incredibly time-efficient, if your competitors have tons of backlinks. 

Link insertion is another classic strategy that focuses on finding non-competing articles that mention your target keywords somewhere in the content. 

The key point being non-competing. 

We’ve definitely received emails asking us to link to other link building guides before. 

Don’t be that person, please!

Listicles

Listicles, or top 10 articles are super valuable link opportunities because not only do they get you links, but put your business right in front of potential customers that are actively looking for services like yours. 

We’d even go as far to say that directly exchanging listicle placements is worth it – even if the links get devalued, the sales can more than make up for it. 

Build a Network of Partners

It’s always a good idea to try and turn every link collaboration into a long-term partnership rather than only doing one-off exchanges. 

A good place to start is to pitch a guest post after every successful link exchange, even if a site doesn’t openly accept them. 

It works especially well if you go through the effort of finding a keyword gap for your partner’s website, and offering to help cover it for them. 

Whether it’s regular guest post contributions or continuous link exchanges, you can get way more links if you start working on a partner network. 

Here’s how:

Now Over to You

In conclusion, to know how many links you need to rank for a specific target keyword, check your competitors’ link profiles. 

Then get more, better links. 

Need help?

Don’t hesitate to start your 14-day free trial with Respona to see how we can help.

Link building cheat sheet

Link building cheat sheet

Gain access to the 3-step strategy we use to earn over 86 high-quality backlinks each month.

Download for free

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Building backlinks is an investment, and it takes time to see results.  

Generally, you can expect to see movement in Google search rankings within 4-6 weeks, but it can take longer for competitive keywords.  

Focus on building high-quality backlinks consistently, and be patient – the results will come.

While it’s technically possible to buy backlinks, it’s a risky SEO strategy.  

Search engine algorithms frown upon paid links, and they can actually remove you from Google search results if they’re discovered.  

Focus on earning backlinks naturally through valuable content marketing and outreach.

Not necessarily a penalty, but having a large number of low-quality backlinks can dilute the value of your backlink profile.  

Focus on acquiring high-quality, relevant backlinks from reputable websites.

Absolutely not!  

Using the same exact-match targeted keyword for all your backlinks looks unnatural and can be flagged by search engines.  

Use a variety of anchor texts, including brand mentions, partial-match keywords, and long-tail keywords.

Backlinks are important, but they’re just one piece of the search engine optimization puzzle.  

Other important factors include on-page optimization (keyword research, title tags, meta descriptions), core web vitals, technical SEO, mobile-friendliness, internal linking, local SEO factors like your Google Business Profile and, of course, user experience.

Farzad Rashidi

Article by

Farzad Rashidi

Farzad Rashidi is the lead innovator at Respona, the all-in-one digital PR and link-building software that combines personalization with productivity. He also runs the marketing efforts at Visme, where he helped the company gain over 12 million active users and pass 2M monthly organic traffic.

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