how many high quality backlinks do i need

It is simple to check how many backlinks are there to your site. However, determining the quality of these links and making decisions about where to place them in the future is more difficult. It’s not easy. We’ll be looking at how we assess the quality of links we create for clients and how you can achieve the same with your content marketing and outreach campaigns.

Once, the number of backlinks you have in your profile was everything. People could sell hundreds of links at once and that could really move the needle in search results. Google has changed its algorithm to address this spammy tactic. It strongly encouraged agencies and businesses to focus on creating great content and sharing it on high-profile sites that are actually used daily by people, rather than just search engine spiders.

How to Check Your Backlink Profile

Now that you know that “number” is less important than “quality” and “number” is more, how can you find the links you do have? You have many options to locate your backlink profile . Moz offers Open Site Explorer as an easy tool. Simply go to the site, and you will be able to enter your domain. It will then return a list with all your backlinks.

This report is not just about “numbers of links”. You can also see “number sites linking to yours”, which again is a different metric. Each subsequent link has a diminishing value once a site has connected to yours. Google is more concerned with the number of sites linking back to yours than about the total number. Once you have your report, filter by root domain to find out how many sites are linking to it. You can now score your links based on their quality.

Quantity vs. Quality

Five years ago, marketing companies didn’t have to generate hundreds or thousands of links per month. If you share a piece of content or create a story, it will earn 5-10 links from authoritative news sites. This will allow you to rank highly for the topic you are writing about. You can be penalized in this day and age if you pursue the easy links that have done so much for companies many years ago. Avoid directories and PR news bulletins that are only for search engines that have never been read by actual people. It’s a sort of “smell test”. It is a “smell test” and if it appears to be fake, it most likely is. The best rule of thumb is that if you are able to get a placement on a website by submitting it yourself and there is no review process then you don’t want a linking from them. A site that wants to pay money for a hyperlink is probably not a good choice.

Our Quality Score Guidelines

If that’s how a bad link looks, then how do you identify a good one. To do this, we have created our own score internally. It is based on these factors.

• Domain Authority (DA),
• Social Reach/Engagement
• Site Quality
• Relevance

Domain Authority

Although it takes these factors into consideration, it can sometimes be quite blunt. You can adjust the number depending on your niche, but sites with a DA below 25 may not be the best targets. These include WordPress blogs, personal blogs and niche publications of lower tier. You will find strong niche publications, trade sites, as well as blogs with a higher profile. These are highly relevant and can make great targets. Your larger publishers, such as the New York Times and Business Insider, are at the top of this list.

Social Engagement

This is also a great indicator of quality. You can get more traffic to your site if there is a larger following. Although Google doesn’t talk much about the impact of social signals on search results, research has shown that there is some evidence.

Site Quality

Another important, but subjective judgement. This metric identifies red flags that should be avoided when looking at sites. Poor quality links such as “Write For Us” can be a sign of poor quality. This is especially true if the site only publishes guest posts, and does not write its own content. A site that hasn’t published a new article or post in six months or longer may not have passed all the metrics.

Relevance

This is the last metric that we consider when evaluating our client’s website or industry. We won’t be able to argue with relevance if our story is published on Forbes or Huffington Post, as the site quality and DA are very high. Sites in lower DA levels should still be included in the same category of your content. You don’t want a story about flowers to be placed on a site that focuses on car repairs.

TL;DR

Quality over quantity is what matters most when it comes to backlinks. You can build a lot of links, which is great. However, if time and budget are tight, focusing on building only a few quality links will drive more traffic to your website than a dozen or so average links. Without quality content, building quality links is nearly impossible. Check out our webinar to learn more about creating and pitching high-quality content.