How many back links a day?
-
I am the owner of a very small business who can not afford a decent SEO company. So I am doing my SEO myself. I am producing good amount of content. But at the same time I am way behind my competition in back linking. Can you please let me know as a rule of thumb, how many external do-follow links a day I should make to be on the safe side?
Thanks all
-
The mindset of "get as many backlinks as you can" is now old school SEO. This type of SEO is likely to be completely ineffective or at worst, can get you penalized or have Google look at your site unfavorably through the Penguin algorithm.
While links are still an important part of the algorithm, Google has gotten really good, in most cases, at determining which links are truly earned links and then counting those.
One really good earned link can be worth hundreds of self made links. Rather than concentrating on how many links a day to make, I'd work on finding ways to get people to link to your content truly naturally.
-
any links you can get daily, Are probably not worth anything, if you can just get a link on demand then why would google value it?
-
Thanks Andy
-
Thanks Moosa
-
Thanks a lot for your time. I try to hit on that from tomorrow. Seems difficult but we will see.
-
Don't bother about the quantity. Focus on quality. A back link from a quality site is equal to 1000 back links from poor/less authoritive sites.
Sites can beat you with less links, but higher quality ones. This is because links from high authority domains, from blogs or news sites for example, can be substantially more effective for your ranking. High Authority sites can give you great link equity - sites with lots of juice and not too many links can pass on more authority to your site.
This is why unique content and engaging articles are essential for your site if you want to really push up the rankings - you can't buy links off the BBC website or Yahoo News, but make a unique discovery or post an interesting article or tool and you may well find you the link building can run itself!
Today, where each and every single link is being scrutinized to the highest extent by the powers that be. Not only will backlinks that lack credibility or are outright fakes earn zero credit for the site, they can also result in penalization and a swift plummet to the lower echelons of search ending rankings.
Although site owners have become increasingly aware of the value of link building towards higher rankings, there still seems to be a demand for “higher quantities” of links.
I’m sure just about every SEO expert and link building specialist probably has told you by now to focus on quality when it comes to acquiring links. For the most part, that is true. However, I’m going to ask you to slightly modify your paradigm of thinking when it comes to evaluating your own link profile.
Understand that Google is always looking for domain authority and link popularity within niches. Niches are essentially keywords and search queries. The question they ask themselves before serving their search results is: “Which sites are the most authoritative when it comes to this particular keyword?”
“Quality of Links vs. Quantity of Links,” we see that the answer to the question is much more sophisticated. Instead, you’re better off placing yourself in the proper mindset and looking to build authority as best as possible for your site. Target the most authoritative sites that you can find for your niche. Target tons of sites that have some credibility. Target a balance of sites that are somewhere in between. More than likely, to build the most authority, you’re probably going to need both. Thus, the terms domain authority and link popularity now make much more sense!
If you want to quickly establish a clear plan for your link building campaign, do proper keyword research and identify your competitors. Take a look at their link profiles using some of the free link building tools available. Do they have tons of moderate quality links? Do they have a strong social presence? Do they have just a few super authoritative links? Do they have a strong combination of the above 3? Whatever it is they’re doing, you need to be do the same because that’s what Google thinks you need to do to show authority within your niche. Evaluate your competitors and look to improve on the tactics they’re doing.
Hope this helps
-
This is not a dieting plan or a gym exercise that you have to do atleast this amount of work out on daily basis. Link building is more about quality then quantity so if you get 100 directory links every day… this might hurt instead you spend some time writing a good piece and get it published on a website like Moz (every industry have a Moz like websites).
Instead of spinning articles all day long better spend days and convince the journalist in your local area to cover your story and this will give you a better return on investment instead of 10 links a day kind of schedule.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Armin,
First of all, try not to focus on quantity. Look only for quality and don't worry just about do-followed links.
Google now likes to see sites with a very natural looking link profile, so don't bother with the likes of blog commenting or article marketing. Instead, focus on what you have to offer a potential link partner, and if this is nothing, perhaps look to create an article or study that is specific to your industry / specialism.
Link building changed a little while ago, so please be careful, otherwise you will end up with a penalty in the shape of a Penguin!
EDIT-----
Adding a few links that should provide you with additional information:
- Google: Link Schemes
- MOZ: Link Building ideas to get more customers
- MOZ: Scalable Link Building tactics
-Andy
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
-
Did Google Ignore My Links?
Hello, I'm a little new to SEO, but I recently was featured (around 2 yrs ago) on some MAJOR tech blogs. For some reason however, my links aren't getting picked up for over 2 years - not even in MOZ, or other link checker services. - By now I should have had amazing boost from this natural building, but not sure what happened? This was completely white hat and natural links. The links were after the article was created though, would this effect things? - Please let me know if you have any advice! - Maybe I need to ping these some how or something? - Are these worthless? Thanks so much for your help! Here's some samples of the links that were naturally given to http://VaultFeed.com http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/09/13/microsoft-posts-cringe-worthy-windows-phone-video-ads-mocking-apple/ http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/15/4733176/microsoft-says-pulled-iphone-parody-ads-were-off-the-mark http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/16/microsoft_mocks_apple_in_vids_it_quickly_pulls/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2420710/Microsoft-forced-delete-cringe-worthy-spoof-videos-mocking-new-range-iPhones.html And a LOT more... Not sure if these links will never be valid, or maybe I'm doing something completely wrong? - Is there any way for Google to recognize these now, and then they'll be seen by MOZ and other sites too? I've done a LOT of searching and there's no definitive advice I've seen for links that were added after the URL was first indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DByers0 -
More bad links
Hi, After a recent disastrous dalliance with a rogue SEO company I disavowed quite a few domains (links he had gained) which I was receiving a penalty of about 23 places. I cleaned up the site and added meta descriptions where missing, and deleted duplicate titles and pages. This gained me another 5 places. In the meantime I have been getting a few links from wedding blogs, adobe forums and other relevant sites so was expecting an upward momentum. Since the high point of bottom of page 1 I have slowly slid back down to near the bottom of page two for my main keywords. Just checked my webmaster tools latest links and another 4 domains have appeared (gained by the dodgy SEO) : domain:erwinskee.blog.co.uk domain:grencholerz.blog.co.uk domain:valeriiees.blog.co.uk domain:gb.bizin.eu They all look bad so I am going to disavow. I expect to find an improvement when I disavow these new domains. As I have said, have started using the open site explorer tool to check my competitors backlinks and getting some low level links(I'm a wedding photographer) like forum comments and blog comments and good directories. I know there is much more than this to SEO and plan on raising my game as time progresses. I have also gained more links from the domains I disavowed on the 8th January mostly from www.friendfeed.com. will webmaster tools ignore any new links from previously disavowed domains? Like I have said I know there are better ways to get links, but are these links (forum comments, blog comments and respectable directories) one way of raising my rankings? To be honest that is all my competitors have got other than some of the top boys might have a photograph or two on another site with a link. No-one has a decent article or review anywhere (which is my next stage of getting links). Thanks! David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WallerD0 -
Are footer links important?
We currently display a list of links in the footer of our site to help boost SEO. They were put in place years ago and in a recent discuss with our UX team they requested we remove them from the site. Do footer links have any value? Or is this an old dated practice that no longer works? If we remove the footer links should we expect to see if have an impact on our SEO traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mivito0 -
Spam Links? -115 Domains Sharing the Same IP Address, to Remove or Not Remove Links
Out of 250 domains that link to my site about 115 are from low quality directories that are published by the same company and hosted on the same ip address. Examples of these directories are: -www.keydirectory.net -www.linkwind.com -www.sitepassage.com -www.ubdaily.com -www.linkyard.org A recent site audit from a reputable SEO firm identified 125 toxic links. I assume these are those toxic links. They also identified about another 80 suspicious domains linking to my site. They audit concluded that my site is suffering a partial Penguin penalty due to low quality links. My question is whether it is safe to remove these 125 links from the low quality directories. I am concerned that removing this quantity of links all at once will cause a drop in ranking because the link profile will be thin with only about 125 domains remaining that point to the site. Granted those 125 domains should be of somewhat better quality. I am playing with fire by having these removed. I URGENTLY NEED ADVICE AS THE WEBMASTER HAS INITIATED STEPS TO REMOVE THE 125 LINKS. Thanks everyone!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Are Navigation links different to static links
We are trying to reduce the number of links on our homepage. We could remove some fly out navigation links, We rank 1st on Google for some of these links. Would removing these hurt our SEO. The links are accessible 1 level down if we remove the homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers0 -
Unnatural Links Removal - are GWMT links enough?
Hi, When working on unnatural links penalty, is removing and disavowing links shown on the GWMT enough or should the list be broaden to include OSE and Majestic etc.? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
301 redirect or Link back from old to new pages
Hi all, We run a ticket agent, and have multiple events that occur year after year, for example a festival. The festival has a main page with each event having a different page for each year like the below: Main page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gigantictickets
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-tickets (main page) Event pages:
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2010-tickets/hawksbrook-lane-beckenham/2009-08-15-13-00-gce/11246a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2010-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2010-08-14-13-00-gce/19044a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2011-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2011-08-13-13-00-gce/26204a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2012-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2012-06-29-12-00-gce/32168a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2013/highhams-hill-farm/2013-07-12-12-00 my question is: Is it better to leave the old event pages active and link them back to the main page, or 301 redirect these pages once they're out of date? (leave them there until there is a new event page to replace it for this year) If the best answer is to leave the page there, should i use a canonical tag back to the main page? and what would be the best way to link back? there is a breadcrumb there now, but it doesn't seem to obvious for users to click this. Keywords we're aming for on this example are 'Leefest Tickets', which has good ranking now, the main page and 2012 page is listed. Thanks in advance for your help.0 -
How many keyword links is optimal for Press Releases?
After the Penguin update I've read differing opinions on how many keyword links is best to use in press releases. We've been using 3 different keyword links, plus our home page url brand link. Does anyone have any solid information on how many links is best in google's opinion? I hate to put too many in and have them think it's spam, or over optimizing for unnatural linking. Thanks folks! Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0