How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Rank My Website?
I get roughly 20 emails a day from readers and it appears that the same questions come up in various forms. The questions have to do with backlinks. How many backlinks do I need? How many backlinks should I add daily without getting sandboxed?. And unfortunately there aren’t many answers in regards to this. Some SEM pros will try to define a number for you (Do no more than 20 backlinks a day). Others will tell you that the number doesn’t matter….that the key is in consistantly getting backlinks. (by the way, I wrote an ebook sized article on how to get backlinks.)
Unfortunately, there isn’t a definitive answer. The variables in this are competition (which is easy to figure out) as well as the niche itself (some niches are more apt to sandbox newer sites).
The reality is that most of the back links you can easily get are what I consider low hanging fruit. These are the ones that everyone uses. They are also the least valuable and require a huge amount to rank for anything competitive.
Now obviously, if you are trying to rank your Krupps Coffeemaker website with a certain model as the keyword, you could probably rank for it coming out the gate. If, on the other hand, it is internet marketing, prepare for a long wait, barring the miniscule chance that those that are ranking actually link up to you.
I am pretty lackadaisical in my backlinking strategies. Blame it on the fact that I am already earning a living doing this, I guess. I don’t worry about things if it takes 6 months to rank. Personally, I expect it to take that long in most cases. Anything that ranks early is just icing on the cake.
I think people worry too much about the things that all in all, don’t matter. If you get sandboxed, you will eventually come out of it and although it isn’t fun to suddenly see your rankings disappear, usually it is only temporary (assuming you aren’t linking in bad neighborhoods or have poor content that was reviewed manually).
You want to rank to increase your website’s visibility.
If you aren’t ranking, your options are to find places where your market visits while you wait.
- If you do list building, build a list and market to those interested in your products.
- If you are selling an actual product, hang in forums with people that share your interests while you wait.
- Network with other marketers.
- Work on building a viral article and release it as a press release with an angle (not the typical crap that marketers call “press releases”).
There are more ways to get traffic than obsessing over building backlinks.
That’s just my .02 cents on that matter. While I think that organic search is important in the grand scheme of things, I think that most marketers miss the whole point of why you want to rank in the first place.
Volumes of content….when backlinks don’t necessarily matter
One way to blow off the tedium of building backlinks is to create volumes of content. In my article on how to outsource your online business (or my opinion of when to do it and when not to do it), I casually mentioned WiseGeek.com.
The front page of wisegeek is a PR6. Obviously Google thinks that the folks at WG are doing a pretty good job.
However, if you start to look inside their website, you will notice something….most of their pages have no PR and no links. This, despite the fact, that their site gets roughly 11 million visits a month.
How do they do it? First of all, their internal link structure is very good. Similar articles are linked up to each other, making for a great user experience AND relevant information to the search bots. In geek speak, they are optimized perfectly and do so through the use of virtual silos.
Secondly, they are creating roughly 120 pages of real content a day. That is a lot of content. And I believe that the more active a website is, the more trust they are given by Google and the less links they need.
Now, they rank for a ton of keywords. Almost all of them are long tail. But that is okay. They are making up for it in volume…..
….and did I mention that their site gets 11 million visits a month?….
They monetize with adsense. Figuring a conservative CTR of 3% and you have to think that google is cutting them a check for 100k-300k+ per month.
And given the fact that all in all, they have paid out roughly $600,000 for the 60,000 articles on their site and you have to figure that their business model is pretty damn solid.
Watch how others are Ranking…..Study their models for clues….
The reason why I mention WiseGeek is that they are using practically the same model from a content perspective as Hubpages and Squidoo (although the latter use user generated content); create massive volumes of content consistently and ride on the long tail wave. Coming out of the gate, you won’t rank for anything. But very quickly, given the fact that you are producing 40….100…even thousands of pages of content and Google will take notice and consider you important.
I think that most marketers, for whatever reason are willing to listen to the little guys a little too much for advice (me included). In reality, they should look at successful websites…and I mean those that are million dollar businesses….study their model to see…
- How they are monetizing their site
- Whether the experience is valuable to the reader (in some cases, this is true) and how they are selling it….
- How they are generating traffic
- What kinds of costs are associated with generating the kind of traffic they are generating
If you study enough businesses online, you will quickly figure out that there are only a few models that are consistently replicated and are consistently successful.
Forget Pagerank and Backlinks..it is your internet marketing strategy that matters…
21 Responses to “How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Rank My Website?”
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Hi Leo,
I like your theory on why WiseGeek is ranking so well.
I have noticed that often times if I want to bump up my site in the rankings a bit I only need to add some more content to my own site and it seems to work. I don’t think this has anything to do with the ‘freshness’ factor or that I’ve added more content therefore rank for more long tails because it is the original pages that will bounce up, not the new ones necessarily. The only conclusion I can come to with that is that G likes bigger sites with more content better than tiny sites and will give you a boost for that.
Of course backlinks help as well and I do spend lots of time building them up, but it’s interesting that you may be able to rank for the ‘low hanging fruit’ without having them at all.
If Wisegeek has 60,000 articles and each article gets an average of 20 pageviews a day, that’s 1,200,000 pageviews a day. With an eCPM of $5, I would estimate they’re making $6000/day, or about $180,000/month. This is residual income, so they could turn the cost side of the business down to $0 (stop bringing in new articles), and have 100% profit margin.
Each article is probably earning them money back within 6 months, with an ROI of about 200%.
Yeah, I think their business model makes sense.
@ Fraser…..but why stop it and settle for 180,000 in profit? A business is always looking for more growth and if you aren’t growing, you are dying….
@ Tracey,
Yeah, if you study enough successful business models, you can pretty much deconstruct them into simpler terms. It is no secret that Google likes content rich websites that are updated often. It is the reason why EZ articles ranks so well coming out of the gate. And let’s be real honest here….most article marketers don’t link to their articles…instead, they depend on EZA to link to whatever it is they are trying to rank for another site.
Leo-
I really enjoy reading your website – you provide a great prospective on internet marketing. I’ve been working my way back through your old posts till the new homepage layout. Navigating your site to older posts has become a challenge at best. I now only seem to be able to get to you ‘best work’ page or recent posts. What gives?
Pete
Glad you wrote about this topic. One of my long term goals was to build one real good product/service/site and grow along with it. Tired of managing many sites and trying to diversify streams of income. I would rather keep it simple, focus one thing and be good at it. IM is complicated and takes lots of work.
@ Pete,
I just re-added my archive section….and thanks…
@ zeeray,
That is a good plan. When you start to get into hundreds of sites, you start having to view things through spreadsheets. Just keeping up with it all is tough. Plus, pareto’s principle really starts to kick in….usually what you will find is that only a smattering of sites are actually pulling their weight in terms of providing income.
Most IMers don’t consider business models into the equation. They would rather throw as much shit at the wall and hope that something will stick. That technique works because of volume but it is definitely not the most efficient way to go about doing things.
If more internet marketers starting really looking at the websites that are doing well based not on personality but in general, they could take parts of that model and make it their own. If you have a personality to go with it, then you will be able to gain even more traction. Visibility is the rub though.
Well that is the first time I have heard of that site. They have some interesting placement of Google ads on the site. Anyway, it looks like they have an interesting business model. Do you know what they pay their writers?
@ Mike
As a matter of fact I do- They used to pay $10 per article. These days they are paying between $11-15 per article. Just goes to show you the value of articles….
It’s funny you should mention Wisegeek – me and an IM friend were talking about them last week because they keep cropping up in our niches. It’s also interesting how ugly their site is
@ Alex,
Yeah, I noticed them in a couple micro-niches as competitors. At first, I just wrote it off. But then I started noticing them more and some of their rankings for the long tails are pretty staunt…I have noticed that I have to really fling links to pass them which is a testament to what google thinks about them….
Hi Leo, this post reminded me of a post over at ReadWriteWeb talking about how these mega-large content sites are targeting the long tails for adsense and other advertising dollars. On a conceptual level, they’re growing horizontal rather than vertical, branching out to as many niches and topics they can come up with based on their own algorithms.
Demand Studios, answers.com, ehow, and other content mills publishing thousands of pages a day are using this strategy and they’re doing very well at the moment. The volume makes up for the low CTR and helps build search engine authority and visibility with the search engines.
Then you have the consumer review sites like yelp.com and rateitall.com who are also using this horizontal business approach. Instead of relying just on adsense though, they also sell ad space for local searches and reviews of local businesses to boost revenue. They are doing well with that.
Now I was thinking of how a one-man show like many of us can apply this strategy to one large content site and make it work decently. If wisegeek can make 200k a month then perhaps I can scale it down and make something like 10k a month with lots of articles but not as much as wisegeek.
Let’s say I use this horizontal approach on a general niche like “exercise equipment.”
I could include product reviews, informational/how to/specs articles on all types of exercise equipment: treadmills, stairclimbers, recumbent bikes, stationary bikes, weight benches, free weights, resistance bands, etc.
Monetization would be adsense and/or affiliate programs. Either both, one, or the other depending on what the article is about.
Now I can’t publish thousands of articles a day by myself. But I treat it as a a very important second job and work another 50 hours a week at this. I’m also an expert at this topic and an excellent writer/fast typer/quick editor/reader so I’m publishing 2.5 articles an hour. I keep it up every day for 3 years and I’d have over 18,000 articles. But I’d leave time for promotion, SEO, and finding long tails so I’d probably only end up with 14-15k articles at best. I might work longer hours during the weekends if I’m desperate and crazy to see this through. I might outsource if I have money.
Let’s say many of them rank. I use adsense to monetize in this example to keep it simple. Being conservative, only third of the pages, around 5k, will earn any money from clicks each day. Each click averages 5-6 cents giving you 90-100k a year. I think that’s conservative enough.
Obviously the amount earned will be different depending on CTR, keywords, visitor value, and type of monetization but I’m just giving an example to see what the possibilities are with this approach being “scaled” down for the one man operation.
You can also use volume for a large content site, but on a smaller level than wisegeek. I’ve started seeing some small time publishers do this with blog networks like the zedomax blog network. Basically zedomax is a one man operation with some guest bloggers doing 20-30 posts a day across his network of blogs ranging from mattresses and purses to tech gadgets. Monetization is adsense, chitika, and affiliate programs. It’s mainly about volume with content geared towards search visitors rather than super quality content targeted at social media.
Your thoughts?
That would work but you are right…it would be much slower. I personally believe that google trusts these big sites simply on the sheer volumes of content that they are creating daily and not so much on links. With wisegeek, the majority of their PageRank comes from their doorway page…which says very little in terms of what content you will find inside. I think that the better plan would be to simply reinvest your google profits (assuming you are using an adsense model) back into your business to increase content velocity (dunno if that even makes sense…content velocity, lol).
I imagine that sites that Wisegeek have a pretty high CTR though. Their ads seem to be optimized and targeted for the keywords they are going for (at least from what I have seen). Very insightful comment, James….by the way, your comment went to my spam folder. I am wondering if it is because the address you gave looked liked gibberish?
These blog is terrific! It had given me so much information. I think yo are right leo, you do have to study the models of those successful websites and know how they monetize their site. Great blog!
I visited wisegeek today. It seems they are exploring what is the best PPC network. Last week, I saw yahoo ads on the site. Today, I am seeing MSN ads. I wonder why the owner is testing this now??
Hey Zack…I don’t think that it is abnormal to test contextual ad networks to see what works best. I imagine that wisegeek has a lot of pull and could probably barter with some of the larger ad networks, given the fact that they have so many pages on their site and the potential to make money for ad networks is good.
Excellent story! I think wisegeek has an awesome business model and it will increase their revenues daily
Good pointers. I agree with on you about the value of backlinks. Google probably has caught on to people creating backlinks just for the sake of raising rank, so why not just make your website the first thing that SHOULD show up when people search for something?
Leo,excellent read. I just stumbled over your site and, oddly enough, wisegeek today as well. hadn’t ever heard of them before. Another site I’ve stumbled over in my niche has been Suite 101. Also interesting. Now another thing to seems to be site traffic. A friend of mine has decent enough content I suppose, but he has about 1400 backlinks and about 8 years of domain age. He’s firmly in the #1 slot in google search for his keyword. He has a decent selection of product but not much change in content. So, the algorithm must count for something somehow.
One question Leo,
I saw you mentioned the part about linking ot the e articles a person writes. I’m wondering what you think this would accomplish?
@ Cameron,
Could you rephrase your question. I am not sure what you are asking….