- [Neil] You see all these people
and all these websites that have thousands and thousands
of links and they're ranking on page one of Google.
And you ask yourself, hmm,
if I want to rank on page one of Google,
do I really need thousands of links?
Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patel
and today, I'm going to break down how many links
you actually need to rank on page one of Google.
(uplifting music)
Now, before we get started, make sure you subscribe
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As you can see on my screen here,
I have the key word, web hosting Google.
It's getting roughly 18,100 searches a month
in the United States.
I'm using the Ubersuggest Chrome extension
which gives me all this data.
As well, it tells me how many times it's searched
on mobile devices versus desktop devices,
the volume over time, cost per click,
the demographic information, the searchers age range.
Gives me all of that as well as a handful
of other key word suggestions on the right side
and more metrics on the right side
on how much traffic websites getting,
their overall domain authority or domain score
and as you keep going on and on,
you'll get more key word data.
But when you look at these sites
that are ranking on page one,
and if I look at the first four,
they're ads, GoDaddy, Bluehost, DreamHost,
HostGator, all well known brands,
then you got PCMag, Hostinger,
TechRadar, Bluehost, CNET,
GoDaddy, SiteGround, Network Solutions and QuickSprout.
Those are the pages that are ranking in the top ten.
So what I decided to do to show you how many links
you really need to rank in the top ten was,
I decided to look up each of their link counts on Ahrefs.
So, I first started with the first website,
which is PCMag, as you can see here,
and as you can see as I'm loading up each of these URL's,
I'm loading up the link count for that exact URL,
not the whole site
and some have more, some have less.
Bluehost, I couldn't, Ahrefs wouldn't fetch
how many links or show me the links to each URL,
but there's a lot here, you'll see 19,000.
583, 922, 53,000 to SiteGround to their homepage,
networksolutions/hosting has a thousand,
QuickSprout has 474,
but let's go back and look at them very carefully.
The first one has 949, okay?
You already know 54, domain rating of 91.
Then, Hostinger, 88, 16,000 links to that URL.
Think about that, 16,000.
Now most of them are not dofollow,
only 4% are dofollow.
As you can see here, 62% are dofollow.
So you have to look at how many links
are actually follow, not just the total link count.
And then if you keep going,
domain rating, 90.
This one 1,281 links, 78% dofollow.
This one is 19,000 links, it's a BlueHost homepage,
high domain authority,
19,000, 77% that are dofollow, right?
That's still a lot of links,
that over 10,000 that are dofollow
and I'm looking at referring domain names,
that's not total number of link,
that's total number of unique sites linking
and if you look at this one, 583.
URL rating of 38, this is CNET,
another popular website.
922 for GoDaddy.
SiteGround, 53,000, a lot are dofollowed,
over 89% so you're probably looking at somewhere
over 40 something thousand referring domains,
which is a lot.
And then you have Network Solutions, thousand
and then QuickSprout, 474 with 68% dofollow
and this is ranked on the bottom slot of page one.
Now, when you think about this
and when you look at all the data,
the link counts are all over the place.
See as low as 474 and you're seeing as high as 53,000.
Now, what does this tell you?
Just because someone has 53,000 links
doesn't mean you need 53,000 links.
Look, this has 53,000 links
and it's at the bottom slot
and this right here is 949 links
and it's at the top slot
and if you look at it, 62% are dofollowed,
so roughly two thirds are dofollow,
so you're roughly looking at 600 links.
Now when you scroll down and you look at the links, okay?
You'll see QuickSprout, funny enough,
the number ten listing is linking to the number one listing,
probably not a good idea if you're want to rank higher,
don't want to really link to the ones that are above you.
It'll just really help 'em keep that position.
But as you scroll down and you want to go through the links,
usually the ones at the top, they're showing you,
Ahrefs will show you the top hundred for free
and as you scroll down,
you'll start seeing a lot more junk links.
Oral history technology, right?
They don't necessarily build this link,
this just naturally placed,
or it could be a spam link.
Like if you look at this, a little bit spammy.
Learn to code, okay, medium.
HostGator awards, HighTechies
and if you keep scrolling,
you're going to start seeing more spammy links.
It doesn't mean that you're tryna do spammy stuff,
it's just, square percentage just tend to pick up
a lot of these URL's.
Here's an example, domains.byu.edu,
leaving the university, all right?
So here's an example of a link
that really isn't high quality.
I know it's an EDU site,
but this is not high quality.
URL's a little bit spammy.
Leaving BYU Domains and hosting.
All right, you can say it's not too bad,
but nonetheless, it's not the best link out there.
And as you continue going down,
this one's in Japanese,
Young Startups, okay,
webdesigns tutsplus,
this one, different language.
This one, again, different language, no followed
and when you look at the PCMag,
okay, they don't have too many bad links
but if I kept going through more than the top hundred,
you'll end up seeing 'em,
in which there's a lot more,
not necessarily spammy links,
but what I mean, and spammy's probably the wrong word
to use, what I mean is, there's a lot of websites
that scrape the sites linking to you
and they end up counting as links.
You can see it more in the QuickSprout example here.
So they got some solid links here,
look, this is RSS feed.
Not really a solid link
and if you scroll down and if I keep scrolling down,
keep in mind they have a lot less links
in the PCMag, so it's easier to see.
Instapaper, all right,
let's click on this Instapaper article.
Targeted laser, this is just pulling,
like literally, this is just pulling from RSS feed here.
Not really a high quality link there.
And if you keep going, look, RSSMix.
That one's not good 'cause it's RSS Feed,
let's see, 10 key elements, that one's not bad.
But if as I start scrolling,
this is a blogger site, bloggers, not that great.
The Next Scoop,
I believe this is a RSS site or scraper site,
actually no, this is a legitimate site.
Blogin, another feed link.
Let's see, this one's no follow,
this may be a scraper site.
Tips on finding very valuable web hosting.
Small business, yahoo. Category.
Look at the domain name, doesn't seem that great.
Little spammy, scrapy.
If I go to, welcome to our blog,
best side of trading, unbiased trading,
web hosting, marketing,
it's just random.
They don't even have a lot of text,
it looks like a scraper site or a junk site.
The point I'm tryna make and if you keep going through this
you'll see more and more of 'em, right.
Here's another example, search page.
Different language, this one is,
let's see, blogspot.
Right blogspot, bloggers,
all those are not really high quality.
The point I'm tryna make is,
the more lower you go, the more these scraper sites
and junk links that you'll see.
So typically what we're seeing is,
whatever the number that you're seeing
in Referring Domain names,
usually, if you end up building a third to a fourth,
even a fifth of the links that are reported,
you can do quite well.
And the key if you want to rank is,
you don't have to build a lot of links,
you want to build legitimate links,
you don't want to pay for 'em,
you don't want to use anything that's black at,
you want natural, good links.
Do your outreach, look for,
don't focus too much on domain rating
or domain authority or anything like that,
just focus on building legitimate, high quality links
and do it in a very, very slow pace.
And I know that may sound crazy,
you're thinking, slow pace?
If I need all these links, don't I have to keep building?
Well if you build too fast,
what you'll find is you're going to have to build
too many links like some of these sites, right?
Look at this Hostinger.
They have 16,000 links, sure only 4% of them are dofollow,
but a lot of the sites that are ranking,
that are tryna rank,
that just build too many links too fast,
you get caught in this rat race
where if you build too many links too fast,
it's unnatural, the search engines know it
and you're not going to rank that highly,
you need to slow it down.
Less is actually better.
It's like those social profiles that have hundreds
and thousands of followers but no one really engages,
it's because they have a lot of fake followers.
If you build quote, unquote unnatural links
or you're buying 'em,
what you'll find is your rankings won't be as great
compared to if you just focus on highly relevant articles
that are slow and steady.
The other thing that most people don't talk about
is click through rate.
The reason that some of the sites that rank up at top,
that are higher,
is because they have a way higher click through rate.
You're going to get way more clicks
if you have the best web hosting services of 2020,
which reviews a lot of the websites
that are ranking in the top ten, right?
And it's very educational and resource based,
versus if you're someone like Bluehost saying,
Bluehost, the best hosting 2020
and they're pretty much promoting their own services,
right, same with GoDaddy, hosting secure,
fast, reliable solutions.
So when you're pitching one solution,
versus something that's a review,
more educational, you'll find that it tends to be easier
to rank and you don't have to build as many links.
So you don't just need to focus on how many links
you're getting, but you also need to optimize
for click throughs and anything that is resourceful,
educational, helpful, tends to also rank better.
So when you're doing your back link research,
whether using Ubersuggest or whether using Moz,
or Ahrefs, or SEMrush to look up link counts,
remember, whatever people have,
a lot of those links are scraper sites, spammy links,
it's not that these sites are building spammy links,
it's that you naturally get spammy links
coming to you when you've been on the web for so long.
If you build one third to one fifth of the links
that you're seeing and you do it slow and steady
and you optimize for click through rate,
you can outrank many other people as well.
If you enjoyed this video,
if you have any questions on how many links you really need,
leave a comment below.
I'll do my best to answer it and help you out.
Make sure you subscribe to this channel,
like the video, share it, tell people about it.
Thank you for watching.