How Many Back Links Is Enough?

Dee Barizo poses the question, “how many links is enough?”  This is a very good question as most clients when they learn about link building want to quantify the effort involved with undertaking such a task.  Usually SEO professionals answer, “it depends”.

It depends on what words you want to rank for and how competitive those words are.

In Dee’s article, he makes a very good point that most other sites were not actively building links.  It was a surprise to him that SEO is not as competitive as he first thought simply because most sites aren’t doing it.  This in turn made it much easier to rank for competitive terms through the use of link building, although Dee’s client had a head start by being on page 2 or 3 of search engine results for specifc terms.

This reinforces my observations that many marketing managers and website owners are not committed to a long term SEO strategy.  Most people see SEO as a tactical implementation, rather than an ongoing program of work that realizes the full benefits. This is largely due to, in my mind at least, marketing managers being focused on “campaigns”.  Once a campaign is completed, the microsite or content is thrown away, until the agency comes up with the next brilliant idea.

SEO is more than a one-off project to tick off on the to-do list. It is a foundation or a philosophy in which all online activities are carried out.  Campaigns should revolve around a “SEO’d platform” that can leverage efforts and results of previous implemented tasks.

During such times as a recession, SEO is a reliable and low cost way of generating qualified traffic to any website.  All it takes is a committment to see the strategy through.

So, how many links is enough?  There is no magic answer here, but I do recommend that website owners should seek at least one backlink per day.  Soon enough, your online presence will be a force to be recokoned with.