How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Get Google Page 1?
This is a guest post written by Nick Bokhonok from FreeTrafficSystem.com.
How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Get Google Page 1?
This is a typical question asked by anyone who wants to get Google page . And asking this question means that you are on the right track – you understand that getting page 1 does not come itself as a manna from the sky. And that it needs some job to be done.
Before we get into the details of how many backlinks to build to get to the top, it is important to say that link building is not the only job you should do. You should also take care of the content on your site and make this content nicely “readable” to search engines. Still, backlinks remain to be a critical factor in getting to the page 1.
How Many Backlinks Do I Need?
The Answer Seems to be Simple…
Go to Google.com, type into its search field the phrase for which you want to have page 1, check how many backlinks each of the sites on this page has and outnumber them with your backlinks.
Moreover, Google has a special search operator (special phrase) that helps to see how many backlinks each site has. You type into Google:
link:yourdomainname.com
… and Google shows you the backlinks which it “sees” to the specified site. For example, the way it is shown on the screenshot below:
And everything seems to be great!
Seems to be…
Don’t you feel a little surprised that the almighty Google during its years of dominance in the internet has gathered just some “lousy” 571,000 backlinks? There is nothing to be surprised about, because Google deliberately hides the true information from you.
Google Does Not Want You to Know
How Many Backlinks Each Site Has!
I think it is evident why Google is doing that. Because then everybody will be only checking how many backlinks their competitors have and will be building more. This will turn the Internet and website development into one huge link building mania.
That is why Google is showing you only a tiny portion of backlinks that it really “sees” when you are using its search operator link:
Many people get into this trap every day. They check Jack’s website, see that Google shows 200 backlinks for it, jump on a wagon to build 500 backlinks and … Jack is still on the top. Logically, they lose any hope in building backlinks – very smart of Google to do that.
Are There Any Ways to See
How Many Backlinks Sites REALLY Have?
Solution #1.
Yahoo has its own free service that shows backlinks. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/, then type into the search field the URL of the site.
Then click Inlinks button, and make sure to choose in the dropdown menus (I highlighted them on the screenshot below) to Show Inlinks – Except from this domain to Entire Site.
This will tell Yahoo tool to show you all backlinks to all pages of this site, with the exception of its own backlinks (which are generated from the inner pages of this site).
772+ million backlinks to Google.com! This seems to be a more fair picture than 500,000 backlinks shown by Google’s search operator, isn’t it? 
But the disadvantage is that this is Yahoo. And though Yahoo is a lot more logical in its backlink numbers, still there is some paradox left of measuring the backlinks of your Google competitors with the help of … Yahoo. This is a paradox, because I would personally not bet $100 on saying that Google and Yahoo “see” and index the sites and backlinks the same way.
It is the same to measuring the body temperature of your neighbor and then correlate it by the average temperature in your city to find out your own body temperature. Funny, tricky and not the best way to do it.
Solution #2.
3rd party scripts and software – you will find tons of tools that are helping you to get information about the number of backlinks and the anchor text of the backlinks (which is also important) for any niche you need.
But guess what. They are outsourcing this data from Yahoo, because at the moment this is the best tool on the market. And Yahoo has the problem I mentioned above – this is not Google.
People who sell the backlink checking tools will always persuade you that “Yahoo backlink service is still pretty good” – but they have to SELL their backlink checking solutions and this “Yahoo is good” mantra is the only viable excuse they’ve got.
But These Solution are Not Solutions!
Yes, this is true. At the moment there is no ultimate and effective solution to see how many backlinks exactly your Google competitors have. Because Google is against it and hides the most important info. I would do the same in their place.
But the purpose of this post was to open your eyes about 3 things:
(1) You know that Google’s link: is not going to help you.
(2) You know that Yahoo tool can help, but this is not the ultimate helper – so get prepared for surprises about its numbers and what Google demands.
(3) You can check how sincere and professional your SEO service is – if you decided to hire someone for link building, and they blatantly say something like, “We see that with X number of backlinks to get Google page 1 and that is why pay us $Y for building that number of backlinks” – then most likely they are brainwashing you, as only Google knows how many backlinks you need. All others can only guess and estimate.
My Own Solution
As you can see, as a SEO expert, I fairly admit that this is still a game of guesses and estimations, even after you used Yahoo tool to see something more or less real.
That is why I need to be prepared to seriously outnumber the competition. You must have so many backlinks (quality backlinks) that this huge number should protect you from any surprises.
Build as many as you can. Leave the rest of the world in their attempts to trying to catch up with you. Today it is possible to build quality backlinks and, preferably, do that for free. I would recommend you looking for the communities where you are not limited with the number of backlinks that you can build, because this is the best strategy you need for outnumbering your competitions with backlinks.
This is a fight. And those who are prepared with knowledge, desire and proper tools have serious chances to win this fight.
Wish you SEO success and abundance!
About author:
Nick Bokhonok – inventor of Internet marketing and SEO tools since 2000. His latest community www.FreeTrafficSystem.com is a free membership where people build one way links and get content for their sites.
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BloggerNoob is all about
March 9th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Very cool post
Especially that a page rank update is on it’s way
What’s up Noob hope all is well
Stumbled
@Nick
nice writing I will check out your site
Peace
March 9th, 2009 at 11:31 am
You don’t need more backlinks than your competitor. You need more “anchored” backlinks. Big difference.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Awesome post! I need to work on getting more backlinks. ‘Anchored backlinks’ Nice tip grizzly
March 9th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
You beat me to it Griz… I was gonna say the same thing. Backlinks are good but anchored backlinks are GREAT!
March 9th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Hey Nick,
That is amazing the difference in link numbers between Big G and Yahoo. That Google is one slick cat. Any way, if you are looking for another post topic some other ideas on how to get the links would be appreciated.
Thanks for all the work you put into this post.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Hi nick, the numbers of links to get a site to rank top 10 are unknown. If there is a precise number than everyone is doing it and the search engines are after all a lousy site to use! Just imagine back to the old days when SEO just equaled to the meta tags…
March 10th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
It is so hard to get on page one for keywords. I have some sites with many backlinks. Maybe they want more.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
wow great info..thanks for sharing!!
March 12th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Ahh, I actually enjoyed this post
I didn’t realize that the backlinks shown in Google are the main ones to rank higher. Time to work harder!
-Mike
March 16th, 2009 at 2:33 am
That,s the great post to telling about the linkers and keyword to boosting your site.thanx
March 16th, 2009 at 6:45 am
i think more and more backlinks is good for the site ranking
March 18th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Hello,
Does freetrafficsystem.com work? Can you tell me what your experience with this site is?
March 18th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Some great tips and sites for us to check out. I had a page rank of 4 and am down to 0, but believe that this time around I’m getting a 1. It’s what you call positive thinking, let’s see if it works.
Great guest post!!
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
These were some great tips, I am currently in the process of gathering backlinks. Is quite some useful information there
March 26th, 2009 at 3:46 am
great post..
i use the freetrafficsystem.com good wsite
i works for up my pr..but is hard..
March 27th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Thnaks a lot for these tips. I’m currently working on my backlinks so that I surpass my copmetitors to reach no. 1 in google.
Thanks again
March 30th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Oddly enough, I have positions 4 and 5 on page one of google for my blog, but when I do the link search as described above, Google tells me ‘1′ while competitors blow me have 50+. There is more to it than just back links and anchored links.
–Gole
April 8th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Great tips, I learned a lot. Thank You
April 14th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Just what I was looking for. Provided some help with my questions about backlinking, but still leaves getting them a hard task. Thanks for the yahoo link though. It will help a lot!
April 17th, 2009 at 5:46 am
The most important to have backlinks from the pages that have high PR.And there must not be more than 10 link on that page, anyway 1 link from PR8 page is enough to give you PR7.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:50 am
great info. I love when informed people share with their knowledge . Thanks
April 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I assume this back linking thing is the same with YouTube and search results as well? That’s something to delve into, I think.
April 20th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
great post.It’s very informatif
Thanks
April 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Getting quality backlinks is important to get traffic from search engines. great stuff
April 26th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
yes, you’re right. Backlinks is really important to get traffic more to our website. Nice information.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Thanks Nick! Good stuff! I appreciate that you always write me back!
May 28th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Good post article and power full,Thaks
June 9th, 2009 at 9:31 am
What a productive and informative post!
Thanks much for sharing this valuable information.
Thanks
monsur
June 10th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
really interesting post…keep going
June 25th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
sharing such helpful information is great it can help me at my backlinks tnx!!!!
July 7th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Thanks for sharing the information!
I am currently under-going SEO of my new site so this is great information to come back to review.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:01 am
[...] search engines will never tell you the truth about backlinks - why? read more in this publication: Make Money Online Blog Archive How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Get Google Page 1? And the best way to see the backlinks that you build inside Free Traffic System are the [...]
August 7th, 2009 at 11:58 am
This is a very informative post. It explicitly shows any reader how to locate backlinks which are attached to sites and blogs.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:19 am
backlinks are key to success. the more the merrier
August 12th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Good backlinks are of course the key. Thanks for the informative post!
August 13th, 2009 at 5:19 am
gr8 post, i agree with you, backlinks is important for getting google pagerank but most important is contents quality.
A week i don’t write any post and my blog SEO is down, before its still have indexed in page 1 with “SEO webmaster analyzer” keywords, and now its just indexed at page 5 with google search
August 13th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Yes, Google hides it all purposely, just as it might do for many other sites that perhaps it “works” with.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I’m in need of more quality backlinks.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I wish it were possible to know for sure. All we can do is keep building more and more back lnks.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:57 am
I wish I can know for sure too. It seems there’s really no set amount.
August 21st, 2009 at 1:00 am
Only if there was a way to really know the exact amount…
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Seems that backlinks is one of the best ways to get ranked
August 24th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
This was a very interesting post!
But I have noticed that backlinks won’t always save you and drag you to the top.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Hi,
Thanks for the sharing information.
backlinks is infortant?
October 30th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Not sure I agree with everything written, but some good points made.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Of course, what a great site and informative posts, I will add backlink - bookmark this site? Regards, Money Reader.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Nick if I could shake your hand and buy you a drink I would. This post is by far the best yet. Thanks for the tips!
November 27th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Very nice post, it was great and in depth. I hope to get more backlinks soon enough.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Thanks for the post, keep on posting! I am still trying to get backlinks as we speak.
December 20th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Hello there everyone
Just catching up on this.
December 20th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Thank you very much. This was a great help.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:53 am
WOW! Thank you so much for this post. Setup the yahoo checker. It’s not that up to date. But give it a few days and it should see all my links
Thank you again
January 13th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I just checked that I have 700+ backlinks and my competitor has 9400++ So I really have to make more work. Tnx.
January 17th, 2010 at 12:41 am
Yahoo! Site Explorer is probably the best site to check your backlinks with.
January 26th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Back links dont always make you number one. Ive seen site with only a few back links be a number one. Its all down to how seo freindly your site is too
February 1st, 2010 at 12:51 pm
the best
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Good article, I always have clients telling me that they need x amount of backlinks and they never seem to understand that I can’t give them an exact number. Maybe I will refer them to this page!
March 22nd, 2010 at 6:02 pm
What do you find is the most effective method to increaselinksto your website?
April 27th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Great post! Just came across it from free traffic system thanks for all the info.
cheers,
flight
April 28th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
There seems a lot of inconsistency when it comes to how you rank. Even in Google Webmaster tools, the rank displayed doesn’t always reflect my true rank when searching.
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July 28th, 2010 at 12:05 am
Really ,great article.
August 8th, 2010 at 5:12 am
bottomline: build an empire of backlings from high PR sites. if it does not shoot you up to tha rankings, it means its not enough.
August 13th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
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