Over 95% of Ranking Sites Have LOTS OF Backlinks… No, It is NOT a Coincidence

Debates over how much links contribute to rankings have been going crazy for the past 5 years.

Googlers have continuously been adding fuel to the fire saying something absolutely ridiculous like “Backlinks are no longer among top three ranking factors, RankBrain is…”

Ok, we discussed how to react to Googlers’ SEO advice.

Now, what do those SEOs who deny the power of backlinks have apart from these vague statements from Googlers?

Nothing.

For all these 5 years there has been no evidence, no research, or no actual example that could prove the losing power of links.

If you start discussing this with them, the claim would “My clients rank without backlinks but we cannot share those results with anyone.”

Studies confirming the obvious impact of backlinks on rankings do exist. The most recent one comes from Jim Boykin who looked at 200 competitive queries to find that 96.3% of high-ranking domains have 1,000 unique domain backlinks.

Of course, there are people stating that this could be a correlation and there are too many signals into play here.

But… but:

• There’s no other confirmed or unconfirmed ranking signal with such a strong correlation.
• How could the correlation of almost 100% have happened? Did these 1000+ pages just magically collect backlinks without even trying and get on top of Google without those backlinks playing any role??

But don’t trust studies if you don’t want to. DO YOUR OWN SEARCH!

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Yes, backlinks are no longer the only signal

There are a few things I totally agree with when it comes to link building these days:

• There are many more signals and systems these days than 10 years ago. This means correlating link building activities with higher rankings is more challenging.
• Google is much smarter when it comes to selecting links that they want to count.

But backlinks remain the only thing that actually moved the needle.

You can optimize all you want but there will be no rankings unless the site has backlinks.

Best backlinks that move the needle are:

• Coming from fresh resources (e.g. news)
• Editorial
• Diverse

We build exactly these types of links for our clients. Ask us how.

Don’t forget that links are more than a direct page-level signal:

• Backlinks improve crawl frequency (especially when they come from fresh content)
• Backlinks contribute to growing site authority (yes, it exists)
• Consistent new backlinks improve indexation
• Entity-driven backlinks help grow the brand
• Traffic-driving backlinks help Google assign your site higher authority by tracking these clicks from Google Chrome.

Read more on this in my previous newsletter: Google’s Leaked Documentation and What it Tells Us About Links?

I’ve also seen strong evidence that strong backlink profiles can outweigh other ranking signals and systems. With Helpful Content Updates, for example, sites that were wiped out of SERPs had consistently fewer backlinks than those who survived (and hence elevated in rankings).

Yes, there are many more external signals than just PageRank but many of those signals still rely on backlinks.

So if you looking to achieve higher rankings, link-building is the way to go. Only, the methods have changed dramatically. Ask how to build links that move the needle!