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How Many Links Does It Take To Get To The Middle Of Google Page One?
By Bill Platt (c) 2009 911 Reputation Management

Everyday it seems, people are asking me about the optimum
number of inbound links they need to acquire for their website
in order to rank well in Google.

My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest,
best answer.

Answer: You need more inbound links - of equal or higher quality
- than what your competitors have.

Albert Einstein argued that any mathematical formula that
required pages of calculations did not contain within it "the
mind of God".

So when Albert Einstein developed E=mc2, then Einstein had
fulfilled the promise of a simple formula that could encompass
the brilliance of God.

When people wonder how many inbound links they need to acquire
to rank in the Top 4 of Google's search results or even the Top
10 of Google's SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone
will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know
whether they can afford to undertake the process or not.

I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned
answer that will work for everyone.

Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and
undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish
the same goal.

You can't truly begin to understand the answer to this question,
until you have taken the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison
Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of
Google's SERPs.

  * You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a
    particular keyword.

  * You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google's
    search listings, and you need to check those numbers across
    a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other
    tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo both tend
    to understate the actual link counts. While Yahoo will show
    you more than what Google does, they also show a number of
    "no consequence" links in their results.)

  * You need to look at the quality of a few of the pages that
    offer links to the URLs in the search results.

This is not an easy process to undertake. I have done it before,
but the best you can hope for is a "snapshot" of what is out
there, and therefore, what you need to accomplish.

Note: If Wikipedia turns up in your search query, few people with
small budgets will ever be able to dislodge Wikipedia in the
search results. What they make up for in a small number of
inbound links, they more than make up for with links from dozens
or hundreds of PR4, PR5 and PR6 pages. Wikipedia is the king of
Internal Linking, and they use that to a great degree to rank
extraordinarily high in Google's search listings.

Your analysis should seek to uncover how many links a page has
to it.

As a general rule of thumb, Google will show you less than 1% of
the existing number of links for a web page. Yahoo will sometimes
show closer to 5% of the existing number of links for a web page,
but they will not show you the highest quality of those links.

So, as you strive to gain a "snapshot" picture of the playing
field, you want to take Google's Inbound Links number and
multiply that by at least 100. Then you want to take Yahoo's
Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 20, then cut
the number in half to acknowledge the number of worthless crap
links they have in their database. Once you have achieved these
two numbers, then I tend to call the truth "somewhere in the
middle".

With your "somewhere in the middle" number in hand, you then
need to look at the quality of links to a few of those search
listings, to get an idea of whether those links exist on higher
quality pages or simply junk pages.

If those links are on junk pages, then the goal could be achieved
by just working the numbers. But if there are a lot of high
PageRank pages in the mix, then whatever number is in your hand,
should be multiplied, perhaps 100-fold, to overcome the quality
of pages that link to your competitors.

If you get the idea that my simple formula leads to a complicated
answer, then you are right.

All of the numbers that I have included in my sample formula are
based on rough speculation, as the "snapshot" offers you your
best hope of understanding the challenge in front of you.

While the number of inbound links may be relatively easy to
determine, the link quality is a factor that is really hard to
pin down.

  * If you determine that you only need 300 inbound links to rank
    with the big boys, you may be right.

  * Your 300 inbound links number should also be quantified
    against the number of links that Google will count worthy,
    so you may need 1200 links to get 300 links that Google will
    deem worthy. This calculation depends more on the "quality
    of your content", rather than the "quantity of your content".

  * When all is said and done and your 300 Google-worthy links
    have not yet put you on page one, then you know that the
    quality of the links pointing at your competitors is greater
    than the quality of the links pointing to you.

If you were hoping for an easy answer, I am sorry that I could
not help you with that.

But with this explanation of the challenge, you may be better
prepared to answer the big question, the question that is really
on your mind:

Are my hopes of achieving good rankings in Google within my
reach?

I tend to throw "worry" to the wind and just start working. I
don't worry if I can afford to do it or not. I simply start
doing, and I know that in one month, one year or five, I will
have built enough value in my website that my competitors are
going to be the ones who are trying to figure out if they can
unseat me!
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Bill Platt has provided SEO services since 2004. In 2009, he
transformed his SEO service, into one that helps people defeat
negative search results in Google. By improving the rank of
positive website reviews in the search results, negative search
listings begin to disappear from the public eye. If you would
like to learn more about how Bill's Reputation Management SEO
service can help your business, visit: http://911reputation.com/
Bill has also owned http://thePhantomWriters.com/ since 2001.
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