It’s a common belief that backlinks (number of times your website gets linked to) are king of the SEO jungle. For example, if website A has 100 links pointing to it and website B has 50 links; website A would rank higher in search engines.
In this article, we are going to explain why that’s not always true and is flawed because it doesn’t tell the full story of backlink profiles. Before we do a deep dive, we need to explain some key terms and what they mean.
Key Terms
Backlink(s): A backlink(s) is when another website puts your URL on their website which will direct (link) their visitors to your website. A site can link as many time as it wants to your site and each one is recognized by search engines.
Referring Domains: A referring domain is the count of the actual domains (websites) that links to yours. Now each website is only counted once independent of the number of times it links to yours.
Backlink Profile: Your backlink profile is the number of domains and backlinks that your site has. An example would be if site A links to site C 50 times, and site B links to site C 10 times then site C’s backlink profile would be two referring domains and 60 backlinks.
Taking You To School
At JPDA we like to make things more relatable through comparison because it makes it easier to understand.
Google and other search engines are a lot like a high school popularity contest. The number of times other students say you’re cool isn’t as important as the number of students who vouched for you.
If student A has three students say they’re cool 100 times and student B has 20 students say they’re cool 60 times then naturally the perception would be student B is more popular. In our example, the students represent the number of referring domains and saying they’re cool represents backlinking.
Search engines are similar in the sense that a website with a greater ratio of referring domains to backlinks is considered more relevant. Hopefully, through our awkward high school reference, we were able to show how search engine logic isn’t much different from ours.
The Numbers
The numbers below were generated by SEMRush and we are interpreting the data for you. We are also using clothing sizes again to represent search volume (XL, L, M, S).
The graph above is telling two stories, and both are very important. First, it shows just how competitive XL and L volume keywords can be and the amount of work required to start competing. The second story is there is a lot of potential upsides and a reasonable amount of competition in the M and S search volumes.
Let’s start by addressing the XL and L categories. These keywords are behemoths and make them nearly impossible to compete. For example, for the XL category, the median is 10,000 referring domains. If your site were able to get four new referring domains a month, it would take 2,500 months or ~208 years to hit the median amount of referring domains assuming the median doesn’t grow during that time.
Enough of the bad news, let’s move to a brighter spot, the M and S competition level. These words are more accessible to the common business. At a glance, you will notice that the M and S terms have a minor difference in referring domains when comparing positions 2 to 15 ranking positions. Now compare that to the XL/L groups, and you will notice a substantial decline in referring domains for the same position range. Using the same four new referring domains a month example from before, If the median of referring domains is 50, then it would take only a year to have as many referring domains.
How to use these numbers
Although the first part of the numbers section of this article can be discouraging, the second part of it should be very encouraging. Search Engine Optimization results are in reach, and you can formulate a plan around it.
First, we should mention that SEO is a lot like weight lifting, you shouldn’t expect instant SEO results just like you wouldn’t expect to look like Arnold after lifting weights once. SEO work is continuous and requires consistency to build your search engine muscle. If you’re ever approached by an “expert” who claims to be able to increase your rankings within days, be very cautious. You do not want to end up like BMW and get penalized by Google with the potential of never being able to recover from it.
With that said, our suggestion would be to target search terms in the M & S category at the same time. This way you will see a return on investment sooner than targeting M alone because of the low competition level in the S category. While you see results from the S search terms, you will be building your authority in the M search terms which bring even more results.
This strategy works particularly well with local businesses because region specific terms tend to be less competitive depending on your city or neighborhood because they are long tailed (3-6 word search terms).
Conclusion
Today’s topic was very dense and could use a recap. What the key take aways from Part 3 is having a bunch of backlinks isn’t the only factor in SEO you should be concerned with and should make sure you have a variety of domains backlinking. It’s also important to take away that M and S search terms are with in reach for local businesses.
Concerned about your backlink profile? Contact us now, and we will do a report for you free of charge that will include your backlink profile.
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