How many links will I need to rank for a query in Google?

A very common question that – as often in SEO – has no clear answer. How many links do I need to get to get into the top 10 in Google? Tere are a few ways how you can get at least a rough idea. Let’s take a look at them.

But first, an important announcement. You can’t do without paid tools:

? If you consider yourself skilled SEO, jump straight to the bulk analysis to learn something really new.

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Manual check for a single query in Google with Ahrefs Toolbar

With Ahrefs, you have two ways to estimate if links and how much they affect the Google search result for a query.

The first option is the Ahrefs Toolbar browser extension. As an example, I’ll use the query “how to build a terrace” in Google.sk. With the extension active, the Ahrefs link data is added to the results and I can read (continued below the image).

Domain counts for ranked URLs are highlighted in red

With a few exceptions, none of the successful sites have any inbound links. Even “domain strength”, which is somehow simulated by Domain Rank from Ahrefs, is not the main factor.

First Hornbach may be a strong domain, but their content is the ultimate. It covers multiple formats, has a good UX, and goes in-depth textually. The other domains tend to be less popular.

So they’re probably there because of the detailed content, which I can also easily verify as you’ll see below.

The range of textual content on the TOP10 queries in Google. Source: SurferSEO

The data shows that on average, the content in the top 10 for this query has almost 1400 words. This indicates that these are probably detailed texts. How could it not be, building a terrace is no fun, which I personally tested two years ago:-) .

Manual check for individual queries in Ahrefs

You can also use the Keywords Explorer tool in Ahrefs.

Enter your query and select your country

Ahrefs will supply the data for your search query and show you the current SERP appearance at the bottom. You can easily see the domain data there and observe the ranges and averages of linking domains.

Data on the number of domains is at your fingertips.

Both routes are easy and good for occasional overviews. But what to do if you want such data for a larger dataset, like an entire keyword analysis?

Bulk analysis

The basis is simple.

  • Have a set of queries
  • Find out which URLs rank for them in Google
  • Find out how many referring domains those URLs have
  • Process the data (pivot table)
  • Merge with the keyword analysis

The process is not difficult and can be done in under an hour of pure time. In fact, it will be less, but leave a margin for errors.

In the first step, you take the data from your keyword analysis and create a report in Marketing Miner using the SERP Analysis Miner. This will give you a set of URLs that are on the first page of Google for that query.

The screenshot below shows what the output looks like. We are currently interested in the URLs from which you need to exclude those that are marked as Ad Result.

Copy and paste all appropriate URLs into Screaming Frog. There you need to switch the settings to List mode and connect Ahrefs via API. If you’re making the connection for the first time, you have to do a more few clicks to generate an API key.

Once connected, you need to select the right metrics. In this case it’s Exact URLs (http + https) and specifically Backlinks and Referring Domains. I’m adding individual links because a higher number may indicate the use of sitewide links.

Ahrefs data collection settings

Important info – the number of requests is limited to the volume per month. It’s not on the Ahrefs site, but it’s 300K lines.

Once Screaming Frog has scooped up the data from Ahrefs, you need to merge it with the output from the SERP Analysis miner. This can be done using VLOOKUP in Excel, or by merging the two projects in OpenRefine, which is my preferred way to go.

Export the dataset in which you merged the output from Marketing Miner and Ahrefs to a spreadsheet of your choice. In it, make a pivot table where the rows will be keywords (Input in the Marketing Miner data) and the Values will be Ahrefs RefDomains with display as average.

You then need to transfer the data from the pivot table into your keyword analysis, where you use the search query to make the connection.

And what does the result look like? You will see:

  • search query
  • average number of domains
  • other data you have in the keyword (position, landing page)
Sorry, the queries are from a live project and therefore I had to hide them with the URLs, too.

What to watch out for?

Averages are dangerous. You can also use the median values in the contingency table.
Link spam. There are only absolute numbers in the data. Many URL links today are driven by link spam, which inflates the metrics.

What conclusions can you make?

  • Queries with zero or few referring domains are more about content.
  • Queries with zero or few referring domains may also be about brand/web strength. If you would like to check this, you need to download from Ahrefs Domain Rating for each ranking domain. However, this data is not in the tools API.
  • If there are a high number of referring domains for a query, one or more homepages of a site are probably ranking for it.

You can add your average cost per link to the number of links per query to arrive at a rough cost per success calculation. That is the goal of this analysis. As a by-product, you have a list of competitors’ domains for outreach.

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