Link building is an essential SEO tactic that helps build your domain’s authority, drive traffic, and can even help you get more leads. Here are some statistics about building links you should know:
General Link Building Statistics
- More than 200 factors are used by Google to rank websites, with links being a prominent one (Backlinko)
- The top three ranking factors for Google are high-quality content, page experience for users, and links (Search Engine Journal)
- The number of sites that link to a page has been shown to correlate with rankings on Google (Backlinko)
- Approximately 94% of link builders believe that the quality of links generated is more important than the quantity generated (Authority Hacker)
- Nearly 80% of people in the SEO field consider link building to be a key component of their overall strategy (Authority Hacker)
- Going along with the previous statistic, 52% of marketers state that link building is the most difficult aspect of an SEO campaign (Authority Hacker)
- Most content actually doesn’t receive backlinks at all, as only 2.2% of content receives links from more than one website (Backlinko)
- In fact, most online content – approximately 94% – receives zero external links (Backlinko)
- More than 73% of marketers who engage in link building gain fewer than 10 links each month (Authority Hacker)
- A large percentage of digital marketers – 42% – spend roughly equal time building external and internal links (Databox)
- It usually takes about three months to reap the benefits of generated links in rankings (Authority Hacker)
- Marketers believe that producing content worthy of being linked to is the key to a successful link building strategy (Authority Hacker)
- With that last stat in mind, 89% of digital marketers actually produce content with the specific goal of building links (The Frank Agency)
- 31% of link builders engage in outreach to build links to a new page for up to a month following its publication (Aira)
- Having anchor text that exactly matches the name of the linked page has been shown to be no more effective at boosting ratings than anchor text with no exact match (Ahrefs)
- 51% of digital marketers believe that two to three internal links should be added for new or old blog posts, while 36% argue it should be as many as five (Databox)
- Creating links is the primary goal of approximately 68% of content marketing strategies (Meetanshi)
- In a recent study, it was found that the more anchor text variations you have for a page, the more likely you are to get clicks on Google (Zyppy SEO)
- Pages with URL anchors from internal links saw almost 50% more traffic than pages without URL anchors (Zyppy SEO)
- On average, the ideal amount of internal links you should have to get the most Google clicks falls between 40 and 44 (Zyppy SEO)
- Nearly 100% of sites that rank in the top 10 of SERPs have over 100 unique domains linking to them (Internet Marketing Ninjas)
- And 96.3% of the sites that rank in the top 10 of SERPs have over 1,000 unique domain backlinks (Internet Marketing Ninjas)
Link Building Budgeting and Projection Statistics
- Digital marketers tend to spend about 28% of their budget on link building efforts (Authority Hacker)
- Approximately 46% of SEO experts spend $10,000 each year on link building, while another 22% spend $1,000-$2,500 each year (Aira)
- These numbers aren’t surprising, as it’s estimated that companies can spend $1,000 or more to gain a high-value link (Siege Media)
- More than 61% of digital marketers state that link building is becoming more expensive to perform (Authority Hacker)
- Along with this, more than 52% state it is taking more time (Authority Hacker)
- 41% of SEO experts think the costs of link building will increase in the future (Aira)
- More than 65% of digital marketers believe links will be as or more important for rankings in the next five years (Authority Hacker)
- Meanwhile, 80% believe links will be a ranking factor ten years from now as well (Authority Hacker)
Statistics on the Benefits and ROI of Link Building
- Websites that possess between 30 and 35 backlinks generate over 10,500 visits per month (uSERP)
- Longer content gets more backlinks than shorter content, outpacing it by about 77% (Backlinko)
- Sites that incorporate a blog and post to it regularly give themselves a great advantage, as they receive 97% more links from external sites (HubSpot)
- The amount of organic traffic a website receives is directly correlated with the number of backlinks that are pointing to it (Ahrefs)
- Pages that rank number one in Google search results have an average of 3.8x more backlinks than competing pages (Backlinko)
- Posts that focus on answering what something is or why something is a certain way, along with infographics, receive nearly 26% more backlinks when compared to posts focused on how to do something (Backlinko)
- More than 78% of digital marketers report seeing worthwhile returns on investment from link building (Authority Hacker)
- Blogs that have more than three videos get 55% more backlinks than those with less or none (Meetanshi)
- Companies that utilize infographics on their pages are able to get as much as a 178% boost in backlinks (Meetanshi)
Domain Authority and Domain Rating Link Building Statistics
- More than 42% of digital marketers use Moz’s domain authority (DA) and Ahrefs’ domain rating (DR) to determine the success of their link building efforts (Authority Hacker)
- Approximately 65% of digital marketers believe domain authority is more important than the number of backlinks a page has (Authority Hacker)
- For measuring the quality of a link, 34% of SEO experts would favor DA while only 22% would favor DR (Aira)
- Bucking these numbers a bit is experience, however, as about 51% of new link builders rely on DA and DR metrics, while only about 29% of the most experienced link builders do (Authority Hacker)
- Sites with a higher domain rating have been shown to rank more highly on the first page of Google results (Backlinko)
- 38% of SEO experts consider page rankings as the primary KPI to determine their link building success rate (Aira)
Follow and Nofollow Link Statistics
- Contrary to popular belief, NoFollow links can actually help your SEO, but only if the link is from a page that ranks well on Google and gets organic traffic (Sterling Sky)
- Ranking number one in search results can greatly help link building efforts, as these sites get an added 5% to 14% more follow links from other sites each month (Ahrefs)
- More than 89% of digital marketers think nofollow links have a positive impact on rankings (Authority Hacker)
- Connected to that last stat, Google has been recently altering the status of nofollow links, giving them more value than they previously had (Google)
- 48% of link builders include nofollow links within their reports for clients (Aira)
- Similar to the change in status for nofollow links, plain text mentions of a website are believed to have an impact on search rankings, according to nearly 79% of digital marketers (Authority Hacker)
Statistics on Link Building and Digital PR Platforms
- More than 46% of SEO experts say they frequently use HARO – Help a Reporter Out – as part of their link building strategies (Authority Hacker)
- Qwoted holds over 50% of the market share when it comes to digital PR platforms (Buzzstream)
- About 17% of quote requests are being cross posted on other sites, with an 82% overlap with requests on LinkedIn and X (Twitter) (Buzzstream)
- Qwoted and SOS (Source of Sources) have the highest amount of sources with domain ratings over 80 (Buzzstream)
- Out of all the categories, home and lifestyle dominates with the highest amount of quote requests, totaling at 26% (Buzzstream)
- Only about 1 in 5 of the popular platforms overly offer follow links for brands whose answers are chosen, with SOS (Source of Sources) offering the most follow links, and Help A B2B Writer having the least (Buzzstream)
Statistics on Guest Posting, Paid Links, and Outreach
- Guest posting is by far the most popular approach to building new links, with more than 64% of digital marketers utilizing it (Authority Hacker)
- One study found that nearly 48% of top ranking pages feature reciprocal links (Ahrefs)
- This is supported by other findings as well, since more than 51% of digital marketers use link exchanges as part of their strategies (Authority Hacker)
- Less than 18% of link builders utilize digital PR tactics to get new links, making it the least popular approach (Authority Hacker)
- Along with this stat above, digital marketing firms and SEO experts are three times more likely to use digital PR than companies handling their own outreach (Authority Hacker)
- Another tactic that has been utilized by link builders is buying and redirecting domains for new links, with nearly 20% engaging in this practice (Authority Hacker)
- When it comes to conducting outreach, utilizing the first name for a contact increases the chances of a successful backlink acquisition by roughly 50% (Authority Hacker)
- Follow-up emails are also incredibly valuable, as they result in a 40% increase in backlinks (Authority Hacker)
- More than 61% of digital marketers utilize social media for elements of their link building outreach, with 23.5% using Facebook and 17.3% using LinkedIn (Authority Hacker)
- SEO experts who use social media for outreach definitely get results, too, as they tend to average 22% more links each month (Authority Hacker)
- It takes around eight days to go from an outreach email to a successfully acquired backlink (Authority Hacker)
- Along with this, though, it must be remembered that only 8.5% of outreach emails get a response (Meetanshi)
- Sharing your content, and getting others to, is greatly beneficial, as content that is regularly shared gets 2-5x more traffic and backlinks (Authority Hacker)
- More than 74% of digital marketers pay for links to supplement their other link building efforts (Authority Hacker)
- As SEO experts gain more experience, they are more likely to pay for links (Authority Hacker)
- The average cost to buy a link is $84 (Ahrefs)
- Paying to secure links can help companies acquire two additional links each month (Authority Hacker)
- However, a recent study found that buying links has minimal gain, as only 6.6% of sites that bought links had increases in traffic (Editorial Link)
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Disclaimer: The statistics on this page have been compiled by our team from various third-party sources for informational purposes only. We do not claim ownership of this data unless cited otherwise.
