How Mant Backlinks?

[addz123]

For arguments sake, getting backlinks seems to be the single most important thing as a poker affiliate. You can have great content, a great design, and great niche yes - but without showing up in google none of this will matter, and in this industry in particular showing up in google for the right phrases is all that's required.

My question is exactly how many backlinks are required to make a site show up nicely in google for the general long tail queries. Long tail queries for example 'aced deposit bonus' 'where are the easiest online poker tournaments' 'small stack strategy' etc. Nothing massively competitve, but still something that gets an awful lot of hits.

I know this is dependant on a number of factors, mainly the quality of the site you're getting backlinks from.

But for arguments sake, let's just say i'm getting backlinks from your average PR1 or PR2 site from incontent links. How many backlinks like this would propel a 200 page site into the google serps?

This seems to be the area of pokeraffiliating that noone ever seems to answer in seo blogs etc. Every answer seems to come to the conclusion 'backlinks are important' 'backlinks are crucial for seo' etc but no one ever comes up with a rough idea of how many. 100 backlinks? 1000?

throw me some sticks please all you successful guys who've got sites doing well in serps.

thanks,
adam

[CK]

Edit - removed



I honestly don;t think there is a fixed number of links you need to get and even if there was a magical number and you were able to hit it, which ones will end up giving you value and which wont. If it only it was was that easy. But it doesnt work like that.

[Michael Martinez]

For a long-tail query, you should not need ANY backlinks (assuming the blog is indexed and not penalized). That's the difference between a "long tail of search" query and a "competitive" query.

Maybe the problem is not so much with your backlinks as with your expectations. Sometimes we step into a puddle of water, not realizing it's just part of a raging river.

This is an extremely competitive space and many queries that might look like they should be long tail probably long ago became competitive. I would be highly skeptical of finding any 3- or 4-term "long tail" query in this space that any of the forum regulars here could suggest off the tops of their heads.

Long tail results are usually harder to think of and anticipate than competitive queries.

And by "competitive" I don't mean everyone is chasing a query. You can have a relatively small field of competitors for a query in a large industry.

[addz123]

Kaus: The above examples I gave were completely random, and don't have anything to do with my site in particular.

With regards to your comment on "there is no special number for backlinks", I didn't find this helpful tbh. I just want some ball park figures for finding out how much effort needs to be put into getting backlinks. I know about the on-page seo details etc (even if they're not fully implemented on my site) but I think backlinks must be so important for google.

OK let's think of a better straight forward example. Imagine the term Sit n go strategy (just made up the term it's not relevant to me). How many backlinks would be needed to show up for first 3 results on google, assuming i had 40+ articles etc focused on the term?

I understand this is a difficult answer to explain, but as a new affiliate, i'd really like some ball park figures just how much effort needs going into backlinks.

thanks again

[CK]

Ball park figure of how many backlinks are crucial for ranking for a top 3 term that's semi competitive.

100 PR1's, 87 pr2's, and 22 pr3's + 1 pr6 (or 2 PR4's and 1 PR 5)

Hopefully that answer is a little more "helpful" lol

Edit - in case someone takes this seriously - this was a joke. OP didn't want advice, wanted an exact number of links .

[addz123]

Ball park figure of how many backlinks are crucial for ranking for a top 3 term that's semi competitive.

100 PR1's, 87 pr2's, and 22 pr3's + 1 pr6 (or 2 PR4's and 1 PR 5)

Hopefully that answer is a little more "helpful" lol

thanks.

[Matt Geer]

Ball park figure of how many backlinks are crucial for ranking for a top 3 term that's semi competitive.

100 PR1's, 87 pr2's, and 22 pr3's + 1 pr6 (or 2 PR4's and 1 PR 5)

Hopefully that answer is a little more "helpful" lol

Not quite Cheryle, you were close:

96.5 PR1's, 10 PR2's, 101.1 PR3's and at least ...AT LEAST.....5 PR6s

With regards to your comment on "there is no special number for backlinks", I didn't find this helpful tbh.

Well, to be honest, that's the best answer you're going to get. If you find someone who can give you a definite answer, they are probably full of shit.

I just want some ball park figures for finding out how much effort needs to be put into getting backlinks. I know about the on-page seo details etc (even if they're not fully implemented on my site) but I think backlinks must be so important for google.

OK let's think of a better straight forward example. Imagine the term Sit n go strategy (just made up the term it's not relevant to me). How many backlinks would be needed to show up for first 3 results on google, assuming i had 40+ articles etc focused on the term?

I understand this is a difficult answer to explain, but as a new affiliate, i'd really like some ball park figures just how much effort needs going into backlinks.

thanks again

As a new affiliate, my suggestion would be to forget about the backlinks altogether and focus on content that people willwant to link to in the first place. Do you have those 40+ articles on Sit n Gos (hypothetically)? If not, then why not? Also, you can't put a number on that either; anyone here can have only 1 page on SnG Strategy and rank on the first page for it - it's possible. Obviously 40 pages on any one topic surely won't hurt, but why have 40+ topics ranking for the same thing anyway?

Anyway, I don't care if this is the answer you're looking for or not. I really don't think you're going to find a much different one from anyone else. And Cheryle's initial reply was probably more helpful than this one from me and probably the best one you're going to get.

Bottom line - write content, then write some more, then.....ah, what do you know - write some more - keep doing it until you have a resource that someone will want to visit.

Finally, when you actually have a site with some content on it you'll probably be surprised to find that you don't have to look all that hard for links in the first place. People will be link to you willingly provided you have decent content that's worth linking to.

[Strider1973]

Addz, you are not looking for a number of backlinks, but for a certain value carried to your site from backlinks.
As you probably know,

• a backlink from a PR6 page ist much more valuable that a BL from a PR1 page
• a backlink from a PR3 page, which has only 3 links on it, is much more valuable than a backlink from a PR3 page which has 100 links on it

So I suggest the following formula:

Total value from BL = value of BL(1) + value of BL(2) + ... + value of BL(n)

where the value of a single BL(i) is calculated as following:

BL(i) = 10^(PR of page i)/(number of links on page i)


Examples:
Say you need a value of "1100":

Then you just need one backlink from a PR3 site (valued "1000")+ one backlink from a PR2 site (valued "100"), assuming that these are the only links on that pages.

Or you would need 550 backlinks from PR1 pages if these pages each have 5 outgoing links on them (valued "2" each because 10^1 / 5 = 2).

[addz123]

Ok thanks guys.

I don't mean to be rude, but i kind of disagree with the whole 'write great content and you'll receive natural backlinks'.

Maybe this is true in the long long term yes, but i think to have a strategy purely focusing on content writing when i already have a site with 130+ pages with good content isn't the best idea in the world. I'm not arguing with the theory, but in the near future i doubt i'd be showing up in google from natural backlinks alone within a year...

[leporello]

Receiving natural backlinks because of great content does happen albeit far less regularly in the gambling niche. If you wrote the best article ever written about roulette tomorrow, I doubt you'd have too many PAL webmasters linking to you from their roulette sites.

Some great sites like The Wizard of Odds do generate their own regularly occurring natural backlinks as do the likes of Pauly from Tao of Poker, or at least he did back in the day when i used to read his stuff.

But you are correct in that great content in gambling doesn't get gambling webmasters linking to you from their money sites. Anyone who says that is not the case really is kidding themselves. Look at the backlink profiles of any webmasters on here and you'll be doing well to find any who's backlink profiles include a load of natural backlinks (just to clarify by natural I mean Webmaster X reading Webmaster Ys site and saying what a great site I'll link to that).