How Many Links to Get to the Middle of Google Page One?

I read a newsletter the other day with a title that sounded more like a riddle than a serious item on SEO. The title was “How Many Links to Get to the Middle of Google Page One?” The answer they provide to this riddle is deliciously vague – “You need more inbound links – of equal or higher quality – than what your competitors have.”

I have some difficulty with this answer. While at one level this answer is valid, it hides the fact that links, regardless of quality or quantity, are not the “be all and end all” of achieving page one in Google, or any other search engine.

Links are important. They allow the search engines to find your site by following the links from other sites they already know about, and it is generally acknowledged that links from important sites are interpreted by the search engines as a vote of confidence in the destination page. But links alone won’t put you on page one of Google.

Here are MidBoh we always argue that to achieve results in the search engines you need to do 3 things correctly:

• be found / be findable
• provide good (parse-able) content (Write your content for your target audience)
• link well (Link Building)

These points are explained on other pages within this site, some of which I have noted above, so I won’t elaborate on them in this discussion. While it may sound as if these items are a check list or a magic formula for achieving success, they are not. These are a high level summary of factors which influence the search engine decisions. Concentrating your effort on one factor in this trio of factors at the expense of the others is dangerous. They are indicators – nothing more, nothing less.

Search engines are trying to return quality and appropriate websites in response to every search. If you can become one of those websites you will benefit.

The newsletter is correct to suggest the process of achieving results in Google is competitive. The higher your position in Google the more opportunity you have to communicate your message with your potential clients, so being ahead of your competitors is potentially very valuable. But rather than focus on only one element of achieving that result, why not broaden your approach and make sure you have content worth reading. This will help you deliver a compelling message to your potential clients and along the way convince Google your website is valuable.

Hopefully you found this discussion interesting or perhaps you would like more information about how to achieve better results for your website. If that’s the case, why don’t you contact us.