Looking for some link building statistics to inspire your next campaign?
Link building is one of the pillar elements of effective SEO campaigns and, as such, requires careful planning. One way you can do that is to get current link-building stats so you know the lay of the land.
But first, let’s get a few basics covered.
What is Link Building?
Link building is the practice of proactively increasing the number of inbound links to a webpage. Effective link building requires focusing on high-quality links, not just quantity. It’s also important that the links you build are relevant to your niche, industry, and topic. This is because links are a vote of confidence in the quality of your content. Therefore, the more relevant a backlink is, the more value it has.
No matter what niche or industry you’re in, link building is a vital element of executing an impactful digital marketing strategy.
A few benefits of Link building include:
- Traffic generation: You get to tap into the host site’s audience as they can click on your link and land on your website.
- Brand awareness: When other sites link to yours, you gain brand exposure, resulting in a boost in brand awareness.
- Increase in domain authority (DA): DA is a metric created by Moz to measure how likely a website will rank well on Google search and other search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher the DA, the more likely you will rank for our chosen keywords.
With that out of the way, let’s dive right into the most important link building stats you need to know.
General Link Building Statistics
Before we zero in on some specific link building statistics you can use to fine-tune your campaigns, let’s first look at some general link building statistics.
1. 94% of all the content on the internet doesn’t have a backlink. This means brands that proactively build backlinks are already at an advantage in running successful content marketing campaigns.
2. 41% of enterprise companies say link building is the most challenging aspect of SEO.
3. 85% of marketers believe links will still play an essential role in how search engines rank websites five years from now.
4. 13% of SEO experts cite link building as the most valuable SEO tactic.
Importance of Link Building for SEO
Is link building really important for SEO?
Yes. It definitely is. Here are three types of links you should be building on your website:
- Internal links: These are links between pages on your website.
- Outbound links: These are links from your website to another site.
- Inbound links: These are external links from a website to yours.
All three types of links are essential to running an impactful SEO campaign. Here are some stats to prove that:
6. Links are considered among the top two criteria used by Google’s algorithm to rank web pages.
7. 43.7% of the top-ranking pages on SERPs have reciprocal links (built when websites link to each other).
8. 52% of digital marketers say link building and brand mentions (also called linkless backlinks) directly impact organic search rankings.
9. A higher domain rating DR or DA (depending on whether you’re using Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, or any other SEO tool you’re using) correlates with higher rankings on SERPs.
10. Sites that rank first on SERPs usually have 3.8x more backlinks than those on positions 2-10 on the first page.
11. 38% of marketers say page rankings are one of the top key performance indicators (KPIs) they use to gauge the effectiveness of their link-building campaigns.
12. 65% of SEOs say link building is the most challenging aspect of SEO.
13. 42% of survey respondents said they spend an equal amount of time on building external and internal links.
14. There is a direct correlation between the number of backlinks a web page has and the amount of organic traffic it generates.
Popular Link Building Strategies
Some link building strategies are effective. Others are downright not worth the effort.
Which tactics should you focus on?
15. 40.7% of marketers say content marketing is the best strategy for passively building organic links.
16. A whopping 69% of marketers believe buying links can improve a site’s search rankings
17. “Why” posts, “What” posts, and infographics get 25.8% more backlinks compared to videos and “How-to” posts.
18. 31% of marketers run outreach campaigns to build links to a new piece of content for up to 4 weeks after launching the content piece. 27% don’t put an end date to their campaigns.
19. Guest blogging is one of the most popular and effectual link building practices, with 60% of bloggers saying they publish 1-5 guest posts a month.
The Cost of Link Building in 2022
As with all marketing campaigns, you have to invest to see some significant results with link building.
Being an important factor that influences ranking, you must be prepared to invest time and resources in building backlinks.
How much does link building cost?
20. 36% of businesses outsource link building as they see it as a complicated process.
21. 61% of marketers say they use up to 10% of their budget on building links.
22. In a survey of over 800 SEO professionals, about 40% of the respondents said they spend over $1000 per month on link building.
23. In another study, 46% of marketers said they spend $10,000 or more annually on link building campaigns.
24. The average cost of buying a backlink is $361.44.
25. 41% of marketers expect the cost of link building to increase in the coming years.
Disclaimer: Google is against exchanging links with money or products. That’s why we don’t advocate buying links as a link-building tactic. We prefer link building services that build links manually.
Best Content Formats for Link Building
Content marketing is a discipline with different types of content.
Knowing the content formats that attract the most backlinks is therefore important.
Which content types do just that?
26. Long-form content gets about 77.2% more backlinks than short-form content. This means long-form content should play a central role in your organic link building strategy.
27. 70% of SEO specialists find data/research to be the most effective content format for attracting links.
28. Video content ranks among the most linked to content, according to 66% of survey respondents.
29. According to the same survey, Infographics (61%) and white papers (60%) are other content format types effective for earning backlinks.
Tips for Building High-quality Backlinks
With most marketers struggling with link building, are there some tips to making this important SEO practice easier?
There sure are. Here are our top four:
Become a Resource in Your Niche
One way to earn backlinks organically is to become a resource in your niche or industry. You can do this by publishing high-quality content. You can also become a trusted resource by using a service like Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
Conduct and Publish Industry Research
Stats. Facts. Data. Research. All these are essential to writing authoritative content. Unfortunately, not everyone has the resources and time to conduct original industry research. If you’re in a position to invest in research, do so. It will help you generate backlinks on autopilot as other publications will cite you in their content.
Fix Broken Links (Or Replace Outdated Ones)
Every publisher wants to offer their website visitors the best possible experience on their websites. This is why broken links are a nightmare. Also, broken links can hurt your SEO. That’s why finding and fixing broken links is one of the best tactics you can use to build backlinks. Publishers are more than happy to get help in this regard. The same applies to outdated links.
Develop a New Strategy, Technique or Tip
Another great way of earning organic backlinks is to develop a unique strategy, technique or tip that people in your industry would find helpful. Then, people will link back to your resource on this technique when citing it in their content.
Link Building Statistics: What’s Next?
As you’ve seen from the statistics above, link building is a crucial element of digital marketing. That’s why every brand must invest in it.
Wondering what to do with all this data?
Simple. This statistic post aims to highlight opportunities and strategies you can leverage to design and execute your next campaign. With links being one of the most critical ranking factors search engines consider, you must ensure your campaigns are effective. For that to happen, you need to design data-driven campaigns.
Successful ink building is a critical element of SEO. The above stats have proven it. But as you’ve seen, a lot of content online doesn’t get any backlinks. One reason for that is no one knows about it. To boost the chances of people finding your content and linking back to it, you must create SEO-friendly content.
That’s where SEO plugins like AIOSEO come in.
AIOSEO is an SEO toolkit that can help you implement SEO best practices on your website and content. This includes:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
With AIOSEO, you can drastically increase the chances of your content ranking without needing to hire an expert.
If you’re not yet an AIOSEO user, there’s no better time than now to get this powerful plugin. So go ahead and download AIOSEO here and increase your chances of earning backlinks organically.
Want to Try AIOSEO for Free?
Enter the URL of your WordPress website to install AIOSEO Lite.
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Where can I find a real link builder for my website??
Hi John, Thanks for stopping by.
Sadly, we can not help you with that. However, we do advise that you carefully vet the service provider you go with.
Great ideas, very stimulating!
Great ideas, very stimulating!
This is a great tip particularly to those fresh to the blogosphere. Short but very accurate info… Appreciate your sharing this one. A must read post!