30 Link-Building Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

Link-building has long been recognised as a crucial part of any SEO strategy. Increasing your domain authority can play a key role in organic success, and so link-building is recognised as a way to facilitate this.

It’s an area of marketing where approaches differ, but ultimately the goal will always remain the same – to build a stronger backlink profile and increase domain authority. This often feeds into a wider marketing strategy.

Given that there are different approaches to link-building, a lot of research has been carried out in this area to determine just how important it is in a strategy, and also how important it is to marketers.

In this blog, we’ve rounded up 30 key statistics about the topic, so you can educate yourself on how and why link-building should form a key part of your marketing strategy!

Here at Embryo, we craft tailored organic strategies based on your KPIs, some of which will involve link-building. To learn more about our approach to SEO and what we could do for you, please get in touch with our team after you’ve read this blog! You can call us on 0161 327 2635 or email [email protected] and one of our team members will assist you.

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30 Link-Building Statistics Every Marketer Needs to Know

1. The majority, 93.8%, of link builders emphasise the importance of link quality over quantity. (Source: Authority Hacker)
2. The majority – 65% – of marketers gauge link quality by assessing domain authority, while domain rating (48%) and page authority (36%) are also common methods. (Source: Aira)
3. A significant 79.7% of SEOs view link-building as a crucial component of their SEO strategy. (Source: Authority Hacker)
4. A survey reveals that personalised email outreach remains the most successful method of acquiring backlinks, with 79% of respondents achieving success using this approach (Source: BuzzStream and Fractl).
5. More than half, 52.3%, of digital marketers find link-building to be the most challenging aspect of SEO. (Source: Authority Hacker)
6. If limited to a single metric for evaluating link quality, 34% of marketers would choose domain authority, while 22% would opt for domain rating. (Source: Aira)
7. A mere 2.2% of content manages to secure links from multiple websites. (Source: Backlinko)
8. Sending follow-up emails in link-building outreach campaigns results in 40% more links being acquired. (Source: Authority Hacker)
9. Google’s page ranking algorithm places significant emphasis on links, ranking them among the top two criteria considered. (Source: Search Engine Land)
10. A considerable 41% of SEO experts find link-building to be the most challenging aspect of search optimisation. (Source: Ascend)
11. According to SEO experts, backlinks rank as the third most critical factor for site ranking. (Source: Databox)
12. It typically takes an average of 3.1 months for the impact of links on search rankings to become noticeable. (Source: Authority Hacker)
13. Approximately 94% of online content fails to garner any external links. (Source: Backlinko)
14. A notable 38% of marketers prioritise page rankings as their top Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for assessing the effectiveness of their link-building efforts. (Source: Aira)
15. The quantity of backlinks a web page possesses is directly associated with the amount of organic traffic it attracts. (Source: Ahrefs)
16. Among factors contributing to successful SEO, referring domains to a URL, specifically through backlinks, exhibit the strongest correlation. (Source: Authority Hacker)
17. An overwhelming 89.2% of link builders report that it takes between 1 and 6 months to witness the effects of links on search rankings. (Source: Authority Hacker)
18. Links constitute one of the top two criteria considered by Google’s page ranking algorithm. (Source: Search Engine Land)
19. A majority, 65.4%, of SEOs prioritise domain authority over the number of links on the target page when assessing search rankings. (Source: Authority Hacker)
20. The first-ranked page on Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than other pages. (Source: Backlinko)
21. SEO experts rank external linking as the third most crucial factor for search optimisation. (Source: Databox)
22. A study on web content reveals no correlation between backlinks and social shares. (Source: Backlinko)
23. The majority – 65% – of marketers gauge link quality by assessing domain authority, while domain rating (48%) and page authority (36%) are also common methods. (Source: Aira)
24. Only 2.2% of content manages to generate links from multiple websites. (Source: Backlinko)
25. 28% of SEO budgets go towards link-building. (Source: Authority Hacker)
26. Pages ranking in the top 10 search results have a diverse anchor text profile, with only 13% of anchors being exact-match keywords. This emphasises the importance of employing a range of anchor text phrases when building links (Source: Ahrefs)
27. 51% of SEO professionals regard competitor backlink analysis as a vital element of their link-building strategy, emphasising the value of identifying and targeting high-quality sources similar to competitors. (Source: SEMRush)
28. There is a positive correlation between social media shares and the number of backlinks a page receives, indicating that promoting content on social platforms can indirectly contribute to link-building efforts. (Source: Hootsuite)
29. Guest posting is the most popular link-building tactic, with 64.9% of link builders using it. (Source: Authority Hacker)
30. Content that is widely shared on social media receives 2-5 times more organic traffic and backlinks. (Authority Hacker)

Ready to Find Out What Your Recommended Organic Strategy Would Look Like?

As you can see, there’s no doubt that link-building is an important strategic element, and marketers – and search engines alike – do still value strong backlink profiles.

Just like link-building though, any broader organic strategy will differ in approach depending on your industry, website, and your goals. We take pride in conducting thorough research during our initial strategic phase, to understand exactly what needs to be done to take your domain authority and organic visibility to the next level.

But, don’t just take our word for it – our results speak for themselves! Like what you see and keen to learn more? Get in touch with us by contacting 0161 327 2635 or [email protected].

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