Are you wasting endless hours chasing hundreds of backlinks for your website? If you’ve been told that backlinks are “everything” in SEO, you’ve fallen for a huge misconception in digital marketing. This video will dispel the myth that you need a massive quantity of links to rank high on Google and actually get real results for your business.
Many SEOs believe that the more backlinks a website has, the more powerful it is. While backlinks do pass authority from one website to another, their importance is often drastically overestimated. You might think SEO is a lot more work than it actually is if you focus solely on link building.
So, when do backlinks truly matter? They are most important for highly competitive searches – keywords targeted by many websites, appearing in page titles, URLs, meta descriptions, and H1 tags. For these ultra-competitive terms, more authority (often via backlinks) can help you perform better. Backlinks are also necessary for new sites to gain just enough authority to rank for their brand name or low-volume purchase intent keywords. In these cases, even having a few topical links (within your niche) with relevant anchor text is powerful.
But here’s the game-changing truth: You actually don’t need many backlinks at all to get significant results! Many high-converting purchase intent keywords—where people are looking to buy, use a product, or call for a discovery—are “undertargeted”. This means they don’t have fierce competition, and you don’t need a lot of links to rank for them. Even for “Your Money Your Life” (YMYL) sites like health or finance, the focus should be on topical, niche-specific links rather than just a huge volume of general authoritative ones.
The biggest mistake many marketers make is spending too much time pursuing links and not enough time on proper keyword targeting and creating exceptional content. Many websites doing normal marketing already possess enough “link juice” or SEO authority to rank for keywords that actually bring in customers. In fact, focusing excessively on backlinks can lead to poor quality content (templatized, fluff-filled, poorly targeted) and can even result in Google penalties or updates despite having many links.
The real secret to SEO success is focusing on making pages that get you customers, users, and warm leads. These often involve lower-volume, purchase intent keywords that, while less traffic-heavy, make a huge difference to your bottom line.
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SEO, Digital Marketing, Backlinks, Google Ranking, Search Engine Optimization, Keyword Research, Content Marketing, On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Link Building, Authority, Competitive Keywords, Purchase Intent Keywords, YMYL, Google Penalties, Website Ranking, SEO Tips, Digital Marketing Strategy, Compact Keywords, Edward Sturm, SEO Myths, Rank Higher, Online Marketing, Website Traffic, Lead Generation, Customer Acquisition, Content Quality, Topical Links, Niche SEO