Ready to grow?There is no fixed number of backlinks that gets you to page one. The right number is "however many it takes to look as trustworthy as the page currently beating you," and for a local search that is often very few, sometimes zero.
That is the answer most people do not want to hear. They want a target: get 50 links, rank on Friday, done. So they go looking for a price and a count. But ranking does not work like buying inventory. A bakery trying to rank for "fresh sourdough Hove" and a software company trying to rank for "best email marketing tool" live in two completely different worlds, and the number of links each needs is not within a hundred of the other.
This article is not about how to get backlinks. It is about why the count is the wrong thing to chase, and what to look at instead.
Why "how many backlinks do I need to rank" is the wrong question
The question assumes there is a set answer. There is not. The number depends entirely on the search you are trying to win, and you cannot know it until you look at who is already winning it.
A link-building agency named FatJoe makes its money selling backlinks. You would expect them to hand you a number. Instead they argue plainly that "how many links should I get" is the wrong question because it "assumes there is a set answer when there simply isn't." Their advice is to check how many unique linking sites your real competitors have, then aim for that, rather than picking a figure out of the air. When the people who sell links tell you the count is not the point, that is worth pausing on.
Here is the better question. Not "how many backlinks do I need," but "how strong are the pages I have to beat, and what would it take to look at least as credible as them?" That question has a real answer. The first one does not.
Quality beats quantity, and Google has said so out loud
Google's John Mueller was asked directly whether the total number of backlinks pointing to a site matters. His answer was that the total is irrelevant, and that "counting links is somewhat futile in any case." He told people to "think more about quality rather than quantity." That is not a marketer's opinion. That is Google's own search-relations team saying the scoreboard most owners obsess over is not the scoreboard.
Picture two florists. One has 40 links from random directories nobody reads, scraped blogs, and a few link farms. The other has three links: one from the local newspaper that covered their wedding work, one from a regional event the shop sponsored, and one from a respected industry blog. On a raw count, the first florist is winning 40 to 3. In Google's eyes, the second one looks far more like a real, trusted business.
One strong link from a relevant, trusted source can carry more weight than dozens of weak ones. Source relevance and variety matter more than the size of the pile.
Referring domains, not raw backlinks, is the number that counts
Two words get mixed up constantly, and the difference changes how you should think about all of this.
A backlink is any single link from another page to yours. If one website links to you 30 times across 30 of its pages, that is 30 backlinks. A referring domain is one unique website that links to you at all. Those same 30 links from one site count as one referring domain.
Google cares far more about the second number. Thirty links from one site is one website vouching for you thirty times. One link each from thirty different, relevant sites is thirty separate sources saying you are worth a mention. The second pattern is what trust looks like.
Backlinko studied 11.8 million Google search results and found that the number of referring domains, the count of unique linking sites, was the strongest-correlating backlink factor for rankings. The same study found the page sitting at #1 had on average 3.8 times more backlinks than the pages in positions #2 through #10. So links do still matter. The point is not that they are useless. The point is that "more unique sites that genuinely vouch for you" is the real lever, not "a bigger raw number."
How to find your actual target: look at who is already winning
Stop guessing the number. Go find it.
Open a private browser tab so your own history does not skew the results. Search the exact phrase you want to rank for, the way a customer would type it. Look at the three or four pages sitting above the local map results. Those pages are your target. Whatever level of trust they have built is roughly the level you need to reach.
You can then check how many referring domains each of those pages has using a free or low-cost SEO tool. You are not trying to match the biggest competitor link for link. You are trying to answer one question: are these pages backed by a wall of strong sites, or are they thin pages that nobody has ever linked to? That single look tells you more than any blog post promising a magic figure ever will.
This is the same move FatJoe recommends, and they sell the links. Copy the link profile of whoever is already beating you. Not a number from the internet. The number in front of you.
Local searches versus competitive ones: a bakery is not a CRM
Here is where the answer splits in two, and why a single number could never be right.
Take a bakery ranking for "fresh sourdough" plus its town name. The pages competing for that search are often weak: a couple of old directory listings, a Facebook page, one rival bakery with a thin website. None of them has spent a day on links. In that world a strong Google Business Profile, a clear page about your sourdough, and a handful of mentions from local sites can be enough. You may need close to zero backlinks, because the bar is on the floor.
Now take "best email marketing tool." The pages competing there are giant publishers and software companies with thousands of referring domains and full-time teams. To rank, you would need hundreds of strong links and probably years. Same question, "how many backlinks do I need," wildly different answer.
The pattern holds across trades. A plumber chasing "emergency plumber" plus a suburb name is in the bakery's world: low competition, few links needed. A salon competing only against other local salons is too. The lesson is the same one in every case. The number you need is set by your competition, not by your industry, and definitely not by a figure someone sells you.
Can you rank with zero or very few backlinks?
Yes, for the right keywords. But be honest about the odds.
An Ahrefs study of over a billion pages found that 90.63% of pages get zero organic search traffic from Google, and that roughly 55% of pages have no referring domains pointing to them at all. So for most of the web, no links and no visitors go hand in hand. That is the sobering half.
The hopeful half is that the link bar is set by your niche, not by some universal floor. A WebFX study of 1,462 page-one domains across 15 industries found the median ranking page had 907 referring domains, but that figure swung from just 76 in Apparel to 3,027 in Finance and Insurance. The "number" you need is not one number at all. Ranking with very few links is possible, and it almost always happens in the low-competition corners of search, which is exactly where most local businesses live. The bakery searching its own town has a real shot at being one of those low-link pages. The CRM does not.
So the takeaway is not "links never matter." It is "match the effort to the competition." For a quiet local search, your time is better spent on the page itself and your Google profile than on hunting links.
What to do instead of chasing a number
Spend your energy on the things that actually move a local search, in roughly this order.
Make the page genuinely about the search. A page titled and written around "sourdough in Hove" will beat a generic "our breads" page that mentions sourdough once. Relevance is free and it is the first thing most local pages get wrong.
Fix your Google Business Profile. For "near me" and local searches, your profile, your reviews, and your map presence often outrank link count entirely. A plumber with 60 recent five-star reviews beats one with 6, links aside.
Earn the few links that fit your area naturally. Google Search Central says the best way to get other sites to link to you is to "create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity," and it warns that buying, selling, or exchanging links at scale violates its link spam policies. Sponsor a local team. Get listed in the genuine local guide. Do the thing the newspaper writes about. A handful of relevant local links does more for a local business than a hundred bought ones, and it will not get you penalised.
If you want a deeper walk through the customer side of this, here is how local visibility turns into actual calls.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a minimum number of backlinks to rank on Google?
No. There is no minimum and no magic figure. For a low-competition local search you may rank with zero backlinks if your page is relevant and your Google Business Profile is strong. For a competitive national search you may need hundreds. The number is set by your competitors, not by a rule.
What is the difference between backlinks and referring domains?
A backlink is any single link to your site, so one website could give you many backlinks. A referring domain is one unique website that links to you at all. Google leans on referring domains more, because thirty links from thirty different trusted sites signal far more trust than thirty links from one.
Should I buy backlinks to rank faster?
It is risky and often pointless. Google Search Central states that buying or exchanging links at scale violates its link spam policies, which can hurt your rankings. John Mueller has said the total count does not matter anyway. Your money goes further on a better page, real reviews, and a few genuine local mentions.
How do I know how many links my competitors have?
Search your target phrase in a private browser tab, note the top three or four pages, and check their referring domains with a free or low-cost SEO tool. That gives you a real target to aim at instead of a guessed number, which is the approach even link-selling agencies recommend.
So the next time you catch yourself asking how many backlinks you need to rank, swap it for the only question that has an answer: how strong are the pages beating me right now, and how close can I get to that? For a bakery competing on its own town's sourdough, the honest answer is usually "barely any, you just have to look." Fonzy does that looking for you, reads who you are actually up against, and builds the relevant trust signals automatically, so you never have to guess a number or buy one.
