These days if you’re looking to grow your business online there’s no shortage of agencies looking to court you. However marketing savvy you are it can be a tricky job deciding on who you want to work with - after you’ve been pitched to by half a dozen SEO providers they have a habit of blurring into one. Half a dozen lofty claims of web dominance, half a dozen proposed content calendars and boasts of tight-knit relationships with the blogosphere.

Sometimes these claims can seem a bit nebulous or hard to pin down; it’s no wonder then that some agencies are keen to try and offer some peace of mind by promising particular numbers. One of the most common manifestations of this is when we’re pitching to a prospective client and one of their key questions is, “How many links can you guarantee each month?”

Be impressed by our poker faces after this question has been dropped because inside there’s a whirring maelstrom of bad feels. We’ll hem and haw and talk around this one, but it’s rare that you’ll ever get a definite answer. Sometimes this poses a problem because, by this point in the tender process you might have been promised 10, 25, 50 (high quality) links a month and told that this how you’ll close the yawning gap between you and your most successful competitors - the ones who’ve already amassed this wealth of authority, and now it sounds like we’re trying to pull a fast one.

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading our blog that you don’t think we’re frauds. So why don’t we like to base our campaigns around delivering a numerical volume of links per month? After all, SEO and client alike, we know that links (proper, good links) are the building blocks of performance - you want to know that we’re working hard on your behalf and for your money, so a deliverable that you can load up in your browser and see right there on the page seems like a good idea.

There are two great reasons; one is that there’s little evidence of correlation between number of links and performance, and the other is that it stops both you and your SEO agency from looking at and taking advantage of the bigger picture.

If you’re just starting out online or you haven’t invested in SEO or content marketing before, it’s easy to look at the most successful sites in your industry and recognise that you have less links than them, especially if they’re established companies or high street fixtures. That seems to support the theory that you need to up your number of links to compete with them, but is that actually the case?

We developed our own competitor analysis tool MarketScout to show clients and prospective clients the landscape of their market and where they can make up ground. I’m going to show you some examples from this tool that might make you think again about how many links you need.

Example 1: Printing Industry

This report was produced for a recent pitch to a prospective client in the printing industry. Vistaprint.co.uk easily outpaces its competitors in this sector in terms of number of referring domains - more than double that of print24.com in 2nd place. Does a huge advantage in terms of referring domains translate into SERP dominance, though?

Not according to our data! Drawing from a database consisting of hundreds of valuable printing-related terms, the report actually shows Vistaprint.co.uk coming in 3rd in terms of organic visibility. While sitting at #3 is hardly a disgraceful performance it’s interesting that neither site that outranks them even appeared in the first graph - suggesting that they both have less than 1440 referring domains, and vastly less than the 16,000 Vistaprint.co.uk boasts.

Example 2: Designer Dresses

Here are some statistics from another MarketScout report, this one based around retailers of designer ladies fashion - with a focus on dresses and wedding dresses. Once again we have a clear winner in terms of referring domains and it’s a site with a fantastic reputation and brand in their online space - asos.com. With over 56,700 referring domains they dwarf even some highstreet stalwarts like Selfridges and Debenhams. Net-a-porter.com also racks up an impressive 37,900 referring domains.

So they’re not exactly sitting pretty at the top of our visibility chart either. Asos.com fetches up in 4th place, while Net-a-porter.com barely scrapes into the top 10. Harrods.com (with the 3rd most referring domains) manages a respectable 2nd place, but they seem to be an exception rather than the norm.

So number of links (or referring domains) might not guarantee you internet stardom, but a lot of us would be happy to see our sites sitting in the top 10 for competitive terms like these and maybe playing the numbers game gives a site a shot at that. With that in mind, what are some other reasons why you should be worried if your SEO agency (or prospective agency) starts talking about providing you with link numbers…

• It creates a basic disconnect between their performance and your success: links are a method (hopefully one amongst many), NOT the end product. Base your KPIs around increased traffic, rankings, revenue/leads and you’ll unify their goals with yours.
• Allows them to hide behind a smokescreen if your site performance doesn’t improve - you wanted links, you got links.
• Doesn’t take advantage of the full array of opportunities on Google - a focus on links can mean ignoring the map pack, social media, image and other media search. Plain old organic traffic is great but diversifying your traffic sources is even better.
• Playing the numbers game encourages shortcuts and may lead to a decline in the threshold of link quality as the campaign goes on. It also rejects analysis of the who/why/where/what of each link, which can provide valuable insight into your site’s potential audience and greater understanding of what is required to drive more traffic & conversions.
• Doesn’t lend itself to long term strategic goals or forward planning.

So what should you do if your agency is telling you that you need a certain number of links each month to outrank your competitors? Ask them how they’ve arrived at this number - there’s a decent chance it’s based on your retainer fee (or proposed fee) and little else. If they’re unable to produce the data or strategy behind it then punch them in the face thank them politely and leave.