Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Tim Capper: It Depends - because there is no way of telling how Google may view the value of those links.
Also depending on the specific query space you may not need any at all!
1w
Chris Sutch: Tim Capper I wouldn`t even entertain a link without having a close idea of how far it will move the needle. It`s the first thing I evaluate.
1w
Jason Smith: Also it should be quality over quantity. For example you could have 10, 000 links from spammy sites which Google apparently look down on but 50 good links on well known sites, Forbes etc will look a lot better. But as Tim said, we don`t know the exact science behind Google but some things do make sense.
1w
Judy Taylor: Very generally for page one, 10 quality links for each degree of KD. For example, 100 quality links for a KD of 10.
1w
Neil Beckett: Judy Taylor So for low competition keywords you still need over 100 quality links to get to page one?
1w
Chris Sutch: Just one if you get the right one. It may take more the higher you want to climb. Relevance. Find link opportunities relevant to the page you want to rank. Remembering google ranks web pages and not websites. Put your opportunity in ahrefs and bring up the sites it links out to. Scroll down 9 to 12 months and pick an outgoing link. Remember the opportunity site and the link. Now follow the link. Look for the date that link was first discovered. Ahrefs has a lag and is behind google however look on the timeline graph for any upward movement shortly after the link was first discovered and if yes does the rank increase stay there. There could be the possibility the site obtained many links in a short period and you have to dig deeper but with time and practice you will evaluate if the link has value or not before you accept it. It`s a laborious method at first but you`ll soon do it in under two minutes.
1w
Callie Platt: Chris Sutch thanks for the feedback yeah I`ve found a few high-quality links through Base Search Marketing. They seem to have some good links.
1w
Jeff Ferguson: You don’t. And neither does anyone else. Nor does any SEO tool and so on. It’s simply not how it works. It’s not about quantity and your ranking isn’t base solely on links, but on all the things, including links. So, stop worrying about “getting more links†or “getting more links than the other site†and focusing on getting great links to your content, which should be amazing, along with your site.
1w
Josh Levenson: It doesn`t work like that. Some links are good. Some bad. Some neutral. And the amount of good ones you need can change by the day as the algos adjust. Links are just one of hundreds or thousand of inputs into ranking.
1w
Christine Hansen: One great link can do the trick. A hundred years ago (or so it seems) I made a website for a client and landed one single backlink - though one very important backlink! That particular backlink gave the client so much work, that they had to turn down customers again and again because they were swamped with too much work. So you see, it is not about 1 million backlinks or how many backlinks for one site or keyword or other oddities you might have read about out there.
1w
Callie Platt: Christine Hansen Yes! Agreed quality over quantity! For sure and how do you get backlinks? Do you reach out to blogs yourself?
2d
Christine Hansen: Callie Platt Outreach to journalists: Create an interesting story around your product or business that would appeal to their audience. Find your angle, story idea, or `hook`. The 3 main outreach stories are (SUP): Seasonal, Unusual, own Personal story (don`t do others story, comes out cheesy). I usually go for `Unusual` if I can find a hook somewhere in my client`s new line of "Unusual" products. Make a mail-press-kit for the journalist including - Short Press Release with a hook (read up on storytelling) with a - Catchy Headline (same headline for mail subject!), - Contact info, ultra-short brief about your company- Images (remember your vector logo) or 1 link to images (high res)- 2-3 links (homepage, landingpage, article, video, reference stats, etc), In other words, make it as easy for the journalist as possible. Make a list of those you have sent to, their e-mail addy, when you sent, and what sort of answer you get or if you never got an answer (that _will_ happen).
Who/how to contact? Your local newspaper, then magazines, newspapers, radio stations where your customers are at. A great tip here: If you can get the local newspaper to write about you first and then link to them in your outreach, then the chance of your story getting picked by national journalists is by far much higher.
Other things to try: Join events/exhibits, conferences (perhaps partner programs), become a speaker, and most important: join an offline local network for business owners. Make sure you get a link from their websites. Also, do have calling cards and brochures that fit in pockets ready for handouts.
1d
Boyd Trimmell: If there were some magic number a backlinks you needed to rank on page one then everyone would be doing it, making it irrelevant.
You will find sites 50 links ranking higher than site with 100k links.
1w
David Iwanow: I`m sure you will find plenty of folks willing to take your money who claim they have a secret recipe... it`s more and more dumb luck these days and somewhere between 1 and more than 1... You are focusing too much on CitationFlow and not enough on TrustFlow... focus on quality!!
1w
King Rehan: I`m not against the backlinks as such, but Silo Structures and shoulder articles work better with backlink strategy if you want to rank higher. I`m not an SEO expert, but with content (and zero backlinks), I have seen many clients rank higher than other established websites.
I got a question! How do I know how many backlinks I`ll need to be able to rank higher! Does anyone know how to find this out? 
