Backlinks are an integral part of SEO ranking. They are one of the core ranking factors for Google and other search engines.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks or incoming links are links that point directly to your website. They are like a “vote of confidence” from other websites that say that your website is credible or trustworthy for the topic.
The more “Quality” backlinks a website has, the more credibility and authoritative it becomes. This means links help websites rank higher SERPs.
Quality-relevant backlinks with regular traffic on the source page have a positive impact on the destination page’s SEO ranking.
Backlinks may start to show it’s effect in 2-3 months time. It may take less or more depending on quality, relevance and traffic on the source page.
It is worth understanding how long SEO takes to work in order to relate backlinks and their timing better.
Let’s dive in and learn in detail about the timing taken by backlinks to start working and related factors.
Table of contents:
- SEO backlink timeline
- Backlink timeline factors
- How to monitor backlinks impact?
- Common myths about backlinks timeline impact
- How to speed up the effectiveness of backlinks?
- FAQs
SEO backlink timeline
Backlink ranking timeline doesn’t happen overnight. Backlinks take time to see results, starting from maybe a month to six months or longer.
Let’s look at the different results of backlinks in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
Note: The timeline given below is just an estimate of how an average backlink will take to work. This is affected by various factors mentioned in the backlink timeline factors, this guide is for general understanding only.
Short-term 1-3 months
Minor ranking shifts and crawling process
You can expect minor ranking changes and backlink pages will be crawleded and evaluated by Google search.
In the first 1-3 months of getting a new backlink, the effects will be minimal but you will see some changes if you get quality links from good sites.
When a new backlink is created, it first needs to be crawled and indexed by search engines. This initial phase can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the source website’s crawl frequency and authority.
Example:
Let’s say that you acquired a set of local directory links to your website vs just a few links from a highly reputable and relevant website. While both will take time to be indexed and processed generally speaking the latter will have a much stronger impact on the ranking vs directory links.
Medium-term 3-6 months
Noticeable ranking improvements and traffic growth
Between 3-6 months, you will start seeing some noticable changes in your website’s overall ranking post-acquisition of quality links.
This means that backlinks are starting to take effect and will affect your DA and keyword rankings.
3-6 months is a good time for Google to index backlinks, process and assign relevant authority to target pages and the website overall.
Improved Domain Authority (DA): As more backlinks get indexed and pass on their link equity, you will likely see a rise in your website’s DA and PA (Page Authority). This increase further boosts the potential for better rankings across multiple pages of your site.
Broader Organic Traffic Growth: In addition to keyword-specific improvements, your overall organic traffic should begin to increase. This broader growth is a result of higher domain authority and better ranking across related keywords.
Long-term 6+ months
Establishing authority and stable rankings
In the long term, the backlinks will have a full effect on your site. In almost a year, you should see significant improvements in ranking, traffic, and authority. However, the results may still change since SEO is an ongoing process and the competition in your niche may also change.
Here is what you can expect post 6 months of acquiring links:
- Stable Keyword Dominance: After 6 months, your backlinks should have passed full link equity, resulting in more stable rankings for high-competition keywords. The increase in your site’s authority helps stabilise your rankings, making it easier to defend top positions against competitors.
- Improved Visibility for Competitive Terms: This stage often sees the most significant improvements for competitive keywords, as the total link equity builds up.
- Strong Domain Authority and Trust: As the backlink profile matures, your website’s DA continues to improve, leading to better overall site authority and trustworthiness. This also increases the chances of ranking new content faster.
- Consistent Organic Traffic Growth: By this stage, you will see consistent organic traffic growth for both primary and secondary keywords. This is because of the high referrals and top positions you are getting from the backlinks you have built.
Backlink timeline factors
There are several factors that determine how long backlinks take to work. Some backlinks may deliver results in a short period, while others might take longer. Let’s look into some important factors that determine how long it takes for backlinks to work:
Backlink quality
Not all backlinks are created the same. Backlink quality is one of the important factors that Google takes a look at when ranking websites. Different sites have different authority levels and you must look to get backlinks from high-authority sites to rank faster.
Links from low-authority sites will also work but it will take longer to get results. If you are looking to speed up your SEO process, then you should aim to get links from high-authority and well-established sites.
Relevant links
We all know relevance is the new ranking signal.
While non-relevant links can also add value, too much can look like spam and may lead to a negative SEO ranking impact instead of helping.
It is ideal to get links from relevant websites or similar topics or themes. This tells search engines about the topical relevance rewarding with positive ranking.
Why do relevant links matter?
- Topical relevance: Links distribution among similar theme sites boosts topical relevance, helping search engines index and rank pages with relevant links internally and externally.
- It helps fight against spam: It’s not hard to acquire links from random high-authority websites but acquiring relevant links of high quality is not easy. The process helps search engines to fight spam and reward quality websites to rank better.
Example:
Imagine a website(A) selling kids wear that has a size guide page related to age and weight of the child. There is another website(B) which is informational in nature and related to kids and mums and it has a page about kids’ gift ideas that links to the size guide page of site A.
The above example will be considered as a relevant link as they are closely related.
Relevant links can impact the SEO ranking time signficiently.
Domain age and authority
Older and established sites have more domain authority than new sites. Getting links from highly authoritative is not easy but they make a significant difference in backlink impact in terms of time and ranking.
The more older and authoritative a site is, the more value its link has. When you get links from these sites, you not only get a boost in SEO ranking but also user referrals. The visitors of the established sites will visit your website and boost your own traffic.
The big benefit of getting links from sites with high domain age and authority is that their value lasts longer. Google views these sites as credible sources of information for a long time, so you don’t need to continuously look for huge backlinks if you have a good number of backlinks from these authoritative and established sources.
Source website SEO health
The health of the source website also impacts how fast your backlinks will rank. The website you get the incoming links needs to be of good SEO health i.e. have good SEO practices, must be active, have good traffic, etc. A backlink from a healthy website will have more value than one with less traffic or activity.
Here are some SEO health factors to look for in a website when getting backlinks:
- Optimised content: Check whether the source website has SEO-optimised content or not. Look for factors such as quality of the copy, meta information, linking structure, heading structure, and more.
- Traffic: Look into the monthly organic traffic of the site. Does the site have a good number of visitors? If yes, then these are the sites you should be looking for.
- Page Authority: Page authority is different from Domain authority. It refers to the power of a specific page on a site. If you get a link from a page that has high PA, then it would speed up the backlink process.
- Content quality and relevance: Content quality and relevance of the source website also matter. If you get a link from a website that regularly posts high-quality and well-researched content, then Google will value that link more and speed up your ranking.
- E-E-A-T: You need to get links from websites that have good scores in Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trust) guidelines.
For more information on good SEO health, visit our blog on good SEO vs bad SEO.
Anchor relevance
The anchor text – the clickable part of the backlink – is also important in determining the speed of backlinks to work. Google uses anchor text as a clue about the content of the linked page, so if the anchor text is a close match to the target keywords of your page, it can speed up the process.
Example:
Let’s say you are trying to rank for “trail running shoes”, a backlink from a runners guide page with anchor text “trail runners shoes” is a very close match to the target page. This will act as a great vote for the target page.
While natural links anchor texts are often not a very close match to the target page and often can be linked on words like click here, learn more, brand name or direct link. They still add value but natural backlinks with close or exact matches can have a much faster ranking impact.
Competition in the niche
For every business, there is competition. In the case of SEO, the more competitive your niche is, the more time it will take for your backlinks to work. This is because many businesses are competing for the top spot in the SERPs for a variety of topics and keywords.
So to rank faster, you may need more quality backlinks and even with this, it can take a significant time before you see results.
It is very easy to give up due to not achieving the desired ranking with greater effort for a decent time but the key is to commit to the process and have moderate expectations. Keep the process on to acquire more and more quality/relevant links to achieve ranking sooner rather than later.
How to monitor backlinks impact?
We know that backlinks take time to take effect, but how do we monitor the impact of backlinks and make sure they are working correctly?
The more you know about the backlinks the better you will understand it’s impact with time.
Let’s find out:
Google Search Console Links
Google Search Console is the best tool to check your links acquired.
your backlinks are working correctly and monitor their performance. It’s easy to use Google Search Console to get your backlinks report.
Path: Google Search Console > Links > Top linking sites
You can get the following data from this report.
- Linking websites
- Target pages of your website
- Source page where links are placed
- You will need to visit the page to learn additional details like anchor text, do follow/no follow etc.
Third-party tracking tools
You can get heaps of information on third-party sites along with Google Search Console.
You will be able to see domain authority, page authority, recent acquired links and more.
Here are some popular tools to check links and beyond:
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
- SEO MOZ
Monitoring backlinks to assess timing
If you really want to assess your backlinks to understand their impact with timing then pay attention to key backlinks metrics.
- Authority of the Source Website: Look into the authority or DA of the source website. You can use third-party tools like Ahrefs to check the DA of your source website. A backlink from a high DA website will speed up your backlink process.
- Traffic on the Page: A backlink from a page with regular traffic drives more value than one from a low or no traffic page, as it signals greater relevance to search engines.
- Relevance: Links from sites within your niche or related topics will speed up the process by adding contextual value to your backlink profile.
- Anchor Text: While links with diverse anchor text look more natural acquiring links close target keyword match can add great value. Too many links with exact match can leat to trouble.
Conclusion: Links from a high authority and relevant website with regular traffic and particle or close match anchor text on the source page will have a much faster SEO ranking impact on the destination page.
Common myths about backlinks timeline impact
There are many common myths and misconceptions about backlinks.
It is important to understand them and avoid those mistakes to focus on quality to achieve the desired ranking faster.
- Backlinks Provide Immediate Results: This is the most common myth. SEO isn’t an instant process, and link-building takes time. You need to continuously build high-quality links and let search engines assess and rank accordingly.
- Quantity Over Quality: You need to prioritise getting good-quality links instead of a large number of spammy or low-quality links. Even if you get fewer links from high-quality sites, it can boost your ranking process rather than getting low-quality links from non-credible sources.
- Backlinks From Social Media Don’t Matter: Social media can also help with giving you backlinks. Even though most of the links are no-follow links, they can give you other benefits like driving traffic, increasing your brand visibility, and enabling other sites to link to your content.
- Backlinks Should Be On Target Pages: It’s very hard to get natural links to business or managed pages. People like to link helpful resources like blogs or how-to pages. Internal links from these pages to business pages do the magic.
- Backlinks Should Be Exact Anchor Match: This is another myth, it is very hard and generally unnatural to get links with exact match anchor text. Appreciate quality links in a more natural form.
How to speed up the effectiveness of backlinks?
Even though backlinks might take some time to take effect, you can speed up its effectiveness by using the following strategies:
- Get A Diverse Range of Links: You should get backlinks from a wide range of sources and not just websites. This can include link insertions into existing articles, guest posts for relevant blogs, digital PR efforts for trending topics, HARO (Help A Reporter Out), image outreach for your visuals, skyscraper posts that cover a topic in-depth, or creating linkable assets where other sites can link to.
- Focus on quality vs quantity: As mentioned before, you must focus on getting high-quality backlinks rather than a huge number of spammy links with no value. It might seem tempting to go with low-quality links for the volume but it can affect you in the long run. Links from high-quality sources will boost the overall credibility and authority of your site and can boost your rankings even faster.
- Relevance is Key: You must also make sure you are getting links from sites that are relevant to your niche or industry. The more relevant the link is to your topic, the faster the backlinks work and boost your site.
- Internal Linking Monitised Pages: Internal linking is an effective way to channel the authority of high-quality backlinks to specific pages on your site. For monetised pages, use internal links from high-authority pages like blogs or guides that naturally attract backlinks.
FAQs
How many backlinks do I need for SEO?
There’s no magic number for backlinks. A handful of high-authority, relevant backlinks can outperform hundreds of low-quality links. For competitive niches, more backlinks may be needed, but always prioritise relevance and domain authority over numbers.
How fast do backlinks work?
Backlinks can take anywhere from 1 to 6 months to show their full impact. The speed depends on various factors like backlink quality, the authority of the linking site, and how competitive your niche is.
How many backlinks are good for SEO?
There’s no fixed number of backlinks that guarantee SEO success. Instead, the focus should be on acquiring a mix of high-quality, relevant backlinks. A few links from authoritative sites can improve rankings more effectively than many from low-authority or irrelevant sites.
How do we know the quality of backlinks?
To assess backlink quality, check the domain authority, relevance, and SEO health of the linking site. You can use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush to help analyse backlink quality. High-quality backlinks come from authoritative, trustworthy sites that are relevant to your content and have good organic traffic.
How do I make backlinks faster?
To build backlinks faster, focus on strategies like guest posting, digital PR, participating in niche forums, or using HARO (Help a Reporter Out). Shareable content like infographics and comprehensive guides can also attract backlinks faster. You can also try networking with influencers in your industry to speed up link acquisition.
How do I get backlinks indexed fast?
To get backlinks indexed quickly, submit the page with the backlink to Google via Search Console. You can also build internal links pointing to the page or share the content on social media. To speed up the process, ensure that the source page has good SEO and traffic.
How fast can I rank my page with backlinks?
The speed at which backlinks help rank your page depends on several factors, like backlink quality, relevance, domain authority, and competition. Generally, it can take anywhere from 1 to 6 months to see noticeable improvements.
