How Long Does it Take for Backlinks to Make an Impact?

By: Michael Johnson

When it comes to making a lasting impact in SEO, nothing in the world of SEO is particularly fast. Increasing your Domain Authority can take months. Boosting consistent organic traffic requires work and to gain a reputable source status in your niche doesn’t just happen overnight.

So it should come as no surprise that results from a link building campaign are no different.

It can be discouraging when you’ve started link building, received numerous relevant backlinks, and are seeing no tangible results after a few months. However, with link building, that’s completely normal. It can take weeks of high-quality link building to move up one spot on a Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

High-quality link building will improve your rank on Google, but it takes time and effort. Significant change won’t appear until anywhere from 6 months to a year of consistent link building.

Investing in SEO, and link building in particular requires playing the long game. Let’s explore how backlinks work and when you can expect to see effective results from your efforts.

So it should come as no surprise that results from a link building campaign are no different.

High-quality link building will improve your rank on Google, but it takes time and effort. Significant change won’t appear until anywhere from 6 months to a year of consistent link building.

Investing in SEO, and link building in particular requires playing the long game. Let’s explore how backlinks work and when you can expect to see effective results from your efforts.

What Makes Link Building Effective?

Link building is one of the most effective methods of improving your website’s metrics. The more high-quality backlinks you can build, the better your website will rank in the eyes of Google. Think of it as a vote of confidence from other authoritative sources within your niche.

Authoritative backlinks show Google that you’re an authoritative source and that other websites trust you enough to vouch for you with a link to your site. After a certain amount of time, Google’s crawlers will reward your SEO efforts, in some cases increasing your keyword rankings for specific keywords, and increasing your overall rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

Though link building can take a long time to show real results, there are many ways to ensure the success of a link building campaign. Here are some features of a site to look out for when link building and ways to guarantee the success of your campaign.

Domain Authority of a Target Site

One of the first factors to keep an eye out for when searching for websites to link build on is the Domain Authority (DA.) The DA is a scoring system created by Moz that ranks the likelihood a website is to appear in a Google search result.

The higher the DA of a website, the more authoritative that your target website and the more valuable a backlink from them will be. One of the most effective blog-finding practices for link builders is to maintain a minimum DA of the target websites outreached.

A lower DA is likely indicative of a lower-quality site. Building links on websites with low DAs won’t hurt your own website’s metrics, but it can be a more valuable use of your time to focus on higher DA sites.

There are some instances where a lower DA site will be much more useful to build links on for a company than higher DAs in the same niche. For example, locality plays a major part in effective link building and SEO strategies. Sites with lower DAs that are local to where your company operates can place your links in front of the audience most likely to benefit from your products and services.

Link building can be nuanced, and it’s important to balance the factors that go into your site finding. Think about which sites are the most likely to interact with your preferred audience. While domain authority is a great factor to keep an eye on when searching for high-quality sites to link build on, it’s not the only metric you should look at.

Target Site Traffic

Advertising is most effective in places people are already present. That’s why buying a commercial during the Super Bowl is so expensive. Millions of people are already watching so millions of people are going to see your ad.

In terms of link building, finding those sites where the traffic is already present can be quite beneficial. However, it’s not necessarily the end-all-be-all of site finding.

Tons of traffic is great and is usually something a link builder will actively search for. Sites with lower traffic counts shouldn’t be counted out, though, as they still provide value depending on what you’re looking for.

Target Site Traffic

In terms of link building, finding those sites where the traffic is already present can be quite beneficial. However, it’s not necessarily the end-all-be-all of site finding.

Effective link building services will search for websites that offer both quantity and quality traffic. Sites that have thousands of monthly viewers are a great way to build a global digital audience. Sites that have hundreds of monthly viewers who are close to your location are a great way to increase your store’s foot traffic. It all depends on what your goal is with the link building campaign.

Brand Recognition

Think of brand recognition as being famous (within your niche.) The more famous you are, the more people will naturally mention you and your site.

Brand recognition is a great way to build a natural audience and secure backlinks naturally without having to seek them out. Once you’ve established yourself as an authoritative and reputable site within your niche, other sites will naturally begin to reference your information.

But how do websites get to that point?

There are a few ways to build recognition within your niche and establish your brand:

Paid advertisements
Digital PR and news releases
Engaging and linkable content pages
Reaching out to influencers within your niche

These link building tactics help build awareness of your brand. Digital PR and news releases help spread word of innovations and news about yourself that is related to the niche. Engaging content like quizzes and infographics are much more linkable and could be sources of natural backlinks.

Once you’ve built up enough brand recognition, natural backlinks and references will become much easier to garner.

Pages Linked

When beginning a link building campaign, you’ll decide which pages you would like to build links to. It can be tempting to request 100 links to your product pages. That’s where the money is and where you ultimately want the traffic to flow, right?

Unfortunately, these pages are seen as being too salesy and often get rejected. Even if they are accepted and you’re able to secure a backlink, the chances of those links being clicked on are low.

According to Google, content pages rank better than product pages. If you want your link building campaign to be effective, you have to supply useful pages to link back to. That’s why so many websites have their own blogs with informative articles.

Pages Linked

Unfortunately, these pages are seen as being too salesy and often get rejected. Even if they are accepted and you’re able to secure a backlink, the chances of those links being clicked on are low.

Supplying informative content as your backlinks will allow other websites to see you as a trusted source within the niche. Content pages and informative articles are more likely to get accepted by websites. They’re more likely to get clicked on making them a more effective source for link building.

Doing an SEO audit of your website and your content pages helps improve the quality of the links you’re supplying a link building campaign. It’s always helpful to ensure your pages rank well on their own for quality. This will help improve the metrics along with link building.

Competitiveness in Your Niche

Unfortunately, you’re not alone in your niche. You’re not the only website looking to take the top spot on a results page. Chances are, you’re not the only website in your niche that is utilizing link building to get there!

The more competitive your niche is, the more difficult link building is going to be. Everyone else is working hard to secure backlinks and references which means your efforts need to increase as well.

So, if everyone is link building at the same rate, how can your website take the top spot?

Effective, consistent link building works best when matched with other SEO practices. Providing timely information, high-quality content, and linkable infographics will help to separate your link building from the pack.

The more work you put into your SEO, the more editors will want to link to your site over your competitors. A competitive niche is also a sign of audience demand, so the extra work will be worth it.

Link Building Budget

Effective link building means being cost-efficient. Creating a link building budget and sticking to it will help improve the effectiveness of a campaign. When building links on your own, it’s important to establish priority. Determine what aspects of link building will require a bigger spend of the budget.

Some of the most time-consuming and spend-heavy parts of link building are as follows:

Site finding and outreach
Content creation
Website branding and brand recognition
SEO auditing

Link building can be done without a budget, but the quality of the work and the time spent on the process will be too much to be sustainable. Allocate a budget and find a link building service that can guarantee success.

Consistency

Much like Rome, effective link building doesn’t just happen in a day. To make an effective link building campaign, you have to focus on consistency. Building 100 backlinks in a day may momentarily boost your metrics. However, it won’t convince Google that you’re an authoritative source that needs to rank higher on results pages, in fact, doing so could actively hurt your campaign if you’re trying to appear authoritative in your space.

Continuously outreaching new sites and link building with them will help build your authority. With link building, it’s all about quality AND quantity. Consistently building backlinks from other authoritative sources will help improve your own website’s ranking slowly over time.

Unfortunately, this means a lot of work over a long period of time. Link building is like a houseplant – you can’t water it with high-quality water once and expect it to thrive forever. Keep watering it with that amazing water every week and that’s when you’ll start to see real results.

How Long Does It Take to See Results From a Link Building Campaign?

This brings us to the question everybody asks when getting a link building campaign started: how long will it take?

There are so many factors that go into this answer. The quickest response is that link building can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months to see a shift in visibility.

Different factors will impact the speed at which you may see results:

Number of backlinks
Quality of backlinks
Link building done by competitors
Who is doing the link building
Quality of your linking pages

Effective link building campaigns don’t provide results overnight. On average, it takes about 10 weeks to see one rank increase on a Google results page. The more links you provide, the faster that turnaround will be. But, you’re still looking at a multi week excursion.

If your goal is to become the number one search result in your niche, then it’s going to take even longer. Jumping from number nine to number eight on a results page will take 5-10 weeks. Jumping from number two to number one will take much longer.

If link building takes so long to do – is it worth the time and effort? For many high-ranking websites, link building is the only reason they’re as successful as they are. Hiring a dedicated link building service will help improve your campaign and allow you to focus on other aspects of the business.

Though link building takes a long time to show major results, it remains one of the most effective ways to improve your site’s metrics and rank on Google. A successful link building campaign is still the best way to boost your site to number one. better than most other SEO improvement practices.

Strategies to Have a Successful Link Building Campaign

There are many factors that go into determining the success of a link building campaign. Offering quality content that editors will want to link to. Knowing what sites will be most likely to accept your backlinks. Creating outreach that is likely to grab an editor’s attention and convert.

One way to ensure your link building campaign is a success is to provide useful information that other websites will want to link to. Creating content pages with valuable articles will make link building easier. Content pages with beneficial information are much more linkable than product and service pages.

Strategies to Have a Successful Link Building Campaign

Once you’ve filled your blog with valuable content and important information related to your niche, it’s time to find the sites you want to work with.

A successful link building campaign requires an understanding of what sites will be the most valuable for you. Looking for a great DA, traffic, and quality content is just the start!

Outreaching these sites and establishing a connection with them can be one of the most difficult aspects of a link building campaign. Emails to editors can sometimes be tossed into the trash bin before they’re even opened. However, in the few cases where an editor does open your outreach, you need to ensure what you say is enough to convince them to supply a backlink.

A successful link building campaign relies on many spinning plates all at the same time. It takes a while for results to show up, so you want to ensure that when they do, they’re the results you want to see.

Quality content, sites, and outreach will help to guarantee success long before the results begin to appear.

So how long does it take for backlinks to make an impact? “All in all, it may take you 6 months–1 year from beginning to end before you start seeing noticeable effects from your link building efforts.”

Conclusion

Link building is an investment that takes time. There are many factors that go into determining just how much time a link building campaign will take, but it’s safe to say it won’t show results overnight. As with all SEO, there is no fast way to the top. Link building continues to be one of the most effective ways to improve your metrics and your ranking with Google.