GEO Backlinks for Local SEO.

While there’s not one definitive answer, it’s good to have a general idea of how long it takes for backlinks to take effect.

Backlinks and the pages they’re pointing to usually undergo three phases: Indexing, the “Big Jump” and the “Uphill Climb.”

It takes a few days for a new link to get indexed. Results may vary depending on the age, authority and popularity of the website hosting that link.

Once the backlink has been detected and indexed, it will sit there for a while before the ball gets rolling.

By a research done by Moz

 Single backlink takes an average of 10 weeks to push a page a rank higher on Google

Backlinks are an important part of local SEO because they send a signal to search engines that other websites value your website’s content.  

Think of backlinks as a vote of confidence. When multiple websites link to the same webpage, search engines can assume that the content is valuable and that it’s worth ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). The more high quality websites that link to your own, the more confidence Google, Bing, and other search engines have in your website.

Local business websites with strong backlink profiles pick up traction and take off more easily than those without, and that’s partly because backlinks figure so highly in local search ranking factors.

How many backlinks you need depends on what you’re trying to achieve. The more you want to achieve (in terms of keyword targets, rankings and visitor numbers), the more backlinks you’ll need. You can potentially rank your business’s website with literally just a few backlinks, but that would be for low competition keywords with low search volumes, meaning you would get few visitors to your site.

Any general number of backlinks given as a target could be argued against, as it will vary very much from business to business, however, a small business should be looking to get 50 quality backlinks to get their SEO campaign off to a good start. With 50 quality backlinks it would be reasonable to expect first page rankings for 5 or so keywords of average competitiveness.