How Many Backlinks Does Your Gaming Website Need

Short answer: it really depends on the competitiveness of the term you are trying to rank for, but as a general rule, having 40 – 50 backlinks from different domains is a great start. Also, quality of the links is absolutely crucial and you will find a backlink comparison to top ranking competitors more accurate when you filter out the low- value links.

If you’ve ever Googled your own gaming website and found it buried deep in the search results, don’t worry — you’re not alone. we’ve been there.

Backlinks are one of the most talked-about aspects of SEO, and for good reason. As they are crucial in SEO, as confirmed by search engines themselves. But how many backlinks does your gaming website actually need to start ranking well? Is there some secret number? Is more always better?

Grab a coffee (or a Mountain Dew if you’re deep in game dev mode), and let’s take a walk through the wonderful world of backlinks — what they are, how many you might need, and how to get them for your gaming site. If you need help with getting those all-important backlinks, check out our gaming backlink services page and let us help you with your link building efforts!

What Are Backlinks, and Why Do They Matter?

Let’s start with the basics.

A backlink is simply a link from one website to another. When another site links to your gaming blog, review site, or community forum, that’s a backlink.

Search engines like Google treat backlinks as votes of confidence. If lots of reputable websites link to yours, Google sees your site as trustworthy and authoritative, which can help push your pages higher up in the search results.

Think of backlinks like recommendations. If your site is getting recommended by many high-quality sources, that’s a great signal to Google.

Now the big question — how many do you need?

How to Determine the Amount of Backlinks Your Gaming Site Needs

Here’s the truth no one tells you right away: there is no universal number of backlinks that guarantees success. The number of backlinks you need depends on your competition.

Let’s break it down with a real-world analogy.

Imagine you’re trying to open a gaming café in a small town versus in central London. The competition in London is intense — you’d need flashy branding, social media presence, and great reviews to stand out. But in the small town? You could dominate just by existing!

SEO is like that. If you’re trying to rank for “how to tame a dinosaur in Ark: Survival Evolved”, you might only need a few targeted backlinks. But if you’re going for “best RPGs,” you’re going to need a lot more.

Whilst having to account for quality of links can complicate your estimates, don’t worry, we can still get a good idea of how many links we may need.

Let’s say you run a gaming news blog and want to rank for something like “best RPGs 2025.” What you need to do is look at the top 5 results on Google and analyze how many backlinks they have. Tools like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, or Moz can help with this.

For example:

If most top-ranking pages have between 80 and 550 backlinks, you’ll probably think you need somewhere in that range — ideally closer to the higher end — to compete. But the quality of backlinks matters even more than the quantity. There are also other factors that may impact your position in SERPs such as preexisting website authority, topical authority etc. Therefore, in fact you may not need as many backlinks as you think.

Fortunately, we can try to account for the backlink quality when we try to estimate how many backlinks our page of our gaming site needs to do well in search.

How to Estimate the Number of Quality Links Your Competitors Have

When it comes to building links gaming websites, not all backlinks are created equal. Some are absolute gems, others… not so much.

1. Remove Backlinks from Low-Traffic Sites

Check the site’s organic traffic.
If a site barely gets any visitors, chances are Google doesn’t see it as very valuable — and that means its links might not carry much weight either.

By focusing on backlinks from sites with at least some consistent organic traffic, you’re making sure your link-building efforts actually pay off. A good number to shoot for is 1000+ monthly organic visitors monthly for larger sites and 500+ monthly organic visitors if the site is evidently a smaller one.

(Pro tip: Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can quickly show you a site’s traffic estimates.)

2. Number of Referring Domains Matters More Than Number of Backlinks

Here’s the first biggie: when you’re checking out their backlink profile, pay attention to the number of referring domains instead of their total backlink count.

Why?
Because getting 10 links from the same site isn’t as powerful as getting 10 links from 10 different sites. Google values diversity.

That doesn’t mean links from the same site are worthless (sometimes they’re awesome!), but when you’re analyzing, competitor link profile, prioritize unique referring domains.

3. Remove Nofollow Links

Now let’s talk about nofollow links.
These links tell search engines, “Hey, don’t pass SEO juice here.”
In other words, nofollow links typically don’t help your rankings directly.

That said, getting a nofollow link from a massive site (think: IGN, Polygon, or PC Gamer) can still be amazing for brand awareness, trust, and referral traffic.

But if you’re laser-focused on ranking higher in Google, prioritize dofollow links first.

4. Filter Out UGC and Syndicated Content Links

Here’s another sneaky trap: UGC (User-Generated Content) and syndicated links.

• UGC links are usually from forums, comments sections, or community posts — places where anyone can drop a link. They’re often tagged with a special “ugc” attribute that tells Google, “Hey, a random user posted this, not us.” These links pass very little SEO value.
• Syndicated links happen when your content gets republished across multiple sites. Sounds cool at first, but most syndicated content carries duplicate content issues and often uses nofollow or canonical tags that point back to the original — meaning very little link equity is passed.

Bottom line:
Focus on editorial links — the ones where someone actually chooses to link to your content because it’s awesome, not just because it got reposted somewhere or stuck in a forum thread.

The Quality of Backlinks Matters More Than Quantity

Let’s say you get 1,000 backlinks overnight — great, right? Not so fast.

If all those links come from spammy, unrelated sites (like a blog about pet iguanas linking to your Elden Ring tips), they won’t help you. Worse, they might even hurt your rankings.

What you want are high-quality, relevant backlinks. These come from websites that:

• Are related to gaming, tech, or digital culture
• Have reasonable monthly organic traffic (shoot for 500+ for smaller sites, or 1000+ for larger ones)
• Are trusted by users (low spam score)
• High DA can be a positive sign, but needs to be taken into consideration with other signs such as organic traffic, instead of being looked at in isolation.

Good vs Bad Backlink Examples:

What About Internal Links?

While backlinks from other sites are crucial, don’t sleep on internal linking — this is when you link between your own pages.

If you’ve written a post on “Top 10 Mods for Starbound,” and another on “How to Install Mods in Starbound,” you should absolutely link them together.

Not only does this help readers, but it also gives Google context and helps distribute link equity across your site. Internal linking is a key component of building topical authority and helping search engines figure out how all your content pieces relate to each other, forming a clearer picture of your topic coverage.

Anchor Text: Another Key Element

The anchor text — the actual clickable text in a backlink — plays a role too.

For example:

• “click here” = bad (no context)
• “our detailed Witcher 3 graphics guide” = good (keyword-rich and relevant)

When building backlinks, try to get descriptive, natural-looking anchor text. But don’t go overboard and keyword-stuff everything — Google’s smarter than that.

How to Build Backlinks for Your Gaming Site

Backlink building can be time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to feel like a grind. Here are some strategies that actually work. For more details on how to execute each of these strategies, check out our guide on how to get backlinks for gaming websites, but here we will provide a quick overview.

1. Guest Posts on Niche Blogs

Reach out to smaller gaming blogs or indie dev sites and offer to write a guest post. Something like:

“Hey! I love your content on pixel-art games. I’d be thrilled to write a guest post on ‘5 Overlooked Indie Pixel-Art RPGs’ — would that be of interest?”

Be polite, helpful, and personalize each pitch. It takes time, but even a handful of solid backlinks can move the needle.

Looking for gaming sites that accept guest post submissions? Look no further, as we have prepared a list of over 220 gaming sites that accept guest post submissions just to help you out!

2. Get Listed on Resource Pages

Look for pages like “Top Gaming Blogs” or “Best Sites for Game Guides” and ask to be included. Make sure your site has useful content and isn’t just a placeholder.

3. Build Shareable Content

If you create a massive guide, a data-driven piece, or something fun like a quiz or interactive map, people will naturally want to link to it.

Ideas:

• Interactive map of Elden Ring dungeons
• Quiz: Which survival game matches your personality?
• Data report: Steam Game Launch Trends in 2025

4. Use Reddit and Forums (Sparingly)

Be careful here. Spamming links = instant ban. But if you genuinely help in places like r/gaming, r/gamedev, or niche subreddits, you can sometimes drop a link naturally.

Example:

“Someone asked for RimWorld mod recommendations? I actually wrote a guide on this last week — hope it helps! [link]”

5. Broken Link Building

This is a clever one. Use a tool to find broken links on gaming blogs and sites. Then email the webmaster and suggest your own content as a replacement.

“Hey, I noticed your ‘Top Co-Op Games’ page has a broken link to a Destiny 2 guide. I have a detailed Destiny 2 co-op guide — happy to share it if you’d like a replacement!”

Tools That Help You Track Backlinks

To check your own backlinks and see how many you’re gaining, try these tools:

• Ahrefs – powerful but pricey
• Ubersuggest – beginner-friendly
• SEMrush – great all-in-one tool
• Moz Link Explorer – decent free tier

Track how many domains are linking to you, which pages they’re linking to, and whether the backlinks are do-follow or no-follow.

How Many Backlinks Do You Actually Need?

Alright, let’s get practical. Let’s say your goal is to rank for:

• “Best co-op survival games 2025”

You check out the top 5 results and find the average page has:

• 40 backlinks from 25 domains
• BUT upon closer analysis you realise that actually 10 links from 10 referring domains are actually of high – quality

In this case, your target might be:

• 15 – 20 backlinks from at least 15 – 20 domains
• Combine this with other methods of building domain and topical authority

If your target is more competitive like:

• “Best games of all time”

You might need:

• 500+ backlinks from 200+ domains — and even that’s just a starting point.

But again — focus on quality first. Ten backlinks from solid, relevant sources can often beat 100 low-quality ones.

Final Thoughts: Play the Long Game

Building backlinks isn’t a one-and-done task. It’s a bit like leveling up in an RPG — you slowly get stronger, gain experience, and unlock new areas (of SEO, that is).

So don’t stress about hitting 500 backlinks overnight. Start by creating good content, reaching out to others in your niche, and consistently putting in the work.

With time, your gaming website can climb the ranks — and who knows, maybe one day you’ll be that top result others are trying to outrank!