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For most SEOs, this is very obvious, that it is not about the raw number of links you have to your webpages but rather the quality of those links. Google can and likely does ignore the low quality links, so having a billion low quality links is worthless in many cases. But having one high quality link can be huge for a site.
John Mueller of Google said on Twitter that when it comes to links "I would think more about quality rather than quantity." John added that "counting links is somewhat futile in any case." He said something similar about a month ago when he said the total number of links is irrelevant to your rankings.
Back in the old days, it was more of a quantity and quality game. But now, it is more of simply a quality game - period. Well, I wouldn't even call it a "game."
Here are those tweets in context:
I would think more about quality rather than quantity. Counting links is somewhat futile in any case.
— 🌠John 🌠(@JohnMu) March 20, 2021
Here is a similar recent tweet from John on this topic this morning:
On the one hand, Google doesn't count links. On the other hand, making links to your site yourself is against the webmaster guidelines. So overall, just making 5000 links yourself sounds like a bad idea.
— 🌠John 🌠(@JohnMu) March 22, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
