In the previous article we discussed how to analyze your competitor's backlink strategy. So now we have a more or less clear understanding of how much time and money we're looking at to catch up with them. But wait, there's more! We can actually improve their strategy, which may even help us to get ahead of them with the same budget, or expect about the same results with a smaller budget, whatever you prefer.

There are already a lot of articles on the web on this topic, but in this article, which is the continuation of my previous one - How many backlinks do I need to rank - I will try to answer exactly this painful question, that your average SEO agency usually fails to answer, leaving you puzzled about what probably bugs you the most: how much money do I need to spend to get there?

How many times have you asked an SEO specialist/agency this question and received the same answer: "It depends"? Well, it does depend, but even if you provide your website's URL, your competitors' URLs and everything else needed for a detailed analysis/audit, you still get some vague answer like "You need more backlinks than your competitors" or "You need more high-quality backlinks". In the next three articles, starting with this one, I will show you my granular case studies and some research, which should help you to get as close to the answer as possible.

I've come across some information on the web, claiming that if your page is not ranking high enough for a certain keyword (but ranking nevertheless, e.g. it appears on the SERP at least somewhere; we're not talking about cases when it's behind the top-100), it can be a sign that Google doesn't consider your content to be good enough, and that rewriting it can help you climb up. I've conducted a case study with one of my pages that was bouncing between positions 20 and 30 for its main keyword. Dig in to see the process and the results!

There is an ongoing debate in the SEO community about the impact of toxic backlinks on a website's ranking. I constantly see it on r/SEO and in the comments of popular SEO blogs. Some people believe that toxic backlinks can harm a website's ranking, while others argue that they have no effect. What I find funny (but not too surprising) is that I have never seen any proof of such claims, for example, a case study. So, I want to share my own experience with some solid data.