Do You Need Backlinks for Local SEO? Test It Before You Build Any

Key takeaway: Before spending months on local link building, run a test first: check whether the prerequisite gaps (local pack signals, keyword match, trust signals) are already ruled out, then check your own actual referring domain count using Google Search Console’s free Links report, since most local businesses ranking on page one carry fewer than 150 referring domains. If those numbers already look competitive, backlinks were never the bottleneck, and building more won’t move anything.

You might assume that ranking below a competitor means you need more backlinks, since that’s the explanation most SEO advice reaches for first. That assumption skips a real question: do you actually know your current numbers, and have you ruled out the faster, cheaper explanations first? Building backlinks takes months of consistent effort. Running the test to check whether you need them takes an afternoon.

The Prerequisite Check

Before testing for an authority gap specifically, the faster checks covered earlier in this series, when investigating why a competitor ranks higher, need to already be ruled out. A weak local pack position, a keyword-intent mismatch, or a thin trust-signal gap can all look like an authority problem from a distance while having nothing to do with backlinks at all.

If any of those three haven’t been checked yet, that’s where the investigation belongs first. Authority is the slowest, most expensive layer to fix, and testing for it before ruling out the faster explanations risks solving a problem that was never really there.

The Actual Authority Test

Once the prerequisites are ruled out, the test itself starts with a number most businesses have never actually looked up: their own referring domain count.

Ahrefs’ own data on local link building found that local businesses ranking on page one for competitive local queries rarely carry more than 150 referring domains (Ahrefs: Local Link Building). That’s a meaningfully lower bar than the domain-authority arms race most backlink advice implies, and it means a lot of local businesses assuming they need backlinks may already be closer to competitive than they think.

Checking your own number costs nothing. Google Search Console’s Links report, available for free on any verified property, shows top linking sites and top linked pages directly from Google’s own data (Google Search Console Help: Links Report). It won’t show a competitor’s backlinks, since it only covers sites you’ve verified, but it answers the only question that matters first: what does your own profile actually look like right now.

Comparing Against a Competitor Without a Paid Tool

Search Console answers the question for your own site. For a rough read on a competitor’s profile without paying for a full tool, a handful of free-tier backlink checkers (Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for verified properties, or a free one-off checker for domains you don’t own) give a directional referring-domain count, not a complete picture, but enough to compare against the 150-domain benchmark above.

The comparison that actually matters isn’t your total against theirs. It’s whether either number sits meaningfully below what typically appears on page one for that kind of query. If both sit comfortably above it, authority was likely never the deciding factor between you.

Reclaiming Mentions: The Free Middle Step

Before building anything new, it’s worth checking for backlinks that should already exist. A business mentioned online without a hyperlink, in a local news piece, a directory listing, or a partner’s site, represents a link that costs nothing to ask for and nothing to earn, since the relationship or the mention already exists. This step alone can close part of a genuine gap before any new outreach starts.

How I’d Test This for a Real Client

Take a Dhaka electrician who assumed a competitor’s stronger ranking meant a backlink problem.

The prerequisite check ruled out the faster explanations first: local pack position was close between both businesses, keyword targeting matched, and trust signals were roughly comparable once reviews were checked for specificity rather than just count.

That left authority as the remaining explanation worth testing. Search Console’s Links report showed the client’s own site with a modest but real set of referring domains, comfortably within range of the benchmark above. A free-tier check on the competitor’s domain showed a similar range, not a dramatically larger one.

The conclusion: authority wasn’t the gap. Both businesses sat in a comparable, unremarkable range, well within what typically supports a page-one local ranking. The client’s instinct to start a backlink campaign would have spent months chasing a difference that likely wasn’t deciding the outcome.

Common Mistake: Matching a Competitor’s Backlink Count as the Goal

Treating a competitor’s referring domain count as a target to match assumes the two numbers are directly comparable and that matching them closes the gap. Often, both businesses already sit above whatever threshold local rankings actually require, and the real difference lives somewhere else entirely, the same local pack, keyword-match, or trust-signal factors worth ruling out first.

My Recommendation

Don’t start a backlink campaign because a competitor outranks you. Rule out the local pack, keyword-match, and trust-signal explanations first, since they’re faster and cheaper to check. Then look up your own actual referring domain count using Search Console’s free Links report, and compare it against the roughly 150-domain range that typically supports a page-one local ranking. Reclaim any existing unlinked mentions before building anything new. Only once the numbers themselves show a real gap does an authority-building effort earn the months it takes to run one.

About the author: Arif Rahman is a Dhaka-based freelance SEO strategist working with local and service-based businesses across Bangladesh, Australia, and the UAE. He checks Search Console’s own Links report before recommending a single new backlink to a client.