First of all, the competition you see in google adwords is NOT your real competition. The competition from adwords is how many people pay for google adwords, and you are interested in ranking ORGANICALLY, not for PAID ADS.
So, to see your real competition you use SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Keyword Titan, or any other tool you prefer. Just not google adwords
Secondly, the number of links that a page has is not always a good indicator (or, I should say, the ONLY indicator) of what you need to do to rank in google. The number of links is only one part of the problem. Other parts are equally (if not more) important then the number of links, and those parts are:
- your competitors' domain authority (DR / UR metrics that Ahrefs shows)
- your competitors' site structure and topical relevance (how good to navigate, error-free, fast loading, and user friendly their websites are, as well as how relevant to the main topic of the keywords those sites are)
- the quantity and quality of your competitors' content (the more content your competition has, the better it addresses the keywords it targets, and the more optimized the content is the harder it will be for you to outrank your competition, regardless of how many monthly searches those keywords have)
- the niche you're in: some niches are harder for newbies to rank in than others. For example, niches like finance, medical, web hosting, SEO, investing, travel, recipes, loans, legal, web design, business, health... these niches are very tough to rank in if you don't know what you're doing, which is why I always recommend newbies to stay away from these niches and focus on more newbie-friendly niches like self improvement, pets, technology (although, technology can also be very tough if you don't do your keyword research properly), arts / hobbies / crafts / automotive (to some degree)
- the number of RDs (Referring Domains). The RD is a much, much, MUCH more important metric than backlinks. A website with 50 backlinks, all of them coming from 50 different domains (so, 50 different RDs) will almost always outrank websites with 5000 backlinks, all of them coming from only 5-10 different domains all things being equal. And when you add in the fact that many of those RDs are powerful domains (bloomberg, NY Times, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, JP Morgan, etc... this type of ultra-big and ultra-rich companies) you are going to have a hard time to outrank any of your competitors when they have backlinks from such strong companies
- the intent behind your keywords: in general, keywords with buyer intent (buy whatever, best whatever, top 10 whatever, how to get whatever, where to get whatever, etc.) are more profitable than informational keywords (how to do whatever, why is whatever, what does whatever mean, etc) because people are looking for immediate solutions to their problems, and are willing to pay for those solutions, and the fact that they are eager to pay makes those keywords very sought after, therefore very competitive. It's usually harder to rank for such keywords, and number of backlinks for such keywords is meaningless if those backlinks are web 2.0s (wordpress, weebly, blogger / blogspot, wix, bravesites, jimdo, paste.it, etc), bookmarks, article directories, wikis, whois / stats backlinks, and so on... Basically, weak links that google has devalued. That's why for such competitive keywords (keywords that have buyer intent) it's usually recommended to get lesser backlinks, but backlinks that are stronger (PBNs, guest posts, niche edits, etc)
If the keywords are informational, your competitors don't have high authority domains (domains with UR / DR metrics that are higher than 10-15 for example), their domains are also not topically relevant (they're not focused on one niche only, but on more - totally unrelated niches), and their content is not very good (it's short, unoptimized, doesn't address the topic of the keyword in depth, etc)... if all these conditions are met then informational keywords will always rank higher if you do all these things better than your competitors, and you won't need as powerful backlinks as for your other keywords (the ones with buyer intent).
So, just because your keywords 1, 2, and 3 have more backlinks doesn't mean that they should rank higher. You must check the intent of those keywords, then check your competitors (check their UR / DR metrics, see how their sites look and feel, how easy to navigate they are, how much content they have and how well optimized it is, how many backlinks the pages that outrank you have, but more importantly, what RDs they have, how powerful those RDs are, how many of them there are, etc.)
There is much more analysis you can (and should) do to assess the real competitiveness of a keyword than just simply building 1000 backlinks to it and hoping to rank for keywords like "best american bank" or "cheapest web hosting" or "bahamas travel on a budget", etc. I can guarantee you that you will never, ever, EVER rank for any of these keywords if you don't have a strong site, and a lot of strong backlinks from authority sites in those niches (banking / finances, web hosting / website design, travel)
