[Noob] Question about backlinks

Hello all.
After cashing in Facebook I decided to go more whitehat and do some blogging. I love time-consuming things, so I decided to make a blog about one of my interests. After some keyword searches I found 2 lines : "3 keywords" and "3 keywords". Both in the same niche, different keywords. One has a Monthly Search of almost 7k, one has a MS of 15K. First one has a pay-out of 30 cents, other one has a payout of 1.0 (in euros).
So 2 pretty decent keywords. Competition? Almost none.
But here is where my question comes in:
The first ranked in 1 has close to 10 backlinks to the article. It is a decent site with about 400 backlinks in total to the http://url.com/

Should I look to the 10 backlinks, or to the 400, to rank first on this niche?
I'm sorry to ask this and feel kinda noob, but I don't know the answer.

Would appreciate if someone could help me, or give me a guide to read all about backlinks.

Thanks in advance!

Dropdown.

Well, the first site which has 10 links must be an authority one, and the second one probably couldn't beat the first that's why the linkbuilding has stopped.

I suggest go for it and not look at their backlinks. Do your own linkbuilding.

Damsa said:

Well, the first site which has 10 links must be an authority one, and the second one probably couldn't beat the first that's why the linkbuilding has stopped.

I suggest go for it and not look at their backlinks. Do your own linkbuilding.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Doesn't really answer my question though.

I was wondering when looking at backlinks:
Do I look how many backlinks the article on the site has for that keyword.
Or do I look how many backlinks in total the whole site has.

Which of the 2 is it?

Example: Article has 15 backlinks.
Total backlinks of the website is 3000 backlinks.

Do I have to get 15+ backlinks to beat it, or 3000+ backlinks?

Thanks