SEO - can fresh original content help ranking without link building?

[BeyondElement]

hey everyone

so one of the key elements of SEO is fresh original content. But I wanted to find out in general cases, if you only do that, can you still move up in the rankings?

then there's link building. Unless it's other people who visit your site and link to you, isn't link building yourself considered unnatural SEO? I mean, you're going around adding links to yourself. Surely the search engines wouldn't encourage that if they found out.

thanks!

[mani15623]

yup building own content is not enough you need to do some basic SEO things like link building and promoting in the social networking sites for better ranking in search engines.

[Louie Sioco]

It depends if you've already built a lot of loyal readers. If it's only new, you need some serious link building to rank high in the SERPs

[nik0]

Yes original fresh content can help your rankings without building links.

I have a big housebrokers site in my country that will list all citys. Each page was identical, only the meta descriptions, titles and some other onpage seo factors were unique but the txt was everywhere the same.

So 2 weeks ago I started to work on it, 600 pages to do. I finished 2 pages so far and both are ranking at page 1 now. 0 links build.

Have to say these are very easy keywords though and the domainname is pretty awesome, as in housebroker.xx/city so its fairly easy to rank for words like "housebroker city" as it makes almost an emd that way. Must add that the 2 citys I started on (since alphabetic order) are pretty small. So don't expect to move walls with only unique content.

[BeyondElement]

It's an established site with solid traffic. I'm trying to improve rankings for pages each with a individual set of keywords and wanted to try just improving the content.

[nik0]

Just adding some content to existing pages won't help you much I'm afraid, you really got to have it from your url's and titles. If thats your strategy fine, but create new pages instead.

Unless it's a thin affiliate site with tons of bad spun content (like my other site based on FSB) then it will help yes.

[BeyondElement]

@nik0
I have a similar site based on lesser known celebrities so my structure is similar.
ie.
domain.com/celebrity-name1
domain.com/celebrity-name2
etc.

So some pages are have page 1 rankings while others anywhere else. My aim obviously is to get to page 1 for all of them and and to top position if possible. I also have the basic seo techniques in place like you (title, meta, h1 etc) but what did you mean by "but the txt was everywhere the same"?

Obviously celebrity content is everywhere so I would focus on writing the content myself in the most original way possible. No spinning or copy/paste from other sites etc.

What strategies would people employ to link build all these pages in the most natural way possible?

[TBInternetMarketing]

My experience is no this is not enough. I think you will always need backlinks.

To be honest, I actually go against the grain and don't really add much new content to my sites.
For example, I have an Amazon site which I setup over a year ago with about 7 product reviews. I haven't touched the site for a year, and it is sitting in the #3 spot on Google page one. I've build some good backlinks to it obviously, but as far as content goes, I haven't touched this.

[paulgl]

Here's the real story. It depends. It depends on the authority of
your site overall. If your site has boatloads of current content, and
you keep adding, most likely the new stuff will rank with little to
no effort. It's what keeps amazon, ebay, craigslist, wikipedia, etc.
at the top of the charts for a lot of searches.

Same way with sites like the NYT. It's a news site. It publishes a fresh story.
No need for any such backlinking or SEO nonsense. It will make
the first page. Ditto with similar.

If people knew this, they would fight for authority. Been preaching that
for years.

LOL! I forgot to mention WF! Many, many threads here rank in a couple
of minutes. For pretty good terms as I've seen, too!

Oh of course I did forget one little 'ol element. Internal linking in
authority sites is golden. Same with yours if it's done right. So
saying no backlinks isn't quite right.

Paul

[gearmonkey]

Post high quality (and helpful) content and people will link to it. so in essence, yes good content can help link building.

[thebitbotdotcom]

Interestingly, fresh and original content can rank all its own given the right conditions.

I run article directories off and on for testing purposes, and let me tell you, they are very telling in terms of SEO and SERP rankings.

For example, someone once submitted an article on dild* reviews and which was the best one that stayed in while you were walk***.

That article literally launched to the top of search results where, if I remember correctly, I ranked # 1 with about 100,000,000 competing results with absolutely no backlinks...go figure.

Interesting Sidenote: Adsense refused to show ads on that particular page...LOL!

[BeyondElement]

thanks all for your different perspectives.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

Interesting Sidenote: Adsense refused to show ads on that particular page...LOL!

Why is that a surprise? It's not family-friendly content.

Paul

[danlew]

Of course! As long you high quality and original content (with proper on-page SEO), it will help your site get ranked well in Google without link building.

[prcys]

Originally Posted by BeyondElement

hey everyone

so one of the key elements of SEO is fresh original content. But I wanted to find out in general cases, if you only do that, can you still move up in the rankings?

then there's link building. Unless it's other people who visit your site and link to you, isn't link building yourself considered unnatural SEO? I mean, you're going around adding links to yourself. Surely the search engines wouldn't encourage that if they found out.

thanks!

As though you have the quality content but not be found by anyone then what is the meaning of having those content. And in ranking with the unique content, inbound & outbound links also matters. So as per me you should get the links for that content and then you can get more better results for your site with the content and backlinks.

[nik0]

Originally Posted by BeyondElement

@nik0
I have a similar site based on lesser known celebrities so my structure is similar.
ie.
domain.com/celebrity-name1
domain.com/celebrity-name2
etc.

So some pages are have page 1 rankings while others anywhere else. My aim obviously is to get to page 1 for all of them and and to top position if possible. I also have the basic seo techniques in place like you (title, meta, h1 etc) but what did you mean by "but the txt was everywhere the same"?

Obviously celebrity content is everywhere so I would focus on writing the content myself in the most original way possible. No spinning or copy/paste from other sites etc.

What strategies would people employ to link build all these pages in the most natural way possible?

With txt I mean that I used placeholders on every page cause I couldn't write 600 pages of content right away. So each page has the exact same content till I have time to fill it in.

As my site is about housebrokers I expect to rank page 1 for all the small city's without building links. However the bigger city's and as in your case the somewhat more known celebrity's pages do need some links to give it the extra weight needed. Internal linking can also do miracles but sometimes you just can't escape it. I would write a couple of BMR posts for each page when it concerns many pages.

Automated software seems hardly to work lately so better spend a bit of time or money on it.

[PromoDirect]

Yes... if you only have content which is unique and of good quality your page will get pagerank. I am very much sure about it because I had a blog for which I didn't created any backlinks but still I got PR4.

Good Luck!

[webdesigndevelopment]

You can't rank with just Good Content. You should have good amount of quality backlink for your page. So go for backlinks also.

[777]

Yes it can help, if done in a structured way. I add five, 500 word blog posts once a week. All fresh original content.

This is in part for my readers, but my main priority is building and then bulking up my internal silo linking strategy. Doing this and building up my authority in the eyes of Google helps improve my serp rankings.

[mosthost]

If you mean does 'fresh content' build around keywords rank without links, the answer is "NO." Too many optimized and linked pages already exist for a new page to debut at one and stay there.

Unless there's something really miraculous about that page

[Bofu2U]

It definitely can, especially if the site is seen as trustworthy in Google's eyes.

[BeyondElement]

What do you guys define as "unique and original content"?

I see blog content definitely falling under it since it's generally personally driven content based on opinion, experience etc.

For my celebrity site, obviously content about those people is everywhere. My aim is to gather the most interesting facts about those celebrities and write them in my own words.

Is that considered "unique and original"?

I'm personally thinking NO, because to me, it's almost like a spun article. ie. the content exists on many sites, but you've just written/"spun" a variation of it.
Obviously content copy/pasted from other sites is not original.

[Ged3]

Yes, if you write it yourself then it is unique and original.

If you write an article that you are enthusiastic about you will often find that is the best way to write it.

You can use some on page SEO such as having the keyword you are competing for in the title and the first sentence of the article, then the last sentence of the article.

As others have mentioned also link your own articles together (on page SEO) as the search engines like this.

Hope this helps
Ged

[BeyondElement]

So the recommendation of keyword density I've read is about 2 - 5%. Are their limits on how many links per keyword you should link to your own pages?

Say "Joe Bloggs" exists 10 times in a 500 word article. Is it okay to link every occurrence to Joe Bloggs' page or just link it a couple of times?

[codecreative]

hmm this is interesting my point is this. What if you place a twitter widget on my homepage, then in theory the homepage content will change as I do twitter updates. Won't that push me higher up the serps as every time google bot re crawls my page content has changed?? (presuming im putting out new tweets)

At least that what I thought?