Rank with no backlinks?

Hi miriahm,
Been frequenting this forum for a while and picked up a lot of seo nuggets here. My site ranks on pg 3 on google after a posting this morning. Only did on page seo for the keywords, no backlinking. Don't know how long i'll stay in that ranking though.

I'm just documenting my steps so I can replicate them for other posts/pages.

mariahm,

yes. You can do it. it depends on some factors such as competition for the keyword. longer tail keywords sometimes are easy to rank on the first page if you do proper on page SEO. one of my websites ranks between number 9 and 11 without any backlinking. but the keyword sucks, it wasn't even a keyword I am targetting, it just happened to start ranking for it.

Another example is if you submit to article databases. Some people get articles to rank on the first page with solely doing a good job including the keyword in the body of the article. I ranked something on the first page like that (position 9) as soon as I published the article. but it was a long long tail keyword. Now I'm backlinking to it to hopefully move it up.

So there you go, it can be done. its easier to do with longer keyword phrases and article databases that google likes.

Hi Mariah,

You can easily do that with low competition keywords, these are long tail keywords. And Your domain to host the article must be strong enough to make it rank on page 1, even without backlinks!

However, backlinks is the most important key element to rank for any keywords, that's why you need backlinks for your website.

You can even do it for semi competetive keywords if you have the exact keyword as your domain.

try making a domain like www.aldk;sfj;askdfjlsa;dfjl;askdfj.com and doing a search on it. You'll be #1 baby.

your articles (hosted on ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com) can rank on the 1st page for a long tail keyword with low competition.

but its always better to have backlinks.

and as turbohips (the post above mine) said, its practically impossible not to rank for something no one is searching for (assuming you put the effort into it).

so basically, do your keyword research properly. and get backlinks. why would you not what to do that in the first place? it helps to ensure your website stays up!

You can rank very well even the site doesn't have backlinks at all, but you need to pick the least competition keyword. But you'll soon be outranked when there is competition does better than you. Also, your content must be useful and help people, then the chance Google rank you well is high.

Sometimes it happens but those are because of domain name you have. But will some amount of social bookmarking only at small intervals i have got many sites on page 1.

When I was developing my recent software product I came up with a new name AdsReact and registered the domain name adsreact.com. As soon as I started developing the website, well before any promotion started, the site ranked number 1 in Google without any backlinks, simply because there was no competition at all for the exact term. There was competition in the form of the two word phrase 'ads react' but it was not strong.

As soon as I started promoting the name it gained quite a few backlinks "automatically", i.e., links by others beyond my control. However, the website could not possibly rank highly for terms that people unfamiliar with the product are likely to search for unless there are relevant backlinks to the website.

Yes, it is possible. However, it depends on the competition. If your competitors have optimized their sites and have done extensive link building on the same keywords you intend to target then it will be difficult. If there is no competition, then yes you can.

Ofcourse possible if your search query is same as your URL.

Sorry guys, I don't agree. If you want to rank for keywords that you will be able to monetize with you will definitely need backlinks.

The site in my sig is number one on Google, Bing and Yahoo and has been for a long time. FlashVideoRecorder.com is ranked number one on the first page for "flash video recorder' and 'flash recorder'. (plus a few others) This is only possible with backlinks.

Okie dokie...

I want examples. I want to see these sites with zero backlinks that are ranking on page #1

My guess is any site that has accomplished this is some vague, no competition and not worth any money keyword.

Because I think a lot of the comments being made are based on hypothesis, ignorance and 'this one time back at band camp...' stories.

I wanna see some proof.

As said earlier, depends on what keywords you are going to target. Ranking no. 1 for a keyword: "This is my bloody long tail keyword" with a domain like: thisismybloodylongtailkeyword.com is easy. I hope you get the idea.

Quality on page optimization for long tail keywords are ranked soon. i have a songs website and it is on 1st page for long tail keywords with 0 backlink

My site ranked on first. Only have 15 backlinks according to site explorer. The site has no PR or anything. It rank on a product name keyword with 54 million competition without quote and 155k competition with quote. Good luck!

I've experienced that with some of my sites already. I created no back-links whatsoever and it ranked well for certain keywords

it is not possible to rank high without backlink

That's what I'm asking

Sure, you can rank for random obscure keywords and long-tail keywords.

You can even build a blog that draws traffic based on long-tail searches alone with few or no backlinks.

but once you step-up to the world of competitive keywords I don't believe that any site is going to rank very well based on content and domain name alone.

I would really like to see an example of a site that is ranking well for even a low competition keyword with no backlinks.

I have a few subpages on the number 1 spot on google with no backlinks. Competition is around 3.5 million but I assume its because there is not a lot of people targeting that KW.

Hi Miriahm

I have had my site on Google #1 in 4th position with keywod Affiliate Marketing For All. It had over 89 million pages and I got that place for about 3 months. I did not made so much link exchange, maybe only 10-20. I was only focusing on content writing. So I think content is most big thing that will effect on Google ranking.

I'm guessing this is no longer the case since every site in the top 10 have 1k+ backlinks with the average being 10k+ backlinks.

I don't buy this argument.

On-page SEO is king.

Content is an abstract thing to a google bot. Using the correct SEO on-page elements are what matters.

It depends on how competitive your keywords are. If you have less competitors, then you'll have higher chance to get into top rankings.

Yeah, you can possibly get no. 1 ranking without backlinks. It depends on the level of competition and how you will do with on page optimization.

My experience has been that it is impossible to get first page ranking without quality backlinks...

So much discussion over quality vs quantity....

I say both are good... the quality ones are hard to come by... so get the quantity to offset...

My 2 cents

if there is less competition on your targeted keyword then you can get better rankings without rankings with efficient on page optimization. if your targeted keywords are long tail then it is much more easier.

Yes, with an well writen article on homepage, on-page SEO,keyword in domain and between 10k-200k exact searches....but of course with very low competition...

A lot of things come into factor. How competitive the keyword you are trying to rank for is. How well your competitors do SEO for the keyword... etc. I've seen it done. But not often and the keyword wasn't very competitive.

I have found many for different keywords.Google always like content and relevancy.So If your site is relevant to an users putted search term the Google will show it even you dont have backlinks but have some good and useful content related to the search query.

I think this is a bit of a trap. People are focusing on rank because they really just want traffic. And traffic = money. I did an article on this topic:

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Do you agree with the following statement?

“If I want to make money, I need to rank #1 for my keywords.”

It seems pretty obvious and completely correct, right? Once you get a keyword to #1 in the search results, you’ll get approximately 40% of the search visitors clicking on your link. Rank = traffic.

Of course you believe this. All search engine optimization focuses on this statement like a laser beam. It’s why there’s search engine spam, massive linkbuilding campaigns, and all kinds of attempts to manipulate and reverse engineer the search results.

Let me give you a new statement, see if you like this one better.

“If I want to make money, I need lots of search engine traffic.”

Disconnect the idea from your mind that high search engine traffic requires high rankings. Don’t you agree that you could get thousands of search visitors across hundreds of search terms and not have a single keyword ranking #1? In fact, wouldn’t you prefer to have this torrent of longtail search traffic, than the traffic from a few premier head terms?

Chasing Rankings is Like Buying Lottery Tickets

The traditional approach to keyword selection is to use some kind of algorithm to figure out which keyword is better. Write an article to target that keyword, and then backlink it until you get to number 1. It might take 100 links, or 1000 links.

This method depends entirely on the keyword itself. If your methodology chooses a “good” keyword, then the time spend backlinking will reinforce that selection and drive you to the top of the search results; although, I’ll argue, only temporarily, and using methods that the search engines frown on. But if you choose the wrong keyword, you’ll spend all that time reinforcing a bad keyword, hundreds of hours wasted, and you never get to #1, or if you get to #1, the traffic doesn’t turn out to be as great as you were hoping.

If that’s what you do, you’re gambling, you just don’t realize it. Only lottery winners think tickets are a good investment.

Building Content is Like Investing in an Index Fund

Instead of trying to rank #1, just create great content on your own website; the kind of content your audience is looking for. Instead of writing 1 article, and then writing 99 more articles to get backlinks, just write 100 articles of great content for your own website. You might not get any to rank #1 for any specific keyword, but that doesn’t matter.

As long as this content is bringing in more search engine traffic, it’s a good thing. Each article you write, every content need you fulfill, every question you answer, brings you more search visitors. After a while, you’ll know with mathematical certainty how much search engine traffic you’re going to bring in for every article you write, and how much you’re going to earn from it.

It’s like investing in a secure, diversified stock market index fund. As you continue to create great content, you’ll see total search traffic (and income) go up and up and up.

It depends on how competitive the term, if it has no backlinks and the term is competitive, chances it would be demoted to the nether regions sometime soon

Yes I have seen websites for local keywords with almost zero competition to rank even in first place of Google with on-page SEO only. Also I have seen websites rank well with lots of useful contents, regular posting and great internal linking structure, but at the end of the day I have never seen an authority website without a backlink. I read in another tread that one of successful folks said he never built a backlink but got 500,000 organic backlinks for his authority website. So far so good. BUT it took him 10 years and 15,000 original articles. I also don't believe that strategy works anymore. It was the times that today's super competitive keywords were not that competitive. We are not in those days anymore and if you are thinking of highly competitive keywords, first off forget about everything you hear publicly from Google in-terms of getting organic backlinks. THEY NEVER WORK. If you are thinking of ranking up inside YouTube with YouTube videos or have your Facebook Page found, then a whole different story.