[case study] - is it possible to rank with only content (no backlinks)

If you are good at keyword research, it is possible.
2 years back, I started out a new website and wrote 10 articles based on very low competition keywords. Within six months the site started bringing 10k UVs/month.
 
If it's a super rare niche that nobody has heard of.....it might work.

Google's job is to show results and if your website is one of the very small amount of results, you have a chance.
 
If you are good at keyword research, it is possible.
2 years back, I started out a new website and wrote 10 articles based on very low competition keywords. Within six months the site started bringing 10k UVs/month.

I done this too. I think it would be harder today though....
 
Personally, it will work.. given that:
a) your topic is not well-saturated
b) your target keywords are super, super easy
c) you do the EAT principle and properly implement that in your website

In many cases, you will rank, at least for top 100, but your idea does not check all those 3 factors I mentioned above, you need backlinks to push them to page 1 or top 3.
 
You are in this game for a while now......you know it's not possible for decent traffic keywords.....why waste your time?
It’s not to say that I won’t build links at some point but I’m in no rush for this one so it’s purely for the purpose of this case study that I will publish the content and not build links just to see what happens.

The additional element here though is that I’m planning on producing a price of content which hopefully adds more value than anything else currently published.

I’ve definitely seen a huge difference in rankings in relation to the amount of effort that I put into content (although normally coupled with backlinks of course) so I just want to see how this pans out.
 
There are some people who did this with great content. Like one guy with blog called mathewhoward. These are exceptions though.
 
I think it works in low competition niches. I'm looking forward for your updates
 
Hey @davids355 , any update on this? It's probably still too early to see rankings, but I want to make sure that you're not forgetting us :)
 
Good luck on your journey. It will definitely work in a low-competition niche. I have a website not in English, but in my native language with almost no quality backlinks (all I've built so far are some foundation links, social media profiles and a few web 2.0s). I put a lot of effort into content quality over all my competitors and the site is still getting decent results
 
Good luck on your journey. It will definitely work in a low-competition niche. I have a website not in English, but in my native language with almost no quality backlinks (all I've built so far are some foundation links, social media profiles and a few web 2.0s). I put a lot of effort into content quality over all my competitors and the site is still getting decent results
those are links, though...
 
those are links, though...
Yes, but based on my experience of building websites, those links may not give any significant impact on ranking improvement. The most important thing is putting quality content in a low-competition niche. I build no links on my inner pages and they are still ranking well

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So I think without backlinks, it will still work if the content is good enough along with good on-page SEO (improve page speed, design, on-page EAT optimization...) and the competition should be LOW
 
So I think without backlinks, it will still work if the content is good enough along with good on-page SEO (improve page speed, design, on-page EAT optimization...) and the competition should be LOW
yeah it will work. But those are links, technically speaking :)

Anyway, I'm waiting for OP's response, no offense!
 
So I think without backlinks, it will still work if the content is good enough along with good on-page SEO (improve page speed, design, on-page EAT optimization...) and the competition should be LOW
Totally agree with this.

Because it mostly depends on the keyword research. If you can find low-competition keywords you can easily rank for them without any backlinks.

Just some internal linking, topical authority, and good website speed you required.
 
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