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

[davids355]

Thanks guys. I am working on this again today. Also, I am not talking about keywords with traffic and no competition. I am talking about keywords with strong competition and also I am talking about targeting keyword clusters rather than individual keywords.

On to the 4th article on my research now (No. 4 ranking site on Google for the main reference keyword).

 

[davids355]

Thats another few hours of research done. Total time spent researching this now is around 8 hours + another 8 hours that I spend previously testing out the software that the content pertains to.
I have read and made notes on all of the top 10 results now and my research notes are around 8000 words (half of this is relevant parts copied and pasted from relevant points in each article and the other half is my own notes - which forms a very rough draft of what will become my article).

Now I have a good idea of what points I need to include (Because Google is ranking those points in the top 10) as well as points that haven't really been covered that well yet (So I can add value with my article).

I also have another 4-5 posts now to read by way of further research on the back of what I read so far from the top ten results.

 

[justinbee]

Such low difficulty but high volume, I'd love to know your secret

No secret at all. I build the site in my native language, not English and that's it! This kind of keywords may not available in top-tier markets like the US or the UK (if available, I think it's almost worthless like the example I given below )

 

[Ezzra]

Thats another few hours of research done. Total time spent researching this now is around 8 hours + another 8 hours that I spend previously testing out the software that the content pertains to.
I have read and made notes on all of the top 10 results now and my research notes are around 8000 words (half of this is relevant parts copied and pasted from relevant points in each article and the other half is my own notes - which forms a very rough draft of what will become my article).

Now I have a good idea of what points I need to include (Because Google is ranking those points in the top 10) as well as points that haven't really been covered that well yet (So I can add value with my article).

I also have another 4-5 posts now to read by way of further research on the back of what I read so far from the top ten results.

any updates?

 

[Patrick111]

Just to chime in. I rank all my sites without backlinks that I make. They get natural links, and that's it.

 

[homeriscool]

Just to chime in. I rank all my sites without backlinks that I make. They get natural links, and that's it.

You must be in really easy niches.....

 

[Patrick111]

You must be in really easy niches.....

Not really. Men's style (suiting, shirting and shoes and then the other niche is everything related to the home, decor, gardening, renovations you name it).
These are not particularly easy niches. But no, they are not 'class action asbestos lawyer' either.

 

[davids355]

any updates?

I am still working on it. Not that its taken me this long to write the content of course but I have been a little side-tracked with other projects. Today I have started to write up the first draft of the article, based on the research notes that I had already put together. I will post another update once everything has been written and published. Then we can see how things go from there.

 

[johntheripper]

Here is my case. a few years ago i built a community website. Fine-tuned it. And wrote very high-quality articles and post as a moderator in the local language.
I never check any keywords, i didn't pay any kind of attention to the SEO. i just wanted my site to have high-quality content.
I wrote extremely high quality, informative articles with decent references etc.

and i totally forgot that website.
Now the website is up. And ranking 1 in many keywords. I'm on top of wikipedia for some generic keywords.
According Semrush score.
Total backlins: 13
Authority score: 11

And here is my positions in some hard generic keywords:

 

[davids355]

I have finially published the article (!). Total word count is 6260. I will have a look at how its doing in two weeks and if there is anything to report, I will do so. Otherwise I will just keep waiting.

 

[tazarbm]

I have finially published the article (!). Total word count is 6260. I will have a look at how its doing in two weeks and if there is anything to report, I will do so. Otherwise I will just keep waiting.

we'll be here, mate! All eager and waiting

 

[BlacklightTwin]

Well, good luck mate

 

[davids355]

Small update: Post is now indexed. This might be the last update to this thread if it doesn't end up ranking for anything. BUT if it does show any signs of life, I will update accordingly.

 

[davids355]

I have finially published the article (!). Total word count is 6260. I will have a look at how its doing in two weeks and if there is anything to report, I will do so. Otherwise I will just keep waiting.

Small update: Post is now indexed. This might be the last update to this thread if it doesn't end up ranking for anything. BUT if it does show any signs of life, I will update accordingly.

In the interests of transparency I am posting this update - 7 weeks after the post was indexed and there are no signs of any searches or traffic coming to the post after checking on both ahrefs and google search console. My thought was that it would rank at least somewhere on content merit alone, but clearly this is not the case and now I feel like I am making a super-obvious statement but backlinks are clearly of primary importance above all else.

 

[tazarbm]

In the interests of transparency I am posting this update - 7 weeks after the post was indexed and there are no signs of any searches or traffic coming to the post after checking on both ahrefs and google search console. My thought was that it would rank at least somewhere on content merit alone, but clearly this is not the case and now I feel like I am making a super-obvious statement but backlinks are clearly of primary importance above all else.

thanks for the update, I kind of waited for it

Will you go straight for strong links, or will you try with internal ones first? (although I don't see much sense in the internal links, but oh well)

And what will your anchor text game be like: aggressive (exact match), or casual (brand + generic)?

 

[davids355]

thanks for the update, I kind of waited for it

Will you go straight for strong links, or will you try with internal ones first? (although I don't see much sense in the internal links, but oh well)

And what will your anchor text game be like: aggressive (exact match), or casual (brand + generic)?

I will go for some strong links to homepage to begin with, brand + generic only. Will avoid exact match for the time being.

 

[tazarbm]

I will go for some strong links to homepage to begin with, brand + generic only. Will avoid exact match for the time being.

is your website ranking for any keywords though? Also, I don't remember (or you might have not mentioned it), but how much content do you have on your site?? Because it might just be that you're not ranking due to thin content, in which case backlinks might still not be needed...

 

[davids355]

is your website ranking for any keywords though? Also, I don't remember (or you might have not mentioned it), but how much content do you have on your site?? Because it might just be that you're not ranking due to thin content, in which case backlinks might still not be needed...

site has 5 pages in total. The Article that I wrote is around 6k words but the content on the rest of the pages is quite thin. Maybe building the rest of the site out would help.

 

[tazarbm]

Maybe building the rest of the site out would help.

that's what I think too...

But either way, I'm looking forward to seeing the results, hopefully you won't forget us

 

[DeadJoe]

site has 5 pages in total. The Article that I wrote is around 6k words but the content on the rest of the pages is quite thin. Maybe building the rest of the site out would help.

@davids355 a huge part of pages getting ranked these days is topical relevancy. I will urge you to post 20 more articles and interlink properly and naturally. As long as your keywords are easy with UGC on the first page, you should start seeing clicks (for the sake of the experiment only). Otherwise, trying to rank without links is obviously not a good strategy. Good content and good links go hand in hand, for people who don't have the budget upfront it is a viable approach, one that requires a lot of patience and perseverance