bout that life
Newbie
- Dec 14, 2014
- 32
- 2
Great guide, I'll definitely use some of these tips for my new website.
The Ultimate Guide To Ranking A Website Without Building Backlinks
- Thread starter Zwielicht
- Start date
lion1978
Junior Member
- Apr 22, 2014
- 196
- 47
OP not sure on how exactly you determine keyword competition level, I understand it as you are using the competition level showed by adwords planner, but that competiton level is only for adwords bidding and not serp.
I am only pointing this out since I have heard alot of selfproclaimed "seo gurus" make that exact mistake, funny thing is G's adwords planner even tells you this and with just a little research you'd easily find out that kw planner and serp competition does in no way relate
I am only pointing this out since I have heard alot of selfproclaimed "seo gurus" make that exact mistake, funny thing is G's adwords planner even tells you this and with just a little research you'd easily find out that kw planner and serp competition does in no way relate
Zwielicht
Elite Member
- Aug 31, 2013
- 21,128
- 40,576
I mentioned how I determine keyword competition level in Part 2 of this guide and I also answered a similar question on page 2 of this thread where I clearly stated that, "The keyword competition in the Google Keyword Planner (which is for PPC advertisers on Adwords and publishers on Adsense) is not the same as the keyword competition in the SERPs (this is SEO competition or "ranking competition").", and then I subsequently provided a link where Google also defined the competition level in Adwords to show that it has no bearing on the competition level in the SERPs. I highlighted both of my quotes in lime green to make them a little easier for you to notice this time.
Part 2: Choosing A Keyword Using The Google Keyword Planner
The first step to choosing a keyword is to open the Google Keyword Planner and enter any keyword related to your article (or any keyword you think would be a good match based on what your competitors are using). We're going to be looking for low competition keywords that receive a decent number of searches per month for their competition level. To help you understand this, I'm going to be using a fictitious puppy training website that needs new keywords. Now, what I prefer to do to find low competition keywords by sorting the results by "average monthly searches" and then go through the pages until I find the keywords that receive under 1,000 searches per month.
For the sake of this post, I'm going to select a variation of the keyword "crate training a dog" in the image below called "how to crate train a puppy fast".
Now, when deciding on which keyword is the best option, I initially look at 4 things to help me quickly sort through keywords (because you'll be sorting through a lot of keywords): The Moz Toolbar, the number of authority sites appearing in the SERPs, how many times the exact keyword appears in the SERPs, and my own intuition.The Moz Toolbar is useful for quickly glancing over pages and determining how many authority sites with Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) over 70 appear in the SERPs (as shown in the image above). As for the part about using my intuition, even if the websites in the SERPs have low a DA and PA and the exact keyword doesn't show up much, if I think I can't compete with the sites, I usually avoid the keyword or use it as a Latent semantic indexing (LSI) keyword instead.
(Notice how those relatively unknown sites do not target the exact keyword anywhere. That's a good sign!)
It's fine that you pointed out what you thought was a mistake (and honestly, we need more people pointing out the shady characters on this forum), just please try to read the entire thread next time if the answer doesn't seem conspicuous to you in the initial post.
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KunkkaSword
Newbie
- Apr 10, 2013
- 41
- 10
Really great read for on-site optimization.
john franky
Senior Member
- Aug 27, 2012
- 1,118
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Ok its a great post to get information.
Beautiful tips.
Beautiful tips.
Zwielicht
Elite Member
- Aug 31, 2013
- 21,128
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Hey, jhakasseo!
I've actually answered this question on this thread a few times before, so I'm just going to post the quotes below (although, your question just gave me an idea for another thread to help out BHW members).
Hello everyone!
Something I'm seeing a lot of confusion about is how this method can even work without you building backlinks. A few people (definitely not most of you) are coming here after reading Tommy's "Stop Believing These 10 SEO Lies Right Now! The Truth Will Set You Free..." thread believing that the purpose of this guide (ranking without building backlinks yourself) contradicts Tommy's thread, but I'm here to tell you that it doesn't contradict his thread and that there is always more than one way to reach the goal.
You see, the way this method works is simple: you create your content, do on-page optimisation using low competition (often also low-search) keywords, and wait for your page to receive its initial rank (notice how I said "initial". I'll get to that in a moment). But one thing I didn't mention in the original post is the other purpose of this guide, which is something I vaguely mentioned in another post I created on this thread.
You guessed it, the other purpose of this guide is to get backlinks without building them yourself, or as Tommy mentions in his thread, "content is a means to get links". This method relies on finding low-competition, low-search (under 1,000/month) keywords at the start to get a decent initial ranking, and then waiting for people who like the content to link back to it ("natural backlinks"), that way you can rank even higher for your primary keyword and for the variations (LSI keywords) of that keyword. This way, you aren't actually building the backlinks yourself and you can focus more on putting out high quality content (which is why this guide is great for someone who doesn't like actively building backlinks).
With everything considered, if you haven't tried ranking using this method or you couldn't figure out what I explained above about how you could procure backlinks with it, then I don't want to hear you criticise this method by saying "you can't rank without building backlinks"; to each his own.
I hope this cleared up any confusion that any of you may have had about this thread.
I would say that some of the best rankings I've achieved using this system were for an article that I wrote for one of my sites at the beginning of the year. I'm not going to post the keywords or too much information about the keywords that the article is ranking for, but the keyword group (primary and LSI) receives about 9,000 searches per month (not a whole lot, but this is only for 1 article on a small site). In case you're curious, here are some of the current rankings for the LSI keywords:
The primary keyword is ranking in position 2-3 on average. Of course, these current rankings have been boosted a bit by people who have naturally linked to the article, but I was still ranking on the first page for this keyword group before. This whole system is basically just pure on-page SEO with good keyword research added in, so it's nothing spectacular and can be complimented with excellent off-page SEO (I don't have a guide for that yet) if you're dubious about doing this guide without it.
Now, if you want to go by best rankings and disregard the number of searches per month, then these are the best rankings I've achieved using this method (these keywords receive between 70-700 searches per month):
Good article. I have a few sites that make a decent amount without backlinks but I generally target products that are new to the market but that still get searches (so very low competition). Most affiliates won't touch them because they don't see searches when they use keyword tools. Once the products get really popular though I do have to build backlinks eventually because other affiliates jump on board once the searches start registering on keyword planner etc.
keystoskies
Newbie
- Oct 22, 2015
- 3
- 0
Quite good, what about using keyword difficulty tools? Are they any good?
BulletServers
Junior Member
- Aug 28, 2015
- 140
- 21
it was a nice read, thanks for the great post and tutorial.
GreyWolf
Elite Member
- Aug 17, 2009
- 1,862
- 5,847
Nice solid guide Zwielicht. Covers a lot of the same things as in my guide a few years ago on basic seo, but emphasizing on-page optimization exclusively. I think that any readers of this thread saying they are skeptical about how well this can work have been missing the point. This method is as whitehat as you can get.
It's not going to work for blackhat churn and burn websites or pumping out spammy 4-page micro sites, but for a long term project this method is exactly what google and all the other search engines want webmasters to do. Pick some good keywords, incorporate them into good informative articles and posts, create well structured internal links, relevant outbound links and then let the content encourage natural backlinks over time. It's mostly suited for topics with low traffic search terms, but if you build a lot of pages targeting many of those keywords then cumulatively the site can show significant appearances in the serps resulting in a lot of SE traffic. Additionally there will be a lot of traffic directly from the natural backlinks because of the type of places they will tend to be placed.
The cool thing about using this method if you have a long term project is that since your following all the search engines recommended practices, the website shouldn't suffer from any algorithm updates.
It's not going to work for blackhat churn and burn websites or pumping out spammy 4-page micro sites, but for a long term project this method is exactly what google and all the other search engines want webmasters to do. Pick some good keywords, incorporate them into good informative articles and posts, create well structured internal links, relevant outbound links and then let the content encourage natural backlinks over time. It's mostly suited for topics with low traffic search terms, but if you build a lot of pages targeting many of those keywords then cumulatively the site can show significant appearances in the serps resulting in a lot of SE traffic. Additionally there will be a lot of traffic directly from the natural backlinks because of the type of places they will tend to be placed.
The cool thing about using this method if you have a long term project is that since your following all the search engines recommended practices, the website shouldn't suffer from any algorithm updates.