Full Case Study: Ranking WITHOUT links

I had a weird experience...I took off the tag widget/default WP blogroll... lost rankings and moved down a full page 2 days later... put both back on.. and my rankings came back

mind you I was not doing any backlinks because I wanted to see for my self if it had any affect because both of those are ugly / annoying but now I have them still on my page and couple of my sites still on 1st page
 
Well it sounds really interesting but in reality is it possible..???

Of course it's possible! Blogs rank with well written content all the time. Natural content can get rankings with less links, if it is written correctly.

op did you use EMD's for this test ? were they .com .info's ? the backlinks were social? hi authority? web 2.0s?

I wonder as well how you concluded that the 6th to 9th word were more important? My only guess is that you saw these words rank high as google search keywords right?

The patents on LSI gave me some tips about the 6th to 9th word, when I took all my data, I also checked most natural articles and I found that this spot correlates very well to the articles focus. As for the sites I used, they were not EMD's, most domains had nothing to do with the keyword, they were mostly web 2.0 type names. Scrobilicious, Leapzoop, ect...
 
This looks quite interesting, I will try this out, but to be honest i dont think it will work. Worth a try though :)

If you PM me your site or articles, I'll be glad to critique them and give you some more pointers. I am SURE it works, let me prove it to you! ;)
 
JOf1O


have built maybe 5 links max to main domain which is the number 6. everything else hasn't had backlinks yet. I dance like crazy, I have several keywords not pictured that bounce between page 4 and 8
 
Ranking a site without links won't hold up in the longrun, been there done that~







_____________________________
http://secure.hostgator.com/%7Eaffiliat/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=AceshighNAJ
 
i know without link site ranked fast but content should be unique, Thanks for sharing this information.
 
Thanks for publishing your findings. Really gave us some meaningful insights.
Did you use same keywords across different sites to eliminate competition variable?
 
Ranking a site without links won't hold up in the longrun, been there done that~


The OP is just demonstrating the value of properly written content added in a specific fashion can get you ranked. Obviously without links this won't last long, but his tips will at least get you there. Add some valuable links and *poof* - magic :)
 
Thanks for the interesting case study. I concurr that it is easy to do seo with content alone and have made similar experiences with emd sites. However, they have almost always lost their rankings when I placed affiliate links on them.
 
Top 5 Content Writing Tips:
  1. The more H2 tags the better. 150 words under each H2 tag is the ideal range to achieve best rankings.

I can't imagine how dull your article could be if this 150 word in each H2 tag. The best way to achieve rankings is to make your article viral and easy to read by users and and not search engines. Avoid the GREAT WALL OF TEXT.
 
Thanks for the interesting case study. I concurr that it is easy to do seo with content alone and have made similar experiences with emd sites. However, they have almost always lost their rankings when I placed affiliate links on them.

This is a good point. Most of these content-only sites have very few outbound links, if any. When you rank with content alone, you don't have much authority to hand out... so any outbound links probably hurt your rankings. Thanks for the input.
 
Thanks for the interesting case study. I concurr that it is easy to do seo with content alone and have made similar experiences with emd sites. However, they have almost always lost their rankings when I placed affiliate links on them.
Are your affiliate links D O Follow or NOFollow? Google recommends putting a nofollow tag for affiliate links...(at least Matt Cutts talked about it at the SMX Advanced)
 
Last edited:
finally a post that makes sense and some tips that work. have to try that too. I think we should ask ourselves, how googleul think that and like to find.
 
Another proof that quality > quantity. Great post OP :)
 
You mentioned images but howabout videos? Images & Videos, Just Videos vs Images? Tag? Duplicate content so are those nofollow or what?
 
To add some data to this discussion: I have an EMD sitting for ages at #1 for Google USA with just 17 social bookmarks. All my competitors at first page in the SERPS count their backlinks in the thousands.

Not an easy keyword: in the cell phones niche, adwords competition 87%, cpc $1,5, searches local: 3,600 exact, global: 5,500 exact.

What I find more amusing is that you couldn't find a more spammy MFA in the whole internet. The site consists, merely, of Homepage + Privacy Policy (1,000 words article at homepage). Naturally, I'm not using Adsense at it, as that would put my account in certain risk. It is just a dummy site that, to my surprise, happened to work as a champ.

I have also noticed great improvement at SERPs in another site in the health niche. This one is bigger (25 articles), way better content... yet not EMD. The whole site has got 0 backlinks. Nil. Zero.

After 6 months ranking nowhere, now it has just got to first page for a couple of 3,600 USA exact keywords with good cpc.

All I see in common is that both sites went upwards all of a sudden after maturing for 6 months.

Yeah, I am aware that they can fall down tomorrow as a meteorite too. But, taking into account that I haven't spent a dime in offpage seo, adding content, etc. I think I can wait for Google's gravediggers eating candies and singing Alouette, gentile Alouette.
 
Back
Top