Is ranking a website basic purely on content possible.

MatthewWoodward · Feb 25, 2013

Killix said:
So i was curious if anyone had done a case study on this. No backlinks nothing just content posted to a website on a regular basis?

Thanks.

Hi,

Actually yes my blog is live case study of this right now - http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/experiments/google-webmaster-guidelines-experiment/

I decided to play purely by the webmaster guidelines for a change and in 5 months the blog has earnt $35,000 and secured a range of number 1 rankings including 'buy seo'

The site had no existing authority - in fact even now its still only a PR1.

So I have to disagree with everyone above that says it takes a year, will only get rankings for long tail keywords, the site needs be authorative etc.

I started putting real effort into creating tutorials/content on the 1st Aug 2012.

This is what my traffic from Google looks like across that time up until yesterday-

Google Traffic broken down by month-

Aug 2012: 376
Sep 2012: 944
Oct 2012: 1,681
Nov 2012: 2,319
Dec 2012: 2,710
Jan 2013: 5,961
Feb 2013 (so far): 5,730

So what do you think? Is my zero link building experiment successful?

What is an interesting point I think we need to touch upon during this discussion is how the next 12 months are going to change the search landscape.

I firmly believe the next 12 months we are going to see some of the biggest fundamental shifts to how Google ranks websites we have ever seen.

I think we are going to see less of a dependance on links (which will still play a part) and a bigger weight placed on social signals and authorship.

Just my two cents ^^

Feel free to hammer any questions at me about my case study/experiment here and I'll do my best to answer in extensive detail

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

Thats amazing to hear bro, plus you will be the one laughing here at the next penguin panda update and everyone crashes and you are fine. In fact looking at your site did you do video tutorials as well i remember seeing something on a linkwheel and the logo looked the same so im guessing your the same guy or?

moonlighsunligh · Feb 25, 2013

Killix said:
So i was curious if anyone had done a case study on this. No backlinks nothing just content posted to a website on a regular basis?

Thanks.

It is just matter of quantity of content. Post over 400 reasonably good articles on one site and you will be seen as an authority and rank without much links. Quantity means much more than quality.

MatthewWoodward · Feb 25, 2013

Killix said:
Thats amazing to hear bro, plus you will be the one laughing here at the next penguin panda update and everyone crashes and you are fine. In fact looking at your site did you do video tutorials as well i remember seeing something on a linkwheel and the logo looked the same so im guessing your the same guy or?

I have recently updated my logo (that was a bitch btw) so yeah probably the person your thinking of

I dont see why people are so quick to rush out to build links and ranks their sites before getting the basics right. Link building/SEO is the last piece of the puzzle - the site should already have traffic before starting any SEO campaign.

moonlighsunligh said:
It is just matter of quantity of content. Post over 400 reasonably good articles on one site and you will be seen as an authority and rank without much links. Quantity means much more than quality.

In terms of rankings you are right.

In terms of conversions/bottom line profits, I disagree

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

MatthewWoodward said:
I have recently updated my logo (that was a bitch btw) so yeah probably the person your thinking of

I dont see why people are so quick to rush out to build links and ranks their sites before getting the basics right. Link building/SEO is the last piece of the puzzle - the site should already have traffic before starting any SEO campaign.

In terms of rankings you are right.

In terms of conversions/bottom line profits, I disagree

Totally agree with you on that, no point in linkbuilding to a site that has crappy content and not even the basics started. I posted 100 articles to this site with perfect onsite seo and so on before i did any form of linking.

moonlighsunligh · Feb 25, 2013

MatthewWoodward said:
In terms of rankings you are right.

In terms of conversions/bottom line profits, I disagree

I didn't say anything about profits, however if I had 20 000 visits I would probably earn around $5K. Newbies probably even less. You earned $35K. Is your secret in building a list and promoting affiliate offers using this list.

moonlighsunligh · Feb 25, 2013

Killix said:
Totally agree with you on that, no point in linkbuilding to a site that has crappy content and not even the basics started. I posted 100 articles to this site with perfect onsite seo and so on before i did any form of linking.

By reasonable quality I do not mean auto-spun garbage, but something like a $10 500 word article.

kasheshe · Feb 25, 2013

Yes it is possible to rank a website and earn well from it without building links to it.

But that does not mean that the website you are building has no links to it. Google, unfortunately still relies on links to rank you.

Take this as an example. Your mom gives you the best bagel recipe in the world. You know it is the best bagel the world has ever tasted. So you go and start your bagel shop, but start it right in the middle of the Nevada dessert.

Sure, people will come to the bagel shop even in the middle of the dessert. In fact,they will pay more for the bagel.

There is only one problem though. It's only you and your mom who know about it. You really have to tell people about it.

So since you are not link building, how do they get to know about your website? How are the tour guides (search engines) going to know that you even have that bagel shop?

So yes, you can rank a site with excellent content. But it takes time and most people don't have the luxury of time. You don't have to use link building though. You can tell people about it simply through social signals.

I have seen many a site rank high in search engines very fast simply because everyone was talking about them. Link building was non-existent or very little. However, engaging people online worked very well. Take it like going to networking parties for the bagel shop.

But why may I ask would anyone want to slow down the process of making good money?

So write good content + Be Superb at social networking + build links = and you should do just fine and dandy. Leaving any part off that equation only slows down the speed at which you become financially independent.

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

moonlighsunligh said:
By reasonable quality I do not mean auto-spun garbage, but something like a $10 500 word article.

Yeah ofc i wasn't pointing that comment at you it was more just a broad comment about how people tend to write crappy content and then span it with links hoping to get rank 1. I agree with your comment on needing more quantity but not over quality i sitll think quality plays a really main role. But as you said you dont mean spun content so yeah

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

kasheshe said:
Yes it is possible to rank a website and earn well from it without building links to it.

But that does not mean that the website you are building has no links to it. Google, unfortunately still relies on links to rank you.

Take this as an example. Your mom gives you the best bagel recipe in the world. You know it is the best bagel the world has ever tasted. So you go and start your bagel shop, but start it right in the middle of the Nevada dessert.

Sure, people will come to the bagel shop even in the middle of the dessert. In fact,they will pay more for the bagel.

There is only one problem though. It's only you and your mom who know about it. You really have to tell people about it.

So since you are not link building, how do they get to know about your website? How are the tour guides (search engines) going to know that you even have that bagel shop?

So yes, you can rank a site with excellent content. But it takes time and most people don't have the luxury of time. You don't have to use link building though. You can tell people about it simply through social signals.

I have seen many a site rank high in search engines very fast simply because everyone was talking about them. Link building was non-existent or very little. However, engaging people online worked very well. Take it like going to networking parties for the bagel shop.

But why may I ask would anyone want to slow down the process of making good money?

So write good content + Be Superb at social networking + build links = and you should do just fine and dandy. Leaving any part off that equation only slows down the speed at which you become financially independent.

Very well said.

akbarsheikh · Feb 25, 2013

I started a website last year in June. The niche is too competitive or I should say one of the toughest niches around to make money. Since then till today I have written 1 article each day which is well researched and almost all the articles have infographics attached. Have done no backlinking at all...

As of today I get around 500 unique visitors a day and earn around $20 from adsense only.

My take is, it is very much possible. I don't believe in keyword research! What I do is market research. Get under the bloody skin of your niche and write content which solves people's problems and you will see your website on page one for numerous long tail keywords similar to each other.

There are other ranking factors as well but this is just to share my experience with regards to your question. With no backlinking also you can build authority website. The right example would be Wikipedia. But this is a long term strategy but will never let you down if you have the patience to stick to it

Thanks,
Akbar

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

akbarsheikh said:
I started a website last year in June. The niche is too competitive or I should say one of the toughest niches around to make money. Since then till today I have written 1 article each day which is well researched and almost all the articles have infographics attached. Have done no backlinking at all...

As of today I get around 500 unique visitors a day and earn around $20 from adsense only.

My take is, it is very much possible. I don't believe in keyword research! What I do is market research. Get under the bloody skin of your niche and write content which solves people's problems and you will see your website on page one for numerous long tail keywords similar to each other.

There are other ranking factors as well but this is just to share my experience with regards to your question. With no backlinking also you can build authority website. The right example would be Wikipedia. But this is a long term strategy but will never let you down if you have the patience to stick to it

Thanks,
Akbar

I agree with this but i think that some keyword research is vital for more searches i dont mean it to totally change your articles but if you no the best keywords and put them in just once you will get a large traffic boost.

akbarsheikh · Feb 25, 2013

If you know your niche in an out and the topic well then keywords would flow naturally. Building a large website with content requires much more conviction then dreaming about sipping margaritas by the sea! People just hype too much as far as keyword research goes!

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

akbarsheikh said:
If you know your niche in an out and the topic well then keywords would flow naturally. Building a large website with content requires much more conviction then dreaming about sipping margaritas by the sea! People just hype too much as far as keyword research goes!

Fair point.

cecle · Feb 25, 2013

akbarsheikh said:
If you know your niche in an out and the topic well then keywords would flow naturally. Building a large website with content requires much more conviction then dreaming about sipping margaritas by the sea! People just hype too much as far as keyword research goes!

I agree with Akbar here, most of my traffic comes from keywords that evolved from my content naturally and then ones I tried to target actually didn't work out as well as I hoped!

dennica · Feb 25, 2013

Killix said:
So i was curious if anyone had done a case study on this. No backlinks nothing just content posted to a website on a regular basis?

Thanks.

yes its possible if your working on keywords that have no competition...

moonlighsunligh · Feb 25, 2013

Killix said:
Yeah ofc i wasn't pointing that comment at you it was more just a broad comment about how people tend to write crappy content and then span it with links hoping to get rank 1. I agree with your comment on needing more quantity but not over quality i sitll think quality plays a really main role. But as you said you dont mean spun content so yeah

But google judges quality as a bot not a human. Google cannot distinguish good grammar-error-free from excellent content. IT can find grammar errors topically irrelevant words and phrases but that's all. Then cannot use NLP, some people think Google doesn't even use engrams too much.

I see every day crappy content ranks on top; however these sites probably doesn't last too much but they're on top long enough to be profitable.

KHer0 · Feb 25, 2013

I love this discussion. Great topic with a lot of experiments and opinions here

As for my part: Yes, you can actually Rank with no link-Building by having a site that covers a whole Niche. You would naturally rank for thousands of Long Tail Keywords. And finally you would rank for good keywords

Keyword Research is important as there are many keywords with same meaning. Some have zero competition and Some have Tough Competition. This is why some sites with 100 Articles have all keywords ranking and others suffer to get only half of them rank

@Romeo... Like your strategy and this is the way to go. 700 Pages in 4 Months... Just Amazing

R0meo · Feb 25, 2013

i would not be sure thinking that google is not getting better on valuating content quality - and i am not talking about grammar nor spelling.

their technology are light years ahead

Killix · Feb 25, 2013

KHer0 said:
I love this discussion. Great topic with a lot of experiments and opinions here

As for my part: Yes, you can actually Rank with no link-Building by having a site that covers a whole Niche. You would naturally rank for thousands of Long Tail Keywords. And finally you would rank for good keywords

Keyword Research is important as there are many keywords with same meaning. Some have zero competition and Some have Tough Competition. This is why some sites with 100 Articles have all keywords ranking and others suffer to get only half of them rank

@Romeo... Like your strategy and this is the way to go. 700 Pages in 4 Months... Just Amazing

Totally agree with you there and yeah 700 articles in 4 months is nuts either he is a genius or outsourced the articles either way he is a genius or has a massive wallet! But all props to him for doing it and succeeding.

Is ranking a website basic purely on content possible.

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