Can I rank in Google without backlinks?

[Rodney Olson]

I don't want to build backlinks for my blog site, it consumed me more time for that.

my question is, I can get ranked in google without backlinks or just some?

 

[SEOPub]

Probably not for anything that is worthwhile to rank for.

 

[metafser]

Yes, You can. Write big content (less than 2000 words) & increase your social signal, If you choose a low compitition keyword, i think, you will get rank without backlinks. Besides, your content can rank, if your site DA or PA is good enough.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

God this is horrible advice. I mean seriously terrible SEO advice. I would expect nothing less though from someone promoting EDU/GOV BS in their signature tag.

Content length is not a ranking factor. DA and PA are not ranking factors. Social signals are not a ranking factor.

Without links your pages are not going to rank. It would be like opening a great restaurant and not telling anyone about it. If nobody knows your content exists, it really does not matter.

 

[metafser]

metafser

Maybe you don't have any idea about link earning. I know that, DA & PA is not ranking factor. Can you please tell me when a webmaster can get high DA & PA? I am focusing DA & PA. But actually it mean's authority. YES, Content length & user friendly content is important now ! You will write 500 words content & I will write the same content with 1500-2000 words. Open I challenge I will be getting ranked. I am still working with this method. May main focus is link earning. That's why i always try to write meaningful & user friendly content. I never checked keyword density. I do not believe that method.

If social signal is not ranking factor, maybe all SEO optimizer is a donkey. See this image [URLnf="http://www.searchmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/ranking-factors-uk-overview.jpg"]here[/URLnf]

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Content length is NOT a ranking factor. You do not even have to test anything to prove this. Just look in the SERPs. The SERPs have all of the answers. You will find tons of pages ranking in the top 10 with less than 500 words of content. Hell, I have ranked plenty of pages with 200-250 words.

The length of an article has zero correlation to whether or not it is a useful or engaging webpage. If a topic only needs 300 words to answer a searcher's inquiry, then why in the world would I ramble on for 2000 words?

As for social signals, that is a correlation report, not any actual proof of anything. The only thing people who believe in social signals can point to are these stupid correlation reports. Correlation does not equal causation. What there studies find is that in a lot of SERPs top ranking sites have more social signals. However, they offer zero proof that the social signals got them higher rankings. So which came first, the rankings or the social signals? Probably the rankings. Sites that rank highly are likely getting much more traffic than sites ranking further down, so naturally because they have more traffic they are likely to attract more social signals.

Show me a site ranking based on social signals alone, and I might buy into the whole social signal myth.

Google has stated numerous times that social signals are not a ranking factor.

And even if you do not want to believe a word of that, think about it from a business perspective. Why would Google give any significant relevance in their algorithm to something they could be shut out of at any moment? Remember when Twitter blocked them from crawling? What would happen to the SERPs if that happened again or if Facebook decided to do that (they already have a contentious relationship with one another)? The SERPs could be thrown all out of whack if that happened.

 

[arronmattwills]

arronmattwills

Interesting information.

Google is just a company who consider user's point of view, based on that only they are running algorithms. Personally i feel that we do not pretend to impress search engines. Have to move in our way to make things happen in a right way.

 

[basicblogtalk]

basicblogtalk

Yes, the backlink is really important to rank your article on search engine. However, sometime it isn't really true. I thought.

Google is now a clever search engine. He used many facts to rank an article on the list. Matt Cutt encourage to write more quality article.

It seems nothing related the link building, but why do people need to link to your article. The reason, it is useful information...

Quality article give indirect benefit of SEO..., isn't it..?

Moreover, the backlink for less authority page is worthless. You'll need a link from high authority page.

What was you opinions about what I said...?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Of course Matt Cutts encouraged people to focus on their content. Google does not want anyone building links.

If you want to use a build and pray method to attract links, that is up to you. Here is something so many IM'ers seem to forget. In most niches, 99.99999% of your web visitors do not have a website of their own. They could not build a link to you even if they wanted to. If you think that just by having great content you are magically going to bring in a ton of great links, you are likely going to be waiting for a very, very long time, and you may actually never see any results.

I prefer to be in more control of my business. I'm not going to wait for something to happen. I'm going to make it happen.

 

[Maxwell]

Probably not for anything that is worthwhile to rank for.

Really not understand what you are saying...

Backlinks are very important for guys who doesn't know anything about SEO.

Yes, You can. Write big content (less than 2000 words) & increase your social signal, If you choose a low competition keyword, i think, you will get rank without backlinks. Besides, your content can rank, if your site DA or PA is good enough.

I have to agree with metafser, for me it's enough to rank with big and quality content with social shares.

One of my blog is getting good organic traffic without building backlinks for it.

 

[Jacob_k]

Jacob_k

Many foolish things have been said here... but this one is on the top...

For people who knows nothing about SEO, backlinks are the last thing they should be learning about. You can have 1,000's of backlinks, but if you have poor onsite SEO... then it is a waste... Please guys, do not give crappy advices if you have no idea about the matter!

Response to OP:

You can rank if you have "flawless" onsite SEO - if you really know what you are doing... but the question is... you rank where and for which KW!

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I would actually say the complete opposite is true. Backlinks let you overcome poor onsite SEO pretty easily, especially considering that they are the #1 ranking factor out there.

This has been proven many times. One of the more famous examples was a few years ago when someone ranked a blank page for "Make money online".

I'm not going to say that onsite factors are not important. They are, and they should not be ignored. However, great onsite SEO alone is not going to rank you for anything that is very competitive. And by rank you, I mean put you in a position where you will actually get traffic.

 

[ericplotz1]

ericplotz1

Yup! Exactly. Alot of stupid thing have been said and YOUR COMMENT IS ON TOP!!!!

I've watched you spill your BS for far too long. SEOpub is being light with you like a police officer who just was written up on the department. Well I just got tagged in the ring and I'm sick of this nonsense that spills from your face.

Ive just ranked a site in the 9th position of Google for a low comp keyword that gets 1,000 searches a month with NO on-site SEO. NONE! 0. Zilch! It is an ecommerce site.

I've banned you in the beginning for copying and pasting content, which already says a lot about your knowledge base. Keep up with this nonsense, and I'll be having another talk with WMS about you.

In fact I bet if we remove your signature, you won't have so much to say now anymore will ya?

 

[emilylynch]

Yes, you can rank with out back links but consider whether you are following these things. Make sure you follow all the quality webmaster guidelines proposed by Google. Post regularly in your blog with unique traffic driven content. Check the load time and uniqueness of your website design. Last thing, don't get penalized in any Google's algorithm. Make sure your site is responsive for any type of device as mobilegeddon algorithm is in effect.

 

[Mark007]

I wouldn't agree on writing a content and getting ranked in Google. Off page is definitely required to rank keywords in search engines. There are various techniques and criteria to fulfill to rank your website in search engines. So content alone or link building alone will not help in putting your website in the top results of Google.

 

[ridgley]

Google is really after the quality of website content. However, off page seo is also important in ranking and link building is included in off page seo techniques.

 

[hmmricha]

No you can't rank in Google without backlinks. You may rank for some keywords if you optimize your website (writing meta tags, updating web page content etc.) but only for very low competitive keywords or location based keywords.

How can you think of ranking without having any backlinks? Google doesn't know that your website do exist and you are talking about ranking a website.

 

[sanusense]

sanusense

Stealing some lines from your comment - "You may rank for some keywords if you optimize your website". Enough said! Of course, you may rank for plenty of keywords that hasn't optimized ever with low traffic volume.

 

[Steve Roberts]

Where's the evidence for these assertions are about what works and what doesn't? You can waste a ton of time with bad advice. I suggest you look for empirical data that supports theories (that's all they are - only Google knows for sure) and then make your own judgment. Try searching for things like "Google ranking factors 2015"., Search metrics did a good report late last year with a ton of evidence. And yes, according to them, backlinks are a major factor. But click through and low bounce rate seem to be more important.

 

[nesito29]

Social signals are back-links... No-follow but still back-links. An the way you increase your DA is with Back-links, powerful ones at that.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

DA does not rank webpages, so focusing on increasing that is a waste of time. DA is not a ranking factor. It is a third party metric based on Moz's backlink index, not based on all of the links that Google knows about.

 

[PTTed]

PTTed

For the longest time I questioned whether Domain Authority was truly a ranking factor or not. I realize that Google doesn't use the MOZ domain authority metric, but I do believe they use some algorithm similar to it that is factored into rankings. Here is why:

3 years ago I conducted a series of test. 3 separate tests using 3 separate domains each time. For each test, I published 3 identical orphan pages, one for each website. In other words, I took an article that had never been published online before and I published that article as a static HTML page on each of those 3 sites. The page was an orphan page because it had zero inbound links to it from anywhere (zero links from external sites and zero links from within its own domain). Google did not know it existed. The page was not in any "feed" or "sitemap" or anything. It would not get indexed unless I wanted it to.

I made up a word that didn't exist in the English dictionary. I included that word in the exact same spot on each of those articles.

I then submitted those orphan URL's for those orphan pages to Google to be indexed.

After a week or so I did an exact search for that unique keyword in "quotations" on Google. Those 3 pages in Google ranked in the exact order of highest domain authority to lowest domain authority.

Remember, all on-page SEO factors were identical for these pages and none of these pages had any inbound links at all. The PageRank of each of those pages should have been exactly equal in theory. I tried to completely eliminate any factor that would affect ranking except for domain authority (if such a thing even existed).

I conducted 3 of these tests separately using 9 different domains (3 tests x 3 different domains each time). In every single one of the 3 tests, each of the pages ranked from highest domain authority to lowest domain authority as measured by SEOMoz at that time.

That was proof enough to me that Google definitely does use some kind of "domain authority" metric algorithm in their rankings. And I believe it is a significant ranking factor. Yes it can be easily overpowered by a single powerful link pointing directly at a page, but in the absence of other links, I believe Google's "domain authority" or whatever they call it (if they even have a separate name for it), is a substantial ranking factor (probably on-par with some on-page metrics other than page title). You can see it a lot more in low competition situations.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I understand what you are saying, but I do not think that has a thing to do with what I said. I have no doubt that Google has some sort of authority metric they use in their algorithm. What I said was that Moz's was useless to focus on and does not accurately measure it. It is extremely inaccurate. I have created brand new domains and spammed the crap out of them. Their Moz DA metric shot up to over 50, and has held there for almost 2 years now.

Also, like I said, focusing on improving DA is not a smart move. It's just a number. It is not going to make your site rank better. It is not going to make you more money. It's like focusing on Alexa Ranking or the people that used to obsess over improving their PageRank.

 

[PTTed]

PTTed

I don't think the domain authority number is meant to be accurate for anything. It simply gives you a measuring stick to go by when comparing one domain against other domains. It's a lot like a gas gauge on an older car. It shows you approximately how much gas is in the tank.

Domain authority by itself doesn't mean much. It has to be taken into context for that situation.

I guess I find it more useful than you do because I work more frequently in ranking situations where none of the sites are engaging in spam. If the majority of sites on page 1 aren't spamming, I guess it is more accurate, because in those situations I generally find it to be a very useful tool (when combined with other metrics) for comparing one website to another at a glance. It allows me to get general feel for things in a few seconds without having to do any detailed page/link analysis. That can give me some idea of how much work would be involved to rank for that keyword.

 

[magentostore]

I don't want to build backlinks for my blog site, it consumed me more time for that.

my question is, I can get ranked in google without backlinks or just some?

Yes you can get rank in Search Engine without even backlink.
Just to keep using what a user looking for.

 

[lord]

"Building backlinks for a blog" now, is just a legendary story of ancestors

 

[Knightrider]

Hey! I don't think You can rank without backlinks. If you have a high DA & PA, AND YOU ARE TARGETING low level keywords, You might gain some ranking. Most of the time those ranking stays in the top only for certain period and we loose ranking very soon.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

DA and PA are NOT ranking factors.

 

[jameswilliam723]

You cant get rank with out back links and link authority.
It is possible only if your blog or website name is unique.

 

[ertha]

I've been ranking okay in moderately competitive market (other people would say high if they want to advertise their service ) and my DA and PA showed in Moz SE was 0/0. It's proven for me so i don't really check PA/DA often so i will just stick to the SEOQUAKE + AHREFS combo to check my campaign results.

For the performance i rely purely on the GWT.

 

[sunil0021]

If you don't want to create backlinks yourself hire someone because i think without backlinks it's not easy to rank google. anyway you can try your luck with low competitive keywords.

 

[talukdar]

It is difficult but not impossible. You can get rank through content but you have to write high quality content.

 

[Alex Mercer]

Yes you can but I seriously doubt it's success. It may require more and more and more and more time that you may not see it's success. So, I recommend you not follow this paths.

 

[itrafficsupplier]

hell yeah you can, look at the site in my signature, 'get secure samsung downloads', now look how many links it has got, about 4-6? now go type in google 'secure samsung downloads' and see where it is a few days ago it had no links and what still ranking

 

[EsferaSoft]

Backlink is most important roll play the keyword ranking, without backlink is not possible to achieved the high ranking in SERP. Content Optimization is most important part of SEO but it does, it ignore the link building strategy.