- Can You Rank Your Website Without Backlinks? - October 20, 2024
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Backlinks are one of the most important rankings factors of search engines. If you can have more high-quality websites linking back to your site, you will gain more authority and trust from search engines. As a result, you will end up with better rankings on search engine results as well.
However, search engines are getting smarter and have started focusing on many other factors than backlinks. In fact, content quality and user experience are given more priority than backlinks. This will lead you to the question of whether you really need to create backlinks to secure better rankings? Keep on reading and we will find out more about it.
What Does Google Say About Ranking Without Backlinks?
In one Search Engine Journal article, Google’s John Mueller was quoted in a YouTube video about ranking without links:
“From my point of view, I think you can rank websites without having external links pointing to them.”
Mueller has also elaborated on this elsewhere, essentially saying that for ranking purposes a site needs authority and Google can determine authority in a number of ways outside of backlinks, especially through understanding quality content.
So, Google itself claims that backlinks aren’t an absolute requirement, even if they acknowledge that they do help. Armed with that knowledge from the source, ranking without backlinks starts to sound more plausible.
Should You Try to Rank Without Backlinks?
Just because it may be technically possible to rank a website without external links, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good strategy to pursue. Building quality backlinks at scale is still one of the most powerful moves you can make for increasing ranking potential.
However, for a smaller business just starting out without much of a link-building budget, focusing on creating high quality content that directly answers user intent can be enough to rank for some less competitive queries. As the site grows over time and starts making more money, some of the profit can be reinvested into link building.
Really it comes down to understanding the level of difficulty for ranking target keywords, which can determine if backlinks are mandatory or not.
Tips for Ranking Without Backlinks
If you do want to attempt to rank a website without relying on external backlinks, here are some tips:
- Conduct thorough keyword research, focusing only on low competition long-tail keywords at first. Avoid highly competitive commercial terms.
- Craft highly relevant on-site content optimized around answering search intents, not dropping in keywords. Provide truly useful information.
- Make sure technical SEO elements like site speed, security, proper XML sitemaps etc. are properly implemented.
- Encourage engagement and time on site through compelling writing and design. Lower bounce rates signal quality content.
- Promote new content through social channels (without link sharing) to generate some initial visibility and traction.
- Monitor rankings regularly and expand to more competitive targets once you start seeing positive movement and traction.
- At some point invest in earned links through outreach. This will accelerate growth further once fundamentals are strong.
The Reality of Ranking Without Backlinks
At the end of the day while it may technically be possible to rank a new website without any backlinks at all, actually accomplishing that is extremely difficult outside of ranking for very lightly searched long-tail keywords.
Investing at least some effort into building quality links remains one of the most scalable ways to accelerate the growth of a new website. While certainly deemphasize excessive link building, don’t neglect it entirely either unless you have a content site strong enough to rank for valuable terms on its own merits.
For most sites a balanced approach with at least some link building as a component of overall SEO and content marketing efforts remains advisable. But focusing on providing the best possible user experience both on-site and for searchers needs to be the first priority.
So don’t stress endlessly about links from day one. But also, don’t buy into the idea that you can ignore backlinks entirely and rank a commercially viable site in a competitive space. As with most things in marketing, balance and nuance wins over extreme either/or style approaches.