New Techniques To Rank Without Backlinks

How To Rank Without Backlinks (11 Most Actionable Techniques)

In this article, you will find out how to rank without Backlinks.

When any external (third party) website posts a link of your website on their site, which is visible to public and gives you traffic (visitors) then such link is called a backlink (in the context of search engine optimization).

While in the past, backlinks were the number one SEO factors, it is no doubt they still boost the rankings of a website super fast.

New blogs rarely receive Backlinks due to less popularity. Even websites that contain quality content rank somewhere on fifth or sixth page of Google. That also means zero traffic (visitors) and low earning.

Nevertheless, having low backlinks does not mean that you cannot rank. There are many other ways that you can exercise to rank without any backlinks.

But first, read a quick tale:

In 2015, I published an article that received a poor Google ranking. I received zero traffic and visitors that I almost gave up blogging.

With fresh mind, I studied On Page SEO and did search experiment. A few months later in 2016, I published another article that followed some rules of On Page SEO. In only one week after publishing, it was displayed on the first page of Google.

The most interesting part was that my blog had zero backlinks.

Today I am going to show you those exact methods that I applied to rank on first page of Google with zero backlinks.

How To Rank Without Backlinks

1. Do Title Research Before Writing Content

In most cases, you don't rank because your post title does not contains those seo optimised keywords.

While I analyzed my old blog post, I discovered many faults but the biggest mistake was SEO unfriendly title.

Therefore I made the headings more clear, meaningful and catchy by doing some research.

Do your title research in the following ways:

* First of all you must know about the highly searched keywords by audience in your niche.

Use Google Keyword Planner to find such words.  

If you don't know how to use, then try alternatives like http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook . I use this free tool to do keyword research.

* Register and search for a keyword on any of the tool mentioned above.

* It will display a list of many keywords along with their monthly searches on various search engines. From the list, find the top 5 searched keywords and note them down. We will try to rank for all these terms combined.

* Search for those 5 keyword on Google. You will find many similar articles.

* Make the list of headings shown on first page including "Related Search Terms".

* From the list, find and eliminate unnecessary keywords like "a", "the", "what", etc. that are unrelated to your topic.

* Select most important keywords from the list and prepare another list. You will get idea about what the audience is looking for.

* Using those keywords, prepare a unique title. Add some exciting words of your own like "Amazing" , "Popular" , "Guide", etc. that are useful to create long tail version of your keyword.

* Try to keep the most important keyword closer to beginning of your title. 

* Do not capitalise unnecessary keywords like "A" , "To", etc.

* Generally a SEO perfect title does not exceeds more than 150 characters long. So check the length of your title.

* Add brackets and numbers to grab attention of your audience. People love to read what is written inside it.

* Your title must denote the purpose of your content. For example, if you are writing article about Top 10 Websites, then it should be clear if you are making list of top domestic or international website, their type (is it fashion blog or news site) and which year. Following is an example how the title should look:

"Top 10 Nepali Websites That Are Popular"

This title makes clear that the blog is about list of top Nepali (domestic) websites and among which of them are popular in the year 2016.

But if you search for that keyword, many similar results are found. As you know that Google only rewards unique and quality article, it will not be enough to rank well.

Therefore make it one in a million from others. It is not necessary that you use brackets every time. You can use modifiers. Let's take example. The above title can be written as:

"Countdown 2016: Top 10 Nepali Websites That Are Popular"
For example, if your website is about super badminton rackets, you can write anything that contains power words and emotional headings.

Be creative with fresh ideas to make picture perfect titles so that search engine should know what your content is about and how it is unique from others.

2. Fix URLs and Permalinks

They have dominant effect on search index. Always use a premium .com or .net domain for your blog as they are easy to remember and rank fast.

I'm not a full time blogger. So .com.np extension is okay for me but for SEO and if you are a pro blogger then it is shame to use a sub-domain like example.blogspot.com or example.wordpress.com, etc. To rank on Google without backlink, you must have good domain ratings.

Similarly, permalinks also have effects on search visibility.

In an interview, Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) said that the first 3 to 5 words on permalink are given more priority. That means fix your Permalinks right now. 

3. Use h1 tag for Titles:

You can add one separate H1 tag for heading on blog posts. They make text look bold and increase their size. Some blogger templates automatically change your titles into header tag but some do not. Better find and fix this by editing HTML of your template or manually add H1 tag on posts. The general format of h1 tag is:

<h1>Write your heading here</h1>

However use of more than one header tag on a single post is unfriendly for SEO. You can only use it once.To make text look bigger and attractive,  you can use font attributes instead.

4. Add Banner After Header Tag:

Once you add one h1 tag, insert a beautiful image that clearly describes the purpose of your article.

Here is an example how you should add an image on blog posts using HTML:


<Img src="URL Of Image" alt="describe your image here in 3 words" height="#px" width="#px">

Do not miss the alt tag. An alt tag is alternative text that describes what the image is about to search engines. So be tricky about it.

5. Accumulate Data

The key to SEO is making your site more authoritative. Data with proofs make posts authoritative and valuable. Collect real information from multiple valuable resources like Forbes, Wikipedia before writing content of your article. You can add statistics, numbers, date, name of publisher, etc. Also you can perform own workshop and surveys to present results proofs so that you can create your own resource.

While picking data from another source, make sure to not copy the entire sentence. Do some research on it to make sure if its real and only select few words that contain facts.

6. Write Introduction To Make More Clear About Content

Write few keyword filled lines introducing content after adding h1 tag and banner to your post. Make your first impression clear and long lasting like professional. Brian Dean (founder of backlinko.com) says adding most important keywords in first 100 words helps Google understand what your content is about. So instead of adding keywords later, do it at the beginning of your article.

7. Use H2 Tag For Sub Headings

Add one H2 tag for sub heading. Let's take example of title of this post. Here "11 Actionable Techniques" is the sub heading that should be written in H2 tag.

8. Meta Tags Really Put Some Effort

While Meta Tags might not be as much important but they add efforts by describing content of your web pages to search engines. The optimal length of meta description for search engine is 155 characters.

9. Internal And External Linking

You can compare internal linking to self made backlinks of your site. You should add at least 2 or 3 internal links.

Similarly linking to external websites is important too. I have used this technique in many of my articles to rank.

Wikipedia is a great example. I have already edited Nepali Wikipedia making significant contributions. While editing it or creating new articles, it is compulsory to add external link to resource after completing a sentence. That means linking to site (both external and internal) is very useful. However it does not makes sense that you should make your site a link farm. Adding 3 to 4 external links will be okay.

10. Write Lengthy Content

Usually SEO experts suggest that writing 1000 words tends to automatically rank higher. On a test, Neil Patel found that long content converted by 7.6% better. However writing long content does not means that you should add 1000 or sometimes 3000 words of crap. Just get to the point of your article and make it concise.

11. Reduce Bounce Rates

It is the total amount of time that a visitor spends on a website. Google checks Bounce Rate to rank any site. The more audience stays on your site, you will get more chances of ranking higher.

Use of Infographics and optimised images makes audience engaged with your content and keeps them spend much time on your blog. Increasing loading speed also reduces bounce rate for your site.

Final Words:

The more efforts you put on these 11 On Page SEO techniques, you will not only rank higher but build backlinks as well. Just try it and let me know if it worked for you on comments below. If you need any SEO advice, I provide it for free on my Facebook page. Feel free to ask me there. Enjoy!