Is site can rank without off page. Even if on page strtegy have already been done.

[Naresh Chauhan]

Is site can rank without off page. Even if on page strtegy have already been done. Kindly suggest me.

Thanks & Regards

Naresh Chauhan

[dzine]

Without ANY inbound links? No.

[Doodled]

I'll have to disagree with dzine. We got a site (howtoseo.link2light.com) to rank with no inbound links last year and I have a feeling that this will become easier with the following sort of logic from Google:
1) Is this a site with unique content?
2) If yes show it now and then in the search results
3) If users respond well to it then show it more often
4) If users respond better to it than the competition raise it higher

Note when we got the above site to rank without links Bing would not touch it with a bargepole. We wrote directly to Bing asking them why and they said "build links"!

That said I wouldn't do it for more than an experiment. You should consider creating links in places where real internet users will find them and create genuine traffic to your site.

[dzine]

That depends on how you measure the number of inbound links

[Doodled]

Yes - as soon as we launched the site we uploaded a sitemap.xml file and registered it with Google.

We kept a diary of it here:
A real SEO example - Google Top 10 in Two Weeks | How to SEO

I know, I know we talk about Alexa but some people just can't shake it so we included it in the numbers! But the upshot was Google Top 10 for "How to SEO your website" within 2 weeks without any links.

What I find of equal interest is that we removed thousands of links to the site late last Summer and it made absolutely no difference at all. They were links from different IP addresses, different domains with varying PR but all genuine websites.

So if we removed so many links we should have dropped but we didn't and my conclusion is that we didn't because user behaviour signals had taken over.

[tstolber]

It is entirely possible to have a site rank with no links - just not for a competitive term.

It is possible to get a site indexed many ways without having a link, but the indexing frequency will be low.

Links are what makes the web go round and are a vital part of any serious SEO effort, but they are not always mandatory.

[eddyf]

Doodled - I've read your posts and SEO articles. Interesting stuff.

I'm curious how your "linkless" page did in Bing. The reason I ask is, like you, I've spent a lot of time with on-page factors, and less time pursuing links. A couple of years ago I did very well in Bing, less so in Google. Today that is reversed, starting with Panda/Penguin. Some of my competitors followed the same pattern. This leads me to believe that today, Bing is more driven by links (and crap links) as opposed to Google. In other words, my lower position (by 20 to 25 positions) in Bing suggests my links are not as "valuable" as my higher ranking competitors. However, my position #6 in Google suggests my on-page, trust and user behavior overcomes my weak (by comparison) link profile.

Your thoughts?

Ed

[dzine]

I maintain that a webpage without ANY inbound links (be they from a submitted sitemap if necessary) cannot be found and will therefore never be indexed, let alone be ranked.

[tstolber]

Dzine, I don't disagree that links are vitally important for any serious SERPs and are never a bad thing when you want to rank, but I am pretty sure that it is possible to rank without links.

My reasons, its quite common for developers to get a whole site indexed on a development URL before setting the site live. Nobody links to the development URL, and there are no links but it gets indexed.
How? If you are viewing a URL with Google Toolbar, Google Chrome or while logged into a Google Account or visit another URL with Google Analytics installed Google will then know about the URL and will go about its business of finding all the info on the web and indexing it. It won't happen quickly or with any kind of priority or frequency but it will happen.

Imagine this scenario - developer logs into client web site and makes some changes, clicks on the link in the footer to their company web site (feeling very proud of the work just completed). The company web site has Google Analytics installed - the referring URL is the development site that is new, not indexed and with no links. Google thinks - ahah - a new URL for me to index.

This is not too uncommon a problem I run into where the clients site is suffering a duplicate content penalty because the development site got indexed on another URL.

I guess this becomes a bit of a technicality issue - yes a site can get indexed without links - but you would much rather have links to get the site indexed and in general, most links are beneficial for you.

[Doodled]

@eddyf,

I did mention it earlier - Bing sat and sulked! I actually emailed Bing about it and was knocked off my chair to get a response which basically said, "give it time and build links". I replied to the email asking if this meant that Bing would never index a site that had no links ... I never heard from Bing again!

This is my opinion: Google has way more to go on when ranking:
- Google analytics
- Links
- Google toolbar
- Chrome (when you accidently let it spy on you!)
- Google users signed in to their accounts
- Google Shopping
- Google Adwords
- sheer volume of searches every day and user behaviour patterns (this one is really important as any statistician knows - the higher the sample size, the more accurate the result and the smaller the margin of error)
- etc.

Bing has far less data so it has to rely on links and on page SEO as indicators much more than Google.

In other words, my lower position (by 20 to 25 positions) in Bing suggests my links are not as "valuable" as my higher ranking competitors. However, my position #6 in Google suggests my on-page, trust and user behavior overcomes my weak (by comparison) link profile.

I buy this and it is very much my thinking in recent months. Links can be gamed too much and any good search engine must be trying to untangle themselves from this.

And I mean this in the extreme - for example say CNN wrote a story about people having a mid-life crisis who run their own SEO business and they feature me ;-). Chances are I get a link to my site which is just gold in the world of links but is my site really better than other SEO sites or am I just a lucky *^*&?

[eddyf]

@Doodled - Thanks for your input. Refreshing to find like-minded thinkers

I know there are folks who believe it's all about links. I happen to believe the pendulum has swung much more toward on-page and user behavior signals as you noted. I also passed college statistics back in the day and understand how anomalies stand out in large data sets I believe links are used now more as a confirming signal rather than an absolute indicator of popularity and relevance.

As you noted, there are several signals available to Google besides links. I believe these signals must all agree and appear in relative strength comparable to the central tendency of entire world-wide-web data set. Anything identified as an "outlier" is suspicious and affects your "score". So IMHO, if you have a strong link profile, yet your users bounce off your site at a high rate, those link "votes", no matter how strong, don't confirm your site is relevant to the search term. If you have great on-page SEO & content, great user behavior, and great links that confirm what your site is about, then all the stars are aligned in your favor. But I believe as you do, the role of links is now diminished (as compared to 3 years ago) and supplemented with other more reliable signals.

Ed

[dzine]

(...) the referring URL (...)

There's your link. It's weak, and it won't last, but still.

I'd prefer to have some control over my links and referrers tho

[atkinssteve028]

Yes it will rank, but it will be difficult! Especially today that Google is basing the rankings on the backlinks! High quality backlinks.

[Test-ok]

Is site can rank without off page. Even if on page strtegy have already been done. Kindly suggest me.

It depends...you might and you might not. If you toss out the key word we can offer you good odds.

[subzero27]

Not to forget that Google also crawls whois data since google is an official domain registrar.

The investigation starts right when you buy a domain.