Despite what you may have seen online and from various experts in the field, it is certainly possible to rank your website without backlinks. The following techniques will focus on on-page SEO, creating valuable content, and off-page mentions.
So, what are these techniques?
1. Create valuable content. When you answer a search query thoroughly, then you’re giving your readers what they want to know.
● This will increase user engagement on your website, which will tell the search engines that your content is valuable. Consequently, the search engines will rank your website highly for that search term.
● Go more in-depth than your competitors for the highest rankings, provide clear answers, and provide graphics or illustrations to help your reader understand the content.
2. Try to rank for longtail keywords. These are keywords that are niche-specific and may have very little search engine traffic. You will be aiming to rank for these terms because there is less competition, so they should be easier to rank highly for.
● Ranking highly for these terms will be easier and quicker to achieve.
● Plus, your overall traffic will increase if you rank highly for many of these terms. At this point, you may be able to consider ranking for more competitive search terms.
3. Get customer reviews. With local businesses, reviews submitted about your website online can also affect your search engine rankings.
● This will lead to great reviews and more customers! For many reasons, it’s worth your time and effort to ensure that you are providing the best service possible for your customers.
4. Copy your competitor’s on-page SEO strategy. Visit your competitor’s website and study their content. You may think that creating more extended forms of content is best for ranking. However, this is not always the case. Check whatever pages are ranking for each particular search term.
5. Build internal links. For each of your longer, authoritative articles, link smaller supporting articles on your website to this main page. This will help your more extended page achieve higher rankings.
6. Ensure that your website is easy to navigate. If your website isn’t easy to navigate, visitors will click off your website and go somewhere else. This can lower the time spent on your website and increase the bounce rate. These are both negative SEO factors.
7. Have a mobile-friendly website. These days, most internet users will access your website through a mobile device. If your website isn’t rendering correctly on mobile, this will hurt user experience, rankings, and sales. So, be sure to optimize your website for mobile devices and desktops.
8. Increase your page speed. Page speed refers to how fast your website page loads, which affects your rankings.
● A faster-loading website improves the user experience of your visitors. No one wants to be waiting for a website to load. Chances are, if they have to wait more than a few seconds, they will leave the website entirely.
9. Get an SSL certificate for your website. It has been shown that having an SSL certificate on your website increases your website rankings.
● These days many search engines will warn their users that a website without this certificate is not secure, which will result in a user leaving the website immediately. This harms your rankings and possibly your reputation as well.
If your website is still new and has yet to establish any authority within the niche, or if the competitors in this particular niche have very few backlinks, then it is certainly possible to rank highly for various search terms using these strategies.
As your website becomes more competitive, building backlinks will undoubtedly help you continue to rank higher.
But in the meantime, don’t worry about the backlinks. Draw your visitors to your secure, quick-loading website and provide quality content that they’ll want to engage with and share with others.