Can quality content rank without links? [SEO Experiment]
- Hypothesis: Quality content can rank well without links for low competition queries.
- Experiment Result: False.
- Start Date: August 2016
- End Date: April 2018
- Number of Queries: 265
- Number of Pages: 30
- Domain: 1
Between August 2016 and late October 2017 our test domain didn’t have any appreciable organic traffic. After adding a site-wide link with domain as anchor text from a single PBN website traffic levels increased somewhat and plateaued thereafter. An organic link surprised us all on Christmas. It was a delightfully archaic looking hub with 30 other outbound links to mainly authority resources on the subject.
Linking Domain Metrics
Linking URL Metrics
It’s interesting that the traffic not only jumped, but continued to grow all as a result of a single organic link.