Do You Always Need the Backlinks to Rank? (0 Backlink but got Ranked)

Sarfraj Lakdawala
3 min readApr 4, 2020

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The answer is yes, or may not be required.

I would say it totally depends.

Backlinks are highly correlated with the ranking factor since Google has stated backlinks are one of the top 3 Google ranking signals.

Each and every time you produce the content then you get worried about links because you need a quality SIGNAL to your page/article.

Let me share with you an example of my site (TopVPN.Review) …how we got ranked without any signal link.

One of the query you would search at Google “FastestVPN review” then you will be able to see our result is at 10th position at Google.

There are 2 things that may allow this article to rank:

1. Lack of competition

— Yes, the keyword difficulty for this keyword is very low.

2. Particular niche site

In below screenshot you can see the other sites are dominating because they have high domain authority than us.

Despite of the fact we are ranked with 28 DR because we are niche site that ONLY talks about VPNs not other things.

So, here is another signal that Google has established on our site.

Isn’t it?

When we had started (TopVPN.review), we had targeted only long tail queries.

One of them is “free trial VPN without credit card’

This query is now ranked in Google’s first position and drives tons of traffic via other similar or relevant keywords.

So, based on my experience I would say you can get rank without backlinks but the condition should be met:

a. Target topics that have low competition

b. Don’t write anything. Keep tightening your site with a niche topics

c. Build authority

d. Create content asset to attract backlinks (it can be a tool or educational resources)

e. Proper internal linking to pass values to other pages

In order to rank for popular queries, then, YES you require backlinks but don’t be dependent only on backlinks…

…you should also consider fixing other issues of your site that stopping you to rank in Google.

I hope you get general ideas.

If you have any experience then please let me know by commenting.

I would love to hear from you!

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