Why you don't have to focus on backlinks to get #1 rankings in Google

Why you don't have to focus on backlinks to get #1 rankings in Google

Rankings are what everyone that has a website is chasing, and you don't even have to focus just on backlinks in order to boost yourself up in the SERPs.  Getting top rankings means you need to boost your authority, and getting backlinks is a great way to do this, but it's not the only way   There are plenty of people who will go online and only target backlink building as their primary way of boosting their rankings, which means they could be falling behind their competitors who are placing unlinked URLs, mentioning their business or website name, or branding when they can in order to build up their authority. 

We all want to be on top of the rankings, but a lot of people who just get into boosting their authority don't realize how much work is involved, so they quickly turn to SEO software.  I'll tell you now, I use to use a lot of SEO software, and it very rarely did better work than I could do manually posting links around the internet.  I would say that 1% of the time it would trump my own manual work, and I'm not even sure why, but the rankings weren't stable and dropped after a week or two.  And remember, stable rankings are MUCH BETTER than spiked rankings!  This is because if you rely on spiked rankings, you're only going to be #1 for a week or less, and then you'll drop down.  If you have stable rankings, you will be around the top of the SERPs and getting traffic for weeks or months at a time before you see any movement.  Hopefully you don't stop building up your authority when you hit #1 and drop slowly, which a lot of webmasters do, so always work on your website to boost it

In this discussion I'll be going over a few ways you can build your rankings without actually building your own backlinks   And those ways are:


Plan URL placements
When it comes to SEO, not everyone will know how to build backlinks, so you'll need to just place a plain text URL in order to show a more natural backlink profile.  A good example of this would be http://www.example.com because it's the URL that shows up in the address bar and it's not turned into a hyper link with an anchor text.  The search engines know that not everyone knows how to use hyperlinks, or even anchor text, so they will see this as more natural than a link that is placed on forbes and linked with a specific anchor to a very relevant sub page on your website lol

I've always practiced placing plain URLs and linking with just the URL as the anchor, and it's worked extremely well for me over the years.  The more times Google changes their algorithm, the better my work becomes because I try to make everything look 1,000% natural, which you should do as well   You may not rank #1 tomorrow if you're placing a lot of these plain text URLs, but you will rank much better over time compared to the companies that are only placing anchors with every backlink


Business or Website name placements
A lot of people don't believe in this, but it actually works pretty well, and my predictions have come to reality when I read about Google starting to focus a lot on business name mentions as well as domain names without being linked.  For example, if I were talking about IonicWare and SEOclerks, I would do just that and not link them lol.  I could also do IonicWare.com or SEOclerks.com and Google will recognize that as a mention and give a slight bit of authority towards the website or company.  Obviously I'm mentioning them on their own website, so SEOclerks won't get a slight boost, but Ionicware might

Placing mentions like this will help you a little bit with your backlink profile because it's not exactly a link, but it's still you talking about the website or business.  You won't be seen as trying to artificially boost your rankings, which is what the search engines love, so they might boost your more as time goes on


Other people will build links for you
One of the great things about the online community is that people will share your website on social media and they will also build links for you because they want to share to their own favorite websites   Now, this is a backlinking method, but I'm still mentioning it for 2 reasons, which are:

1. You're not building the links:  You're not placing the snippet of HTML code to turn a word (anchor) into a backlink for yourself, it's one of your visitors doing it for you. 
2. It doesn't happen often:  This type of linking doesn't happen often, becuase people tend to not share as much as you would think.  They will likely share if they are getting some sort of compensation, but you will get a random good Samaritan who will share without anything wanted in return

People will definitely help you build backlinks, which helps you focus on other things like fulfilling orders and making your overall business better, but it doesn't naturally very often so don't rely on it.


Branding is everything
When it comes to building up your authority, branding is everything!  You would be surprised at how many startups become successful simply from branding, then show up on a ton of big authority websites, which boosts their own rankings   This is similar to when people share your links with not intention of asking for something in return.  The only difference is that the big authority websites sharing your information are trying to show their visitors "breaking news" and if you're branding well and have something unique to show off, you will likely get some big authority backlinks from these types of websites.

Your brand name being shared is great, just like what I mentioned above where you can type up your business name without a link and still benefit from it.  If you're not branding, you're not winning, and that's not good at all!  You can get out there and get active on forums, where you can link a banner in your signature, which will likely be nofollow.  This will help you get seen more and more with every single post you make, and since the banners stay on all of your posts, they could be there for years from now sending in traffic

The search engines don't value nofollow backlinks the same way they do dofollow links, which makes them less desirable, but they're still needed to seem more natural.  If you have all dofollow backlinks, your backlink profile will seem unnatural and you will likely go under a manual review.  No website out there has 100% dofollow backlinks from high authority websites, because people sharing your pages don't care if you get a dofollow or nofollow, they just want to share lol   This means your link profile will look more natural no matter where your niche related links are coming from



In conclusion
You can definitely rank well within Google when you don't focus on backlinks.  Yes, you will get some backlinks here and there, but that's not you building them, which means you can focus on other things lol.  Begin your branding strategy by placing your brand name or website name on websites related to your industry, and you will get a slight boost.  If you place your plain URL, without linking it, you will notice another slight boost.  Over time, you will have a very natural link profile compared to someone that doesn't know exactly what they're doing and just building all dofollow backlinks with their main keyword as an anchor all aimed at their homepage lol   Vary everything up and don't focus on just getting a link on a website when a mention works just as good


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Thanks!

Tommy Carey