Hey guys, this is Tim Soulo from Ahrefs,
and right now you're watching episode #3
of the over simplified SEO show.
[Intro Music]
In my previous episode I explained to you
how to rank for any keyword in Google.
And what I suggested is that you
should build a lot of links to this page.
So in this episode I want to show you
how to rank...without links.
So this is the post on the Ahrefs blog with the
previous episode of the show.
And as you can tell from the title of this post, my
intent was to target the keyword "how to rank number one in Google."
Let's see how well this post ranks for this keyword.
Let's scroll down to the bottom of this page,
and you'll see that the post on Ahrefs blog ranks number 10 because the
rest are Google Ads.
But the funny thing is the previous search result.
It's a SlideShare presentation that ranks right above us.
Let's compare these two pages in Ahrefs' Site Explorer,
and see if we can find something interesting.
I'll start with the Ahrefs article.
So I put it into Site Explorer and what I see is that it has 13 backlinks from two
referring domains, not much actually. But let's see what we have for this
SlideShare presentation.
I will open another instance of Site Explorer.
And here's the funny thing:
it doesn't have any backlinks at all!
In the previous episode of the show, I told you that you should build more links than your
competitors if you won't outrank them.
So how come this SlideShare presentation doesn't have any links at all, but it still ranks
better than our post at Ahrefs' blog that has 13 backlinks?
And the answer is pretty much in front of you.
It's the domain rating.
As you can see, the domain rating of Ahrefs' blog is 66,
while the domain rating of Slideshare's website is 81, which is quite a bit bigger.
And that's what helps it rank better, even
without any backlinks pointing to the page.
Domain rating is a very powerful ranking factor and in fact, when SEOs can't rank for
some keyword with their own website, they might utilize powerful domains like
SlideShare or YouTube, in order to hack their way to the top of Google.
And actually, if we go back to the search results, you'll see that there's a
youtube video ranking at spot number five.
Let's see if this video has any links at all.
Well actually, it does have a single backlink, but as you can see the
domain rating is totally insane and that's what makes it easily rank at
number five for a pretty competitive keyword, "how to rank number one in google."
So that's it guys. This is how you rank in Google without any backlinks at all.
You just need a solid domain rating to make it happen.
But what's domain rating after all?
It's the combined power of all backlinks
pointing to all pages of your website.
So when you build links to any individual
pages on your website, this helps improve your domain rating.
And then when your domain rating is solid enough it, may help you rank for some keyword
without having any links pointing to the page.
So that's it I really hope you enjoyed this episode,
and I'm waiting for your comments and questions below.
Bye!
[Music]