Stream SEO

Learn how to make $10,000+ per month with SEO

On Page SEO Case Study: Ranking without external links?

Updated on by - 69 Comments

On Page SEO Case Study: Ranking without external links?

Let me show you how I went from position 20 to position 3 in a post that had been stuck for 12+ months without any additional backlinks just by applying a simple and well known on-page SEO strategy.

I said it’s a well-known strategy because if you’re into SEO you’ve probably heard about the basic tips to do proper on-page SEO. Things like:

  • Create a strong interlinking between posts (or create silos or other similar strategies)
  • Avoid duplicated and thin content
  • Don’t focus on just 1 exact keyword and over-mention it in the article
  • Fill your meta tag descriptions
  • Put keyword in images, alt text
  • etc.

I’m sure you’ve read many times stuff like this and perhaps even applied it when starting a new website, but the truth is the difficult part about SEO has always been backlinks (off-page SEO).

Also, there aren’t many public case studies about this, so many times for people getting started this (on-page SEO) sounds more like just theory and they’re not able to put it in action because they’re lacking in the off-page SEO department.

Google thought this well as backlinks are the most difficult part of an SEO strategy and since it goes out of your own control Google has decided to make it the most important factor.

Of course there are people who control and manipulate off-page SEO to their will, but it would be so much easier if on-page SEO was the 80/20 of the efforts you need to rank.

Because of this, many webmasters forget about on-page SEO and focus on backlinks while building their authority. Sometimes we just need to go back to the basics to prove things work and so I prepared a simple case study to validate that a strong interlinking can do wonders if you’ve got some authority on your site already.

We couldn’t break position 20th (page 2)

In one of my sites (I’ll not reveal the domain for obvious reasons) I had a post ranking in the position 15-25 of for about a year or more for a low competition but profitable keyword.

After all, the site was ranking for many other keywords and making good money, but I decided to revisit its internal linking to see if I could improve the rankings for 2-3 posts that hadn’t been able to break page 2 of Google.

Here’s how the keywords (2 keywords but pretty much the same term) went from position 20 to 3 after 2 weeks of making this small on-page SEO change:

on page seo case study - first results

As I mentioned before, the keywords itself were considered easy, yet my site with its low authority couldn’t break into page 1 and the URL had just a few external backlinks.

Ahrefs considers the keyword to have a difficulty of 6 with a search volume of 600 in the USA and around 1,000 worldwide.

on page seo case study - ahrefs keyword difficulty

 

The website I’m using to rank those keywords itself has a Domain Rating on Ahrefs of 15 so it’s not a new website but it can’t be considered a high authority website either. on page seo case study - ahrefs rank

Based on this website’s ranking, if we add posts focused on keywords with super low competition (keyword difficulty 0-5) they will get ranked in the first page most of the times, however keywords with higher difficulty won’t make it to the first page without additional backlinks and that was the case of the keyword we’re analyzing in this case study. We just couldn’t make it past position 15.

On-Page SEO was the answer

I decided before trying to earn some additional external backlinks to see if we could get this keyword to move into page 1 by applying some basic SEO tactics.

The post had been published over a year ago, so I decided to make an update and add a couple more paragraphs for a total of 2,500 words. I also double checked everything to see if it had the correct meta descriptions and it was indexed in the SERPs without duplicated/thin content.

After that we decided to analyze its internal backlinks and we found it only had 1 mention from another weak post in the site. It also had a few no-follow posts from the comments section where people asked about something and we recommended them to read the article.

on page seo case study - ahrefs internal links

While I’m using the Ahrefs internal backlinks tool to check this, there’s an easy (free) way to check internal links. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin just go to your posts section inside the WordPress dashboard and check out this column:

on page seo case study - yoast internal links

There you will be able to see how many internal links at coming to each post. If you find out that a post that’s not ranking has 0 or less than 2-3 links you might be able to improve its rankings just by interlinking to that post from additional pages.

The best way to do this is by using some of your strongest pages (the ones with more backlinks and authority) and not just several random pages.

I decided to fire up Ahrefs again to analyze the top pages of that website by links and URL rating. As you can see in the following picture most of the pages will have a UR (URL rating) of 11 or less. However, there’s a few pages with higher ranks based on their authority and in this case the page with the highest UR is the homepage with a UR of 25.

on page seo case study - ahrefs best by links

So, we pretty much selected 3 of the top URLs with the highest rank (not the homepage in this case though) and we conveniently linked from those pages to boost the rankings of the post we wanted to rank.

Needless to say, you should do this process by linking to your desired page when it really makes sense. Since it’s your own website you should be able to add a paragraph or two and make the link relevant to the original post.

Also, if you have a large website with a ton of authority and hundreds of indexed pages you shouldn’t use the same anchor text as it would be suspicious.

Let’s say you want to create 7 backlinks from other high authority pages within your website to a post ranking for the term: top 10 drones 2019.

Instead of linking with that same anchor text from all of the 7 pages you can use anchors like:

  • top 10 drones
  • best drones available
  • our top drones listed here
  • check this list
  • top drones 2019
  • out best drones for 2019
  • top drones 2019

If you’re creating just a couple links it might be OK to use the same anchor but if you’re creating several new internal links it looks suspicious if they all have the same anchor even within the same website. I’ve overdone this a few times and noticed the links weren’t as effective as when the anchors are distributed with different keywords.

I made this change around the end of October and then just left the website alone to see if anything would happen.

After almost 2 weeks we noticed a sudden spike of traffic and our keyword rank tool notified us of a sudden change from position 15-20 to position 3-4.

Based on Google Search Console Data, the keyword had an average position of 22.4 and 61 impressions per day.

on page seo case study - google search console before

After the change, the keyword had an average position of 3.8 and 1,200 impressions per day (the number of impressions changes a lot when your position goes from page 2 to page 1).

on page seo case study - google search console after

As you can see from the screenshot above, there were a couple days were the rankings went back to position 20 or so but they came back the next day.

This keyword by itself only drives a few dozen visits to the website but the conversion rate is good and generates a few hundred USD per month. It could potentially generate thousands if he hit position 1, but this is also a keyword where ads take up the first spots and a good chunk of traffic clicks through those and get their problems solved without clicking the organic results.

Is the keyword still ranking after 3 months?

I kind of spoiled the last part of the article with the screenshots from Google Search Console, but as you can see, the keyword is still holding its rankings after 3 months. I’ve noticed the keyword now dances between position number 3 and number 5, but overall, it’s steady with an average position of 4 (both keywords are represented with the blue and green lines):

on page seo case study - 3 month results

What interests me even more is the fact that making this quick change that literally took me 10 minutes also helped another keyword (see orange line in the graph) in the same post to get ranked that went from position 40-50 to position 10-15.

While it’s taking time to break into the first page of Google, that keyword alone has almost 10,000 searches per month so it’s driving a good amount of traffic from page 2, and it could send a ton more once it consolidates in page one. However, I don’t expect that to happen without some additional external backlinks so I better start working on it.

What can you learn from this?

The message of this case study is simple. Don’t forget about the basics and check your on-page SEO at least every few months.

Interlinking old articles from new articles and new articles from old articles as well as making sure you don’t have any on-page SEO problems can really give you a boost in your rankings when your site has some authority already.

If your website is new, you probably won’t see any changes as all of your pages will have the same authority (zero). Unfortunately, new people are the ones that focus more in their on-page SEO instead of focusing on off-page SEO and content.

But if you have been working on your site for a few months and you’ve got some authority and pages already ranking in Google it might be a good time to re-check your content and make sure you have a strong internal linking strategy to make the most out of your link efforts.

If your site has a medium or high authority with hundreds or thousands of indexed pages this could pack the juice you need to improve your keyword rankings and it only takes a few minutes to implement the changes.

Loved this article?

Learn how to make $10,000 per month ranking websites and other traffic sources!

Don't worry. I hate SPAM.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Hi Servando,

    This is a great article at the right time. You might have seen that Google gives more value than ever to On Page SEO stuff like internal linking and TF*IDF system.

    I have been using internal links for sometime now to my sites, and the results have been amazing. Most of the posts rank on first page now, with no external links needed.

    Of course, the site has links pointing to the homepage, and niche is not that competitive but if it wasn’t for the internal links and proper Silo they would have never made into the first page.

    Reply

    • Definitely makes a change. Especially if your site has some authority to share.
      TF*IDF is quite interesting and requires a complete post soon enough.

      Reply

  5. Hello Servando Silva, can you share website address where you do above work because website address will help us to understand in more depth.

    Reply

    • Hi!
      As mentioned in the article, I prefer to keep the URL private as to avoid competition for this quick case study.

      Reply

  9. Really nice but can you just put is a simpler way you say without external links but seriously backlinks are important when it comes to ranking .
    I’m looking forward if you make a article about it.

    Reply

    • Yeah, so the idea was to say without additional external links, but only works if you already had some links and authority on your site before.
      This just helps you rank new posts without creating specific backlinks for them.

      Reply

  12. Great case study about one page SEO with link juice pass with the internal linking it’s glad to read. I also try a similar thing for ranking without backlinks and has successfully done.
    One point I like to mention that, in this process keywords selection is the most important part for rank without or less external backlinks.
    Thanks, Servando Silva to head on an article

    Cheers

    Reply

  15. Great article. But what about the website that has no rankings at all. Is it possible to bring it on top page with the same strategy?

    Reply

    • No, this is for a website that has authority and links already. Even if it doesn’t have rankings but at least some authority is needed to use this strategy. Doesn’t apply for new websites.

      Reply

  16. Hey Very Intersting thing i have learned in this article , now i am going to add some content to my website and check the old pages interlinking.

    My request is to upadte the blog about new google broad core algorithm update (Florida 2.0) , How it effects to websites explain to me and other readers.

    I like the way to presented the blog content , i think i found another brain dean here. Thank you so much .

    Reply

  21. What were the results traffic wise. The clicks and CTR is extremely low for the amount of impression. Is this something you optimized later on?

    Reply

    • That’s the CTR of all the keywords that post is ranking post. I just focus on the top 2-3 keywords that have the highest volume and the CTR goes from 4 to 12% lately.
      The keywords has already got the no.2 rank in Google and is getting a good amount of visits per day. I don’t think it will break into the first place without additional backlinks though.

      Reply

  22. I am a newbabie in this SEO world and I have one blog which I am maintaining since 10 months. Unfortunately, I am not able to bring any traffic to it. I have tried many things like selecting low competitive keywords for articles, doing link building for that post etc But I didn’t see any result so far. So now I am trying your way to see how it works for me. I checked my website through “best by links” as you mentioned in the article and I have put the internal link of the article to that page where I have good UR. I hope it will help me, I will keep updating you the progress. Anyway thanks for the tip.

    Reply

    • Hi Alfred.
      You’re not doing a bad job, but you’re still lacking of good links and authority.
      Your highest UR is still very low (below 10) so I’d focus on getting more authority before testing this strategy.

      Also, don’t forget to use different anchors for your links to the article you want to rank, both for external and internal links.

      Reply

    • Hi man.
      That’s because the image is showing all of the keywords the post is ranking for, which are hundreds, but I mostly care about 3 keywords with high volume which are the ones I’m tracking.

      If I select only the keywords I want to track the average CTR is 12% aprox at the momento although it was 3-6% back when I wrote this case study (the rankings are better now).

      Reply

  27. Nice strategy indeed! But what about a site which has articles with a minimum of 5 relevant interlinks and adding 6th URL of post we wanna rank will make any difference in ranking?

    Reply

    • If the other pages have a ton of authority and links it would be good to link them to your new 6th post.

      However, since you only have 6 pages make sure you don’t link them all with the same anchor text.

      Reply

  28. Awesome Case study! After reading this case study I have decided to optimize internal linking structure of my blog and see its effect on my ranking.

    Reply

  29. Nice article stream seo, it is helpful for me because my website not rank in Google. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

  35. That’s case study everybody may need for improving on page seo. Some do not interlink their article with right anchor and stuff with same anchor which make them look suspicious to google. Thus they see no improvement in serp.

    And I completely agree with your point that we should check our on page every month for knowing what can be improved further more.

    Reply

  37. Sir, this post is amazing. I will definitely implement this on page seo strategy in my low ranking articles.
    I have a dought!
    I always internally link many previous posts when I’m writing a new blog post. I have a recent posts and category section in my sidebar. The problem is when i check the search console data it shows that i have more than 500 internal links. Is this good for SEO and how can i reduce that?

    Reply

  41. First of all, Thanks for this amazing case study.

    But, here is my question can i put LSI keywords as anchor while internal linking.

    For example, my keyword is “seo full form” and can i use this following keywords
    *Full form of SEO
    *SEO meaning
    *Seo full form in hindi
    Etc.

    Reply

    • Yes, you can 🙂
      In fact, I recommend doing it as you don’t want all of your anchors to be the same.

      Reply

  43. This is the new and unique case study I have ever read. In the year 2019 internal links matters a lot. I am going to follow this tip. Keep sharing more and more.

    Reply

  44. Nice! I like this kind of posts where there’s an study that shows the results because that means to me those changes are really good for SEO.
    I noticed that some pages of my website are not ranking the way I’d like and after reading this post the issue seems to be the internal links. I’ll work on it!
    Thank you very much for your study.

    Reply

  45. Hi Servando,

    This is a great post at the right time. You might have seen that Google gives more value than ever to On Page SEO stuff like internal linking and TF*IDF system.

    I have been using internal links for sometime now to my affiliate sites, and the results have been amazing. Most of the posts rank on first page now, with no external links needed.

    Of course, the site has links pointing to the homepage, and niche is not that competitive but if it wasn’t for the internal links and proper Silo they would have never made into the first page.

    Kudos for you that you also mentioned that we need to be careful with anchor text, even if it’s an internal link. Google still doesn’t want to have it manipulated.

    Keep bringing more articles like this and not some rehashed stuff.

    Regards,

    Melos

    Reply

    • Thanks for your comment, Melos.
      How do you monetize your niches normally? Are you writing in English or other languages?

      Reply

  46. Amazing Case Study. This case study shows some incredible result for On-page SEO.
    Really appreciate the way you have written and explained. Especially the tips you have given for proper On-page SEO.
    Thanks for sharing it with us. Worth reading it.
    Good work..!!

    Reply

  47. Great case study Servando. It’s nice to see how basic on page SEO can produce some real and tangible gains.
    I like your tip about not overdoing with internal link anchors.
    While Google is a lot more lenient with internal link anchor text distribution, it still pays to pay attention and make it so that the strongest pages (by authority) get the best anchors.
    Thanks for the case study, Servando,
    Nikola Roza

    Reply

  48. Great read! I have to focus on my internal links and contents. However, work schedule is really tight. I also have a bad habit of destroying my blog and then re-building it again!

    Reply

    • What do you mean by destroying and rebuilding it?
      Are we talking about creating a new one with new link structure, domain name and all?
      Or just about changing the design?

      Reply

      • I changed the designs. I kept on thinking that it might be the fault of the themes. So while doing that, I actually removed the contents with it. I guess in part, it is also because I do it on a part time basis and I do not follow through with the courses I sign up for.

        Reply

    • The language doesn’t really matter in this case.
      Google knows how to read the interlinking and keywords and i’ve applied this to Spanish websites as well.

      Reply

  50. Congrats for this article, I’ve never seen this data before. I think link building is one of the most difficult parts of SEO and it is always a mystery

    Reply

    • There’s plenty of guides about link building, so I wouldn’t really consider it a mystery. especially when talking about on-page SEO I think it’s pretty clear but I still wanted to make a real case study to show what you can do with the proper internal links.

      Reply

  51. Great case study! This encouraged me more to enhance my internal linking structure for my five month old site. According to Search Console, I only have 9 external links and almost 1,600 internal links. There are definitely rooms for improvement and growth.

    Reply

    • Hi Mary.
      That’s right, it seems you have around 8 external backlinks but still not much traffic.
      In your position, i’d actually focus on getting more external links before focusing in your internal structure. You’re at the precise time where more content and links help more than the internal structure as there’s little link juice to pass around.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Stream SEO makes 4 figures per month without showing ads

Learn 5 ways to monetize your blog's traffic besides Adsense and Amazon

LEARN MORE!