Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world without SEO. It’s easy if you try.
The fact of the matter is that plenty of websites get gangbuster traffic, conversions, and rankings without every sweating even the basics of SEO? No link profile? No problem.
But how can a website possibly do anything without SEO? That’s a question content marketing guru Neil Patel recently asked in a blog posting titled, Why Do Sites Rank High on Google When They’re Not Optimized?, on SearchEngineJournal.com.
The answers Patel comes up with aren’t especially complex, but they do make a case for the fundamentals – quality content, solid backlinks, and organic growth. While no one is advocating tossing out the SEO baby with the SEO bathwater, a few of Patel’s tips are definitely relevant for casino affiliates.
Old Age is a Good Thing
Age is definitely a common denominator amongst sites that rank well without using SEO. Google definitely respects its elders and gives a big boost to what it deems, authority sites.
Authority sites usually have been in operation at least five years, have a good link profile, and plenty of quality content. Obviously this isn’t something you can whip up overnight, but it’s something to consider as you grow your business.
Many of these sites have also experienced the kind of slow and steady growth that search algorithms value over rapid risers.
Quality, Competitive Content
Quality content is an absolute must for any site, whether they’re implementing SEO strategies or not. So it’s no surprise that Patel would bring up this point. What he adds, however, is the idea that these non-SEO success stories come from sites that offer quality content that’s on par with what the best in their industry are doing.
The days of phoning it in with half-baked, link-strewn content are long gone. Google’s Panda algorithm is very good at sniffing out quality content and it’s not going away any time soon.
Low Competition Keywords
The long tail keyword is alive and well and doing good work for niche-minded casino affiliates. Patel points out that many of the sites he found that were ranking well without SEO were focused on very low competition keywords.
Not only is there less actual competition on the far end of the long tail, Patel says that Google doesn’t update for those terms as often as it does for more popular terms. So taking a turn off the crowded corridors of the information superhighway is something that can definitely pay off in the long run.
Finally
In short, the “secret” to ranking without SEO is to have a long-term strategy that emphasizes quality content that end-users actually can use, not a bunch of SEO gimmicks.