Case study · Experiment
ShoestringCan 11 articles beat backlinks? For 2 of 5 keywords.
I set up a brand-new blog with a free WordPress theme and trial hosting, published 11 articles in August, then stopped. No link building, no technical SEO. Three months later, it outranked sites with backlinks for 2 of the 5 keywords I picked.
- Clicks
- 230
- was 25
- Impressions
- 9.11K
- was 1.28K
- Average position
- 20.7
- was 42.1
- Domain Rating
- 0
Google Search Console, web search: the last 3 months vs the 3 months before. Domain Rating from Ahrefs.
Average position roughly halved, from 42.1 to 20.7 (lower is better), and I didn’t publish a single article after August.
11 articles, then I left it alone.
The receipts
Ahrefs and Search Console
What I skipped
Almost everything
Link building
I didn’t build any links. The Domain Rating is 0.
Technical SEO
A free WordPress theme, trial hosting and no technical work.
Regular publishing
11 articles in August, then nothing.
Hand-written articles
The articles were written with AI.
What I did
A small semantic content network
I wanted to know if a content network on its own could outrank sites that had built backlinks. So I gave it nothing else to work with.
Picked 5 test keywords
I chose 5 keywords that other sites had built a handful of backlinks for.
Mapped a small network
I planned 11 articles around those keywords as one connected topic, so every article supports the others.
Published, then stopped
All 11 articles went live in August. After that, I didn’t publish anything else.
Linked in context
Every article links to related articles from inside its text, where the link helps the reader.
Before you copy this
Two things that matter
- Pro tip
Link inside your sentences
Links placed in the text, where they help the reader, did the heavy lifting here. That’s contextual internal linking.
- Fine print
Small numbers, big point
The traffic is small. The point was to see if a content network alone could outrank sites with backlinks. It did, for 2 of the 5 keywords.
