I began to wonder: Is content really that important to get a top search engine ranking???

What makes me wonder?

Well, most of you know that I have started Halloween JV-Giveaway about 3 weeks ago. There are only 3 pages that search engines can index because the rest is inside the password protected area which spiders can't see.

Now when I checked my positions on google today, I saw my website on position 4! There are half a million competing websites. When I do the search with strings, then there are still 10.000 competing websites and my is on position 3.

How did this happen, can't be due to much content since there are only 3 pages. So this definately happened through backlinks. There is an affiliate system in place, so I got a lot of 1-way backlinks from that, plus I bookmarked the website at about 20 bookmarking pages, plus 1200 directory submissions and some article submissions.

I have seen a fast ranking like this for my squidoo lenses before but never from my own websites. Usually it takes a couple of months and a pagerank update to get a top ranking and involves creating a lot of content for the website. This time I did not even aim to get a top position, I did not care at all about on-page optimization and I did not care about the anchor text of my backlinks.

Strange, isn't it?

Guido

Guido,

I would say that is both strange and interesting. It will be even more interesting to see if you stay there and how much traffic you get. Do keep us updated on this.

I'm not sure that is so strange. Content is part of the equation. However, if you have a high quantity of backlinks with good Page Rank then you will rise in rankings.

Do you know how many backlinks you have?

- Don James, The Agile Marketer - Learn How to Make Money Online

Well, that is the funny thing, I have only 260 backlinks and a PR 0 because it started a couple of weeks ago. Most links come from forums and article directories.

It is propably a mix of all: A good domain name, the right title, the right keyword density and some backlinks.

Guido