Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, released another video on Google Webmasters YouTube to answer the following question:

“How can content be ranked if there aren’t many links to it?

How Your Content Ranks

Cutts explains that the process by which Google judges content without many pages linking to it, is similar to how search engines worked in the days before SEO and link building: “You’re pretty much judging based on the text on the page at that point.”

Google has algorithms in place to recognize which keywords are being used (and their frequency) on any given webpage and will adjust the ranking for that keyword accordingly. The first few mentions of a keyword will put your page in the running, so to speak, but at a certain point repeating the same keyword can actually work against your page ranking if Google believes the site maybe guilty of “keyword stuffing.”

If the phrase being searched is unique in nature, pages with less reputation may still make it to the front page of Google’s results, “…If there’s no other pages on the web that have that particular phrase, even if there’s not that many links, then that page can be returned because we think it might be relevant, it might be topical to what the user is looking for.”

Not Just Keywords

Keywords aren’t the only factors in play though. Cutts mentions that the reputation of the domain also plays a role, but that quality content is the key to getting your page noticed.

If you have keywords that are more common and competitive, we recommend executing a link building strategy. By doing this, it will help state your authority to Google and help increase the chances of ranking.

Are you currently considering a content marketing and link building strategy? Contact us today and our experts can get started immediately.