Can your website still have a high Search Engine Ranking if you do NOT have other websites linking to you??
Debbie
Yes … as long as search engines can find it, and believe it to be the best source for whatever words/phrase someone types in.
In practice, that means you’re only likely to get to the top for very specific phrases where there isn’t a lot of competition. (That’s how most SEO scam services guarantee to get you to #1, by optimising your page for a specific phrase that no-one else on the whole of the interweb uses)
Can you please elaborate?
What I was asking about - and which has always confused me - is the criterion that “If people don’t link their websites to your website, then you must not be important?!”
There was a really startling article today in the NY Times on how JC Penney manipulated the hell out of how Google works but setting up all of these scam websites that linked to JC Penney’s website to make them #1 in nearly any search you could think of from “dresses” to “rugs” to whatever?!
That is what led me to my OP.
I would think what is more important is relevant content and unique visitors than links. (Just look at all the scum that litter SitePoint with links back to their worthless websites…)
Debbie
Answer to your question is yes. You can have a high search engine listing depending on the content of your site but when Page Ranking is concerned it is not so. The ranking of a page always depends on the inbound links.
Larry of Google says, " We want to give you back “exactly what you want.” When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data. Today we use more than 200 signals, including PageRank, to order websites, and we update these algorithms on a weekly basis. For example, we offer personalized search results based on your web history and location."
If your website is in the same field as thousands of others, you’ve got a lot of competition
But if you’re a zebra carcass sculptor from Hoselaw in Alberta then your website doesn’t have a lot of competition to beat (Google doesn’t reckon there are any websites relevant to that query right now, although in a couple of days who knows, maybe this post will be up there), so even if you get no links and your website is pretty cruddy, you can still be #1 if your content is sufficiently unique.
I would think what is more important is relevant content and unique visitors than links. (Just look at all the scum that litter SitePoint with links back to their worthless websites…)
Relevant content is right up there - if you don’t have relevant content, you’re unlikely to get to the top and stay at the top.
Unique visitors - not so sure. For a start, there’s the question of how to measure unique visitors. I’m not sure that even Googlegod could do it under their current TOS. Second, the number of unique visitors doesn’t tell you anything much - it’s likely to be a function of the sites that are already high up the rankings combined with those that are tweeted, facebooked and who knows what else. The fact that someone clicks on a bit.ly link once because some twit twetted it in a twut doesn’t mean anything. What search engines should be more interested in is how many repeat visitors a site gets. If the same people keep going back to it again and again then that’s much stronger evidence that it’s offering a useful and well-liked service.
But it bugs me that other websites have to feel I am important enough to put a reference to my website on theirs in order for me to rise to the top.
That makes no sense?!
To me, that is like saying, “In order for the NY Times to get a high ranking, it has to have references/links from all of its competition pointing to it?!”
If you are Target, who is going to link to you? Your competition?! (I doubt it!) Some bored blogger?! (I hope not.) The news? (It’s just another retail store… Hardly news worthy?!)
So if having others link to you is what it is all about, then I don’t get it?! :-/
Unique visitors - not so sure. For a start, there’s the question of how to measure unique visitors. I’m not sure that even Googlegod could do it under their current TOS. Second, the number of unique visitors doesn’t tell you anything much - it’s likely to be a function of the sites that are already high up the rankings combined with those that are tweeted, facebooked and who knows what else. The fact that someone clicks on a bit.ly link once because some twit twetted it in a twut doesn’t mean anything. What search engines should be more interested in is how many repeat visitors a site gets. If the same people keep going back to it again and again then that’s much stronger evidence that it’s offering a useful and well-liked service.
That was my thinking…
Debbie
Google uses an Algorithm to return the most relevant results to the user’s search query. Unfortunately, inbound links plays a major factor in that algorithm. Nobody knows for sure what each of the more than 200 factors are in the algorithm. But, to answer your question, depends on your content, competition, and search string. I could probably add a random string of text to my site. In a few days, once my site has been crawled, search that random string of text and show up #1. However, what are the odds someone else will search it in order to find you?
I hate to say it, but if you want to rank, you have to apply at least a bit of SEO to your site.
They call me Nostrastevie 
The inbound links idea comes from academical papers. If some paper is referenced by a lot of other papers it gets more credibility or authority (whether this is always true is debatable but beside the point here).
PageRank is (in essence) based on the same principle: if a lot of people link to it, it must be worth reading.
In case of the paper you mentioned that would indeed probably be links from you average twitter, your average blogger, etc.
Yes, If you have genuine information (Content) on your site, user as will as SE will give importance to your website. User of your website will spread the link of your web content to various other site and your site will automatically gain link from them.
That´s it genuine content and maturity of the page.
A few years ago it had been easier, you could rank only by optimizing your on page factors. Nowadays there is much more competition and there are so many web pages battling for good rankings.