Anyone done SEO with on-page ONLY?

[inhouseseo]

I read this blog post:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/let-onpage-optimization-change-your-life

The author claims they have increased the visitors 50 fold doing on-page seo ONLY. So they just added content, and optimized the site structure.

Anyone have seen similar results?

Not outreach whatsoever, just adding content to site. Technically, this should be true, article directories has tons of visitors and they were giving out links.

[JamesNorquay]

If you have an enterprise site with many 1000 pages and many problems and many many natural links and you only do on page you can see some good results.

But if you have a small business site with no natural external links and you do only on site I doubt you will see much in terms of results. that been said you may push out 100s of fantastic articles yet will the consumers see these articles?

[Klarke]

Yes, making changes to a poorly optimized site can produce huge gains.

But you still need links to rank for anything worth ranking for.  You cannot discount it.  And I don't think the Client in that article had no external links.

[inhouseseo]

That's what I thought too. But he clearly says:

"PS: We have not built any links or engaged in content marketing activities for the aforementioned themes. We are ranking well; [sorely] on the basis of the work we have done on-page!"

You're saying content alone can work if you have a few hundred existing links and build no more links?

[CaseyKluver]

You can absolutely still rank with good content and site architecture. It doesn't have to do with having a lot of content, just good content. While you aren't going to rank for any competitive terms, but you can climb up high on the first page for some long tail and local based keywords.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Inhouseseo,

Yes, I have made similar things happen for clients. Most typically, this type of results stemmed from overhauling a bad website. In one case, the client's sales (the real test, right?) shot up 125% in one year. I've had similar results with other clients.

My take on all SEO is this: the strength of your efforts must be based on the competitiveness of your target industry. If my client is a quilt shop competing against 2 other quilt shops in a 50 mile radius, chances are, I just need to put up a really good website for them to beat out the other two, who probably aren't going to have hired someone like me because the industry isn't very tech-oriented. If I put a blog in the site and client uses it once a week, she will probably be going way beyond the efforts of her competitors. I'll get her Local SEM firmly in place and she will dominate the whole local scene on the web. No way am I going to have to do linkbuilding. It's just not necessary.

However, if my client is a personal injury lawyer in San Francisco, that's a very different story. I can write content for him all day, and it will help, but if his competitors are all spending $3000+ a month on linkbuilding with hotshot linkbuilders, he's going to have to match and exceed their efforts if he wants to outrank them. There could be exceptions to this, but I would call this pretty typical.

So, my experience with this is that the efforts one has to make for each client are unique. It all depends upon what efforts their competitors are making. In some cases, all you need is good on-page SEO. In others, it will be a combination on on-page plus Local SEM. And, in others, you will have to bring out every weapon in the arsenal, from linkbuilding, to SM, to video marketing in order to gain the visibility the client seeks.