Have you ever seen a top ranked site on the Google SERPs which seemed totally out of place? I mean, it probably looks bad -- it's extremely static with poor navigation links and "decidedly fuggly." And yet it's the top site, and has been for years, for a very competitive key word which bigger and better funded sites rank fourth and fifth for (since our ugly site takes not only the top ranking, but the second and third ones as well).
This scenario is what made me write this article. After running into it a few times since the beginning of my search career, I became intrigued. The first time I started delving into PHP scripting, apart from http://www.php.net/, I discovered that the top five sites in the SERPs contained three separate pages from www.phpjunkyard.com. Recently when looking at the results for "Java certification exams" on Google, the top ranking site was http://www.jchq.net/; believe me, you have to see this site. Sun's official Java tutorial page was delegated to number three, though fortunately it came up as the top site for "Java Tutorials."
Pure Organic
Upon further research I discovered that http://www.jchq.net/ was founded by a Java programmer (who has a regular job) as a way of beefing up his resume. It includes no deliberate SEO, no marketing arm, no Google AdSense and no professionally written content if you don't count all the code. What's more, as a matter of deliberate policy he routinely links to his competing sites. Yet he has advertisers buying up text links and, more importantly, he ranks number one on the Google SERPs for the keyword "Java certification exams."
This kind of result from sites which are commonly run by one individual who has a day job is a miracle of performance. Sun Microsystems with their budgets and web savvy could not bump this site. Even Amazon has to be content with paid listings.
How did he do it? Note that the question this article asks is "can we get traffic without rankings?" The answer is "not quite," but not in the way you think.
Website Promotion 
