Links Vs. Content: Which Is More Important

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Comments (3)

An article SiteProNews got my attention when I read a headline about the best 3 – count ‘em, three! – SEO tips for this year. Here’s what the author suggested:

• Subscribe to Google Alerts
• Search Engine Optimize your 404 page
• Build links – seriously

Notice he didn’t say “optimize your content.” I wonder why.

Seriously, everyone serious about search engine optimization knows that optimizing your content is important, but can you over-optimize? Can you under-optimize it? Can you optimize it optimally?

It’s not a joke. You can use too many keywords for your content pages. You can also use too few. And you do it just right and still not get ranked well for your important keywords. That’s because keywords are not the only elements the search engines look for in order to rank your website against your competitors. Other factors, which you don’t have control over, are the age of your website and the age of your competitors’ websites, how well your competition does at optimizing their websites, and other related ranking factors concerning your competition. Let’s face it, Search Engine Optimization is competition.

I think Google Alerts is a wonderful tool. I also like the suggestion about optimizing your 404 page, but even if you don’t, it’s not a deal breaker. Neither of those two suggestions will make or break you. Even mediocre content won’t necessarily kill your business. But not building links will.

There is a lot of emphasis on optimizing your content, and rightfully so, but truth be told, you can spend too many hours anally going over every word to get the best optimization you can get when you could be doing something much more productive with your time – like building links. You can actually write mediocre content and build links to your website and see your search positions rise just on that alone. Rarely will you ever see your search positions rise on the basis of improving your site’s content without doing anything else. If you do, it’s likely because your content sucked in the first place.

So what it really boils down to is this: Would you rather have mediocre content and darned good links or kick a$$ content and hardly no links at all? As for me, I’d rather have awesome inbound links and mediocre content. Though it can’t be said enough that content that doesn’t sell, now matter how well optimized it is, isn’t going to do you much good at all even if you have the best linking strategy in the world.

Comments (3)                      Category: Link Building                      

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