Should I Focus More On Backlinks Or Good Content?

[Wealthyclark]

Hello everyone, I was sitting here trying to brainstorm a new way of looking at turning a new blog into an authority site, I know that it will take a lot of work, that's not the point of this post.

What are the chances of a blog ranking well for it's targeted keywords by simply writing content to the blog without doing any backlink building other than submitting the sitemap to the search engines and rss feeds? After that nothing else but creating content for the blog.

I ask because I have decided to build a new blog around a very competitive niche to try my hand at becoming an authority in a competitive territory. But in fact there are still some pretty good untapped keywords out there for this particular niche.

I have extracted over 2,000 keywords that my top 20 competitors are targeting according to Google and plugged them into market samurai to analyze. My strategy is to start out going after the least competitive keywords and going right down the list to the more competitive ones.

My top competitors have 20,000 30,000 upto 100,000 pages of content and some of the sites are still pretty young (1 year and up), most of these pages have only one paragraph of content with a few widgets and rank very well.

I was thinking that if I just consistently continue to write good content on a daily basis google would find the content through my sitemap or rss feeds and rank me accordingly, without the need of waisting the bulk of my time building backlinks.

When I reverse engineer my competitors sites I don't find a ton of ezine articles, hub pages or squidoo lens's, what I find most are tons of internal pages targeting long tail keywords, all pointing to the pages that target the main keywords of each long tail keyword.

I have so much more to add but I'll cut it short here so no one get's too board.

What are your thoughts on this, how should one go about trying to compete with the big dogs. Should I be focusing on backlinks as much as an article marketer would or should I be focused more on building the content/pages of my site?

As I stated before, as far as I can see these guy's don't use squidoo, hubpages, ezinearticle or any of the other methods we use to get ranked.

So what's their strategy, how did they grow?

[Melanie Bremner]

I would be curious to see the outcome of that. It sounds plausible that just content with tons of keywords for posts would rank well. I am not sure since I am just getting my site to be visible in a page rank status.

I look forward to more talk on this subject.

[Chris Reeves]

You need both.

Even if you take the time to write amazing content, it's not going to rank well against your competition unless it's optimized. That includes submitting high quality backlinks (unless there's no competition of course).

In creating lots of great content you'll naturally gain backlinks to your site...but then again, you need visitors to first see that content before that will happen.

Don't throw backlinking out the window, especially if you're trying to go up against some really strong sites.

Why not work along that keyword list like you said from lowest competition to highest, making sure that you take the time to do what you need to rank the individual pages as you go along?

All the best,
Chris

P.S. The reason you aren't seeing a bunch of ezinearticles, hubpages, etc. pointing to those sites is because those sites are powerful enough to rank the content on their own blog highly.

Sites like EZA are very powerful in that you can submit your content to them, build backlinks to that content and have it rank well in the search engines...without having to build up a powerful site. You get to piggy back off the power of those sites BUT the obvious trade-off is that the content isn't on your site.

You wouldn't see Microsoft submitting an ezinearticle to try and get high search engine rankings...but you'll definitely see a lot of marketers without established sites doing it because, well, it's fast and easy.

Hope that made sense...lol.

[Wealthyclark]

Originally Posted by Melanie Bremner

I would be curious to see the outcome of that. It sounds plausible that just content with tons of keywords for posts would rank well. I am not sure since I am just getting my site to be visible in a page rank status.

I look forward to more talk on this subject.

You may have missed my point or I might need to clean up my post. I don't think I mentioned anything about making a post of nothing but keywords????? What I would do is start with one keyword, for example "INTERNET marketing" and make a post using that term as the main focus, I would then start to come up with long tail keyword branched off of the main keyword which is "INTERNET marketing". At this point I would make posts that focus on each long tail keyword and be sure to place a link back to the main keyword in the post. This is what I see that the authority sites in my niche doing. I have no intentions on making post that contain nothing but keywords.

[shg]

Originally Posted by Chris Reeves

You need both.

Even if you take the time to write amazing content, it's not going to rank well against your competition unless it's optimized. That includes submitting high quality backlinks (unless there's no competition of course).

In creating lots of great content you'll naturally gain backlinks to your site...but then again, you need visitors to first see that content before that will happen.

Don't throw backlinking out the window, especially if you're trying to go up against some really strong sites.

Why not work along that keyword list like you said from lowest competition to highest, making sure that you take the time to do what you need to rank the individual pages as you go along?

All the best,
Chris

well i agreed that you need both to get on top in search engine...

only content wont help you....

regards

[Wealthyclark]

Originally Posted by Chris Reeves

You need both.


P.S. The reason you aren't seeing a bunch of ezinearticles, hubpages, etc. pointing to those sites is because those sites are powerful enough to rank the content on their own blog highly.


Hope that made sense...lol.

Yes Chris, I totally understand where your coming fom, I'm just looking for some answers that are not the usually, post in forums, make a squidoo lens, place comments on blogs, because it seems that the authority sites don't do any of this and I can't find any traces to prove that they ever did. So how did they become so powerful if they did not use these methods?

Most marketers are doing things that are usually temporary, I did not say all marketers so to anyone reading, there is no need to get upset about that statement.

[LilBlackDress]

"My top competitors have 20,000 30,000 upto 100,000 pages of content and some of the sites are still pretty young (1 year and up), most of these pages have only one paragraph of content with a few widgets and rank very well."


What exactly is considered a page of content? I ask because I often see big numbers put out for how many pages a website has but I have never seen a website with 20,000 plus different pages or posts or categories etc.

[Wealthyclark]

Originally Posted by LilBlackDress

"My top competitors have 20,000 30,000 upto 100,000 pages of content and some of the sites are still pretty young (1 year and up), most of these pages have only one paragraph of content with a few widgets and rank very well."


What exactly is considered a page of content? I ask because I often see big numbers put out for how many pages a website has but I have never seen a website with 20,000 plus different pages or posts or categories etc.

I really don't understand where your coming from with this one but check out www.cheapflight.com using yahoo site explore they have over 1,300,000 pages and 500,000 backlinks pointing to their site, most the backlinks are from their own pages.

[philayres2]

The way Google is today... it takes a good deal more than content. I would say that your chances of targeting the higher level keywords are pretty nil for a new blog. On the other hand, if you are going far down the long-tail, you have a better chance.

But, I think that you will... okay, I know you will be wasting your time in doing it without backlinks. Not only will it take high quality backlinks... it will take time. Just don't get burned out while you wait in generating content on a daily basis.

I really think that in 2009-2010, we are now in a situation where Google wants to see a really good long track record for a decent traffic niche before they start rewarding you with rank. So, I would seriously focus on the backlinks. And, by the way, I am not seeing much boost from Squidoo, EzineArticles, etc., like I did just a few short years ago.

Google really wants the high quality trust links .

And, I know what you are saying... so your competition doesn't have the phenomenal number of inbound links. And, they do a lot of internal linking. I think you have to also look at how long they have been in the game. Clearly, they have built up some trust and page rank with Google. That page rank is, perhaps, floating the ranking of their other pages.

I am saying all of this to say... you need to think about the backlinks... and not just the low quality variety like Squidoo, Hubpages, Quizilla, etc... think about getting links from your niche authority sites. That's the best long-term strategy.

[Wealthyclark]

Originally Posted by Phil Leotardo

Ugh...what about about those backlinks you are peddling in your signature? Why don't you blow the doors off your competition with those?

I guess because I like to test different things to see what works and what does not work, what others are doing and why they are doing it.

I don't understand why some of you guys are so bitter against other marketers. I've done nothing wrong to anyone, I don't scam or lie to others just to make sales, all asked is a question and I get attacked.

I'm taking the sig out do to it being an affliate link and I wasn't thinking about it.

Lighten up guy's you'll make some money one day just keep following what everyone else that makes one $50 sale for a weeks worth of work is doing, that's sure to help you quit your job just my little secret "lol"

[jasonmorgan]

As I stated before, as far as I can see these guy's don't use squidoo, hubpages, ezinearticle or any of the other methods we use to get ranked.

So what's their strategy, how did they grow?

Well, not knowing what authority sites you are referring too it's hard to give a great answer.

Let's think and rant a little...

Take microsoft or adobe, they don't have to create backlinks because they are true authorities and everybody links to them. If somebody is blogging about windows 7 there is a good chance they are throwing in a link to microsoft.

Sites who got into the game early fell into an authority roll by default due to a lack of competition. If you are the only widget site on the net then people have no choice but link to you as the widget authority. Some of these sites had years and years of a head start before the IMers came along.

If you happen to have real quality content like webmd, chances are you will be linked to as a medical authority. If I need to point someone to the latest hemorrhoids cure I'm not linking to an EZarticle.

If you run a game review site and are active in the gaming community you can get word out about your site through casual means, if your site isn't crap people will notice.

When I was a gaming nerd I was in contact with hundreds of people daily through my little pvp guild and thousands more through daily forum participation. An ideal spot to promote a gaming website without having to spam. Some people did this and as a result have very popular gaming sites now.

If you are writing half-assed medical articles or tyring to sell a world of warcraft cheat book you're going to be seen for what you are. You might make some sales but nobody is going to link to you or take you seriously and you'll never be an authority.

Switching gears and looking at the nefarious side of the net. A common trick used in the adult industry is to buy traffic... a lot of traffic, the goal is to create name brand recognition, word of mouth and essentially buying their own viral buzz.

This works because people will start to link to them in blogs or forums chatting about the cool new porn site which creates a further avalanche of traffic and backlinks, at which point they no longer need to buy traffic, the natural backlinks are rolling in and SE ranks are rising which in turn brings more traffic and backlinks.

not sure if there is an answer in any of this... perhaps some idea and thoughts to take home and chew on.

500,000 backlinks pointing to their site, most the backlinks are from their own pages.

the problem is, you can't see all 500,000 backlinks so you really have no idea who is linking to them.

Just because Yahoo explorer may show a majority of internal links for the 1,000 backlinks you can see, you don't know what the other 499,000 backlinks are.

well wacky doodle... this post ended up really long.

[Wealthyclark]

Originally Posted by philayres2

The way Google is today... it takes a good deal more than content. I would say that your chances of targeting the higher level keywords are pretty nil for a new blog. On the other hand, if you are going far down the long-tail, you have a better chance.

But, I think that you will... okay, I know you will be wasting your time in doing it without backlinks. Not only will it take high quality backlinks... it will take time. Just don't get burned out while you wait in generating content on a daily basis.

I really think that in 2009-2010, we are now in a situation where Google wants to see a really good long track record for a decent traffic niche before they start rewarding you with rank. So, I would seriously focus on the backlinks. And, by the way, I am not seeing much boost from Squidoo, EzineArticles, etc., like I did just a few short years ago.

Google really wants the high quality trust links .

And, I know what you are saying... so your competition doesn't have the phenomenal number of inbound links. And, they do a lot of internal linking. I think you have to also look at how long they have been in the game. Clearly, they have built up some trust and page rank with Google. That page rank is, perhaps, floating the ranking of their other pages.

I am saying all of this to say... you need to think about the backlinks... and not just the low quality variety like Squidoo, Hubpages, Quizilla, etc... think about getting links from your niche authority sites. That's the best long-term strategy.

Thanks for being a real insightful person and not a ezine article zombie like so many others philayres, I'm simply trying to find answers on what the real companies out their are doing to grow their businesses and it not writing for ezinearticles but most of the people here never answer the question your trying to ask, they go on about a whole bunch of stuff you never asked anything about.

I think a lot of people sit around here trying to get backlinks to their name trying to answer question they know nothing about, which is rude if you ask me and should be banned.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Wealthyclark

I was thinking that if I just consistently continue to write good content on a daily basis google would find the content through my sitemap or rss feeds and rank me accordingly, without the need of waisting the bulk of my time building backlinks.

"Build it and they will come" only works in the movies.

[cashcow]

I can tell you from experience that just adding a ton of good content isn't going to do it. Been there, done that.

Then again, I never added 20,000 pages of content, how long would that take?

My own personal feeling is that the more articles you have out there pointing to your site, the better off you are. This insulates you from google having a bad day and de-indexing you (yes, it does happen even to lily white sites) because you will still get traffic from the articles.

I'd be curious to see what happens if you did just add content with no linking though.

Lee

[jazbo]

The answer is both, but once you have some decent content, don't keep making it for the sake of it, build a ton of links to it instead.

[Intrepreneur]

I'd say for the first few months build very little links and just write more and more content. Once your site gets some authority then plan out taking top spots from other people with a little bit of manual backlinking.

Hope this helps.

[turbohips]

Dude to rank higher it's all about back links period. I haven't changed any content on all of my sites in months and my SERP's continue to dominate the first pages only because I'm going crazy building links.

[Hanksays]

you need to be focusing on both at the same time. build links and keep developing content that is useful!

[shab]

both!

Construct a good content and geta backlink from wikipedia. Thats all you need.

[oscarkool]

Content all the way. Google is smart and wants to provide users with a "high quality experience" as they always say. So, with that in mind, keep the user's experience in your head when you build your sites. Use only original, unique content. Do not scrape anything. Write everything yourself or pay someone to. Google loves new unique content.

If you want google to rank you with out building back links, you're going to want to become an authority on the subject. In order to do that, you will want a lot of content. I'm talking 20+ pages just to start and eventually you'll want to get up to near the 100 pages of content level to be seen as an authority in a popular niche.

The reason why some marketers stay away from such large authority sites is that it's a lot easier to just build tons of minisites and dominate small niches because you get ranked high really quick and the money starts flowin'.

[worldpeace1988]

Both should go together hand in hand.Give more priority to Content

[sweetfranky]

I would say to get your content to a decent level and then start building backlinks. Once you have some steady traffic, go back and rewrite your content until it's top quality.

[butters]

This is how I see it, if you keep pumping out content day after you will eventually beat them sites. My uncle has had a tourisum site up for about 10 years now and had a solid top position and has built no BL's he got them naturally over time from advertisers and people who liked it site. That took a great deal of time to get tho, I just see it as this, if you build BL's along the way, it speeds up the process of domination.

[jusin]

According to me one should more focus on contenet forst as, if the content is good or right then there will no be problem in getting backlinks.

It is all about getting quality backlinks if the site is good the submissions are relevant then there will not be any problem in getting backlinks.

Thanks!

[apartmentsturkey]

Quality always wins. Provide content that is useful and that visitors may refer to others, ideally you want your content to do your linking work for you.

[Kieran Gill]

The chances of your blog ranking "well" without ANY backlink building, other than as you had mentioned (sitemap/rss feeds) are pretty low... The only way that could realistically happen was if the keywords you were targeting had insanely low competition and your site was better optimised.

However... If the content you are creating is solid and of a very high quality, it's likely your site would start generating backlinks naturally as people begin to link to your site, simply because they liked the content, or would like to use it on their blog and are providing a credit link.

So... It could work both ways, really.

I have created authority sites before (Palm Pre Blog springs to mind... Ranking first out of 23 million keywords (palm pre blog), and second out of 190 million keywords (for palm pre news) - I no longer own the site, but I still use it as an example regularly) and have always found that the best method is to build a nice, search optimised site, to post regularly to the site (original [where possible], high quality content) and to email a few related blogs to cover a article/post you wrote. In almost 40% of cases, the sites I emailed were more than happy to cover a story, including a british newspaper. Of course, you need to time it right, email the right people, and word your email right... But you'll pick those things up with practice.

Once you have your first couple posts (guest posting works great for this too), other sites will link to you naturally too, and it's a repeating cycle from there.

Traditional link-building is still important, and I do recommend doing a small amount. Even if you just build say 10 do-follow and 10 no-follow backlinks to your site, it will be a nice boost and speed up the process greatly.

To answer your post title simply: focus on good content first.

Hope that helped,

Kieran

[sousen]

If you have quality unique content then it will create back link for you automatically please remember content is the king