Fatal Mistake, Don't do it!

[GeorgR.]

I know that i will get some disagreeing, but here it is:

--> BIG mistake to focus TOO MUCH on site content & quality, spending hours on the sites(s), supplying more content (although there is already good content on the sites) - and forgetting the most important part: LINK BUILDING

It's sad, but true. Let's take two scenarios:

A) 90% great site content 10% SEO
B) 10% site content - 90% SEO

Who do you think "wins"? Answer: B) by a LONG SHOT.

In fact, the crappiest site(s) can make a fortune, while a super quality site can be stagnant and not get any traffic/sales.

Once your site has, say, 5-10 good quality articles regarding a subject, STOP putting on more. Do you need 50, 100 or 500 (unique) articles? You can do that later, quality and constant content is good, but do not forget how extremely important link building is.

[Fraggler]

Yes, link building will help improve your organic traffic - but there is a ceiling on the amount of times a set of keywords can get searched.

IF your content is ordinary (not bad, just average) then this traffic will be full of one time visitors. You will only improve your traffic by adding more ordinary content. Your traffic is capped to the amount you write and build links and your Google rankings. Lose those rankings and the traffic of one-time visitors disappears along with your 'business'.

IF your content is great and amazing, you can get that same traffic coming back to your site more and more. You end up stacking your traffic so it grows without having to focus on building more and more links each time you add your content.

Mix that content up with an email capture and you can send that caught traffic back to your site to read your amazing articles with a button push. Lose those rankings and you still have a list of your previous traffic to play with while you sort the other issue out.

[tr7]

I honestly don't think quality content matters as far as rankings. I've seen sites with hardly any content rank at number one in Google. Lots of quality on-theme backlinks are the way to the top.

[SeoWizzard]

in my opinion, you can easily outsource content, however, for me, it's important to have proper on-site seo done as well as backlink building

[JackPowers]

Good content brings in long tail traffic. Articles written for $5 rarely have any related keywords or natural search phrases in them. From personal experience working for big clients, having a lot of good content can bring in tons and tons of longtail traffic. I agree that content isn't very important for small, set and forget websites.

Another reason for good content is the simple fact that people will return to your site more. Brand searches are also a parameter in Googles algorithm.

[aygabtu]

Originally Posted by JackPowers

Good content brings in long tail traffic. Articles written for $5 rarely have any related keywords or natural search phrases in them. From personal experience working for big clients, having a lot of good content can bring in tons and tons of longtail traffic. I agree that content isn't very important for small, set and forget websites.

Another reason for good content is the simple fact that people will return to your site more. Brand searches are also a parameter in Googles algorithm.

Good SEO with bad content will win everytime as far as income. People will be looking to get off your site and will have no loyalty to it. Make a good site and people won't want to leave as easily. Trust me, I know. My site has huge loyalty but very low ctr. People stay on my site for 40+ minutes per day. Why would they click an ad and leave the site if they like being there.
But a crappy site? Put some bling bling ads, and they are gone!

[MikeFriedman]

Couldn't agree more.

Content is not king. I've been saying it forever. Content matters if you are worried about people liking your site, recommending it to friends, returning, etc.

For SEO, it means very, very little.

[yukon]

Or,

C) 50% great site content 50% SEO

I do all my on-page seo upfront with a few minor tweaks as I go, content is kick a$$ & off-page seo is high PR backlinks as I build content.

If I build a page I build a few high PR backlinks.

The rest is forum traffic that I've built up over the years, I just move them from one of my sites to another related niche site, keep them in the loop the best I can until I make a sale or Adsense click.

[pethanks]

Well, it is normal. But let us use all those mistakes as our stepping stone towards success. But anyway, thank you for sharing.

[dburk]

Hi GeorgR,

While I agree somewhat with the sentiment of your post, I think a better way to look at it is to view the backlinks you create as part of your content. Naturally, you need to balance that content over your entire "web" which should span many different websites. Quality content, both within your website as well as within your multi-site web, will aid in building your pages' keyword authority.

[paulgl]

Why not both?

For me
great content= linkbait=relevant backlinks=relevant traffic=PR= paid link offers

It starts with great content and drumming up your own targeted traffic to start,
with a few well placed, high PR, relevant sites.

If you can have junk sites and shmooze google, more power to you. But
my chosen niches do not cotton to that.

Paul

[Steven Liew]

Hi GeorgR,

In the first place, shouldn't it be a good quality content site being put up and then have the back links established at a consistent pace (50:50)?

I mean, choosing between a site with quality content (and consistent updates) and a good rank vs bad quality site with a good rank. I think the former will be a lot more outstanding.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Why not both?

For me
great content= linkbait=relevant backlinks=relevant traffic=PR= paid link offers

It starts with great content and drumming up your own targeted traffic to start,
with a few well placed, high PR, relevant sites.

If you can have junk sites and shmooze google, more power to you. But
my chosen niches do not cotton to that.

Paul

Hrmm ... all this discussion of all this quality ... Im imagining the BBC or HuffPo or something with articulate articles and ya know - maybe 750 words?

Paul ... how would you rate the squiddooo lenses in your sig on text books and free tuition? On a quality scale of 1-5 ? 5 being best ...

the needy blog? tindex adsense blogs? same scale.

[GeorgR.]

I do agree with "quality content", and there is also no question that quality content will keep your visitors on the site, and keep them returning. But i made the mistake to totally SLACK with seo/links..the occasional article submitted DOES NOT CUT IT!

If you want rankings and traffic, you need to do build links and/or engage in other off-site strategies..and for plain revenue/sales/adsense/offers etc. people make a killing with the worst sites bare ANY real content.

Of course, the best is to combine both...but just dont overdo it with wanting the perfect site - because you will sit there and write content, or tweak your site to the max endlessly - while OTHERS laugh at you and make a killing with crap sites.

[rashidjaved11]

But if the contents are also of good quality and a good SEO work has been done you will enjoy long term seccess. Do people not tell others about their experience. Your readers will refer others if you have maintained a good quality site.

[alycemackie]

There is always mistake that will happen to us but for me those mistakes can be used as stepping stone for success. Thank you for sharing. Atleast we are aware.

[hezell1989]

I think a even ratio of link building and content will do yourself well in the long run. But try not to build to many links to fast.

[thebarksmeow]

I agree with you. I have a CPA landing page with just an image of the product. Of course the image has words on it but still an image nonetheless. All I did was enter in the meta description using All in One SEO and it's on the first page. Heavy linkbuilding.

[DavidO]

They're obviously both important but you're right that you can get the wrong balance. I've found myself slaving for hours and weeks even on design work and graphics. This is the work I enjoy most but the balance was wrong.

Having said that, I don't quite buy your 90%/10% formula... the right balance is closer to 50/50.

[thebitbotdotcom]

To me, they are both important. I want both traffic and loyalty. Personally, I believe that this is the best long-term solution.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

Yes, link building will help improve your organic traffic - but there is a ceiling on the amount of times a set of keywords can get searched.

IF your content is ordinary (not bad, just average) then this traffic will be full of one time visitors. You will only improve your traffic by adding more ordinary content. .

Excellent point! People entirely forget that search counts on google only are reporting people who are relatively new in searching for that term. tens of thousands of return visitors to WF that in the beginning searched on google to find this site no longer do. For every niche search count you can multiple by 20 or more the actual people interested in that niche who are return visitors to someone's site where they found something useful to revisit.The all that matters is backlink crowd often don't see return traffic because once people see and read their site they know its garbage, never return and skip over it the next time they do a search for the term.

Now we think they are making more money than the people getting return visits because frankly Those thay build up their site for return vistors don't usually have the mindset of coming back to (or even knowing about ) WF to brag about it (to increase their stature for the next WSO/ launch). They are too busy relaxing in their income. How do I know? They are some of my highest paying clients and they don't blink at paying what would make most IMers cry foul. You can always know who is really making the money when its time for them to pay for a service related to their business.

[ameerulislam10]

I disagree about weighting more on link building. Link building is ok you ought to have high quality content. True, that you might see garbage sites some times ranking better that good ones. But hei, Google and others are trying to get rid of them right?

Google's 20 engineers are working day and night for what? do you want to be some one who they want to get rid of? I heard Matt Cutt saying that they are working on an Chrome-extension that will let you disapprove sites that you don't want to appear on your search results on particular query. So every searcher are becoming moderators/editors. And there will be influencing the search results. Blekko trying to rank things more on manual basis. If your site is primarily made for adsense or other ways of monetization methods and you are not worried about your content, then you always have to be worried about link-building and bringing visitors for one time.

[dellingter]

Yes Defiantly You are right but the thing is that if you site does not have good content good keywords and meta tag all that then there would be a problem to optimize website...you know on page seo is also very important...

[warrich]

i am 100% Agree With dellingter on page seo is must important

[ameerulislam10]

Originally Posted by dellingter

Yes Defiantly You are right but the thing is that if you site does not have good content good keywords and meta tag all that then there would be a problem to optimize website...you know on page seo is also very important...

No one questions ethical on site SEO. Google has a guide named "Google SEO starer guide" which is the best for on site SEO IMO.

[John Williamson]

Good analogy.

[GeraldGigerl]

Yap, you got that right. Forgetting or not taking backlinking
into consideration can be deadly, and all your previous work
and effort is a ****ing joke.

However, you should update your site with new posts or pages
consistently.

Google´s wants your site to gain importance and the best way
to do this is to build links naturally. Don´t go out and build
50 backlinks+ for 3 days and than stop doing it. What helped me
was a plan to follow through, because this strategy commits
yourself to taking daily action, and not only for a few days..

[InternetMarketingIQ]

One can not base the success of others by their own limited exposure.

[GeorgR.]

I am not saying on-page SEO is not important, i actually assume that the on-page basics are actually all right, meta tags, H1 tags, seo urls.. etc.etc.

But this is really no big deal, eg. using Wordpress out of the box and SOME initial tweaking is all its needed. And some "decent" article(s). No biggie, at all.

Loyality is ALSO good...but if you only get 20 uniques/day there wont be a lot of loyality since almost no one will know about your site

Make a good site, good content..but at some point you MUST put the majority of your work into link building to gain rankings/traffic.

Don't sit there, wondering where your traffic is, by ignoring this. Its really how it is.

[Jude.A]

Originally Posted by hezell1989

I think a even ratio of link building and content will do yourself well in the long run. But try not to build to many links to fast.

I totally agree with you here.