Post Panda: does quality content rule over links now?

[kiwiviktor81]

I've been adding a lot of articles to my websites the past month, generally one SEO-optimised article containing my keyword phrase in the first fifty words and a few times thereafter (in a 500-600 word article), and I have noticed that I am slowy moving up the ranks, despite not having much in the way of backlinks.

One of my sites, for which I am competing for a keyword phrase with 12,000 exacts, has gone up from 28th to 14th despite not having a single backlink, just content added that gets indexed by Google.

Has content replaced backlinks as the primary determinant of Google rankings? And will people selling backlink services pile into this thread to tell us that backlinks still rule?

[RichardF]

Interesting! I think it depends a lot on the niche/keyword too. I've always been a "links" guy, but I am indeed focusing more on good content these days. I think for competitive niches, good links+poor content can still yield better results than the other way around.

Btw, I'm guessing your site that sits at #14 right now could easily get to top 5 with some good links - no reason to stop building links completely.

[jameswarrior]

You are right, backlinks are not as important as before. Moreover, the new feature +1 is a new tool Google is using to evaluate our websites. Just on thing, "Content is king" - this phrase is never old!

[kiwiviktor81]

Yeah, RichardF, I think I could get there - I'm just surprised because I started building content, waiting until I had enough content to be worth linking to, and was surprised to see my rankings going up anyway.

[xxxJamesxxx]

I don't know the ins and outs of Google Panda all I try to do is write or outsource quality content that people actually want to read and use ONLY quality backlinks.

I stay away from low quality backlinks now as I've noticed they actually hurt rankings.

James