Content vs Link Building?

Post new content.

If it's good enough quality for other people to want to share it.

(I'm just getting in first, in case most other respondents say "backlinks", or ignore you and say "both").

It depends on the quality of your content. If your content is awesome, then merely sharing it on bookmarking sites, facebook, twitter and other social media will bring you traffic.

If your content is average run of the mill rewritten content, then you are going to get much better results by building links.

Ultimately you will need to do both. Links will bring traffic and your content will convert that traffic into money.

If you are just starting and can afford to outsource, then pick one area which you enjoy i.e. either link building or content creation and outsource the other part.

I would say content. I have one website with unique and quality content. It's not really even a money making niche more of a niche I have a genuine interest in and it is already making me some money. I have never even attempted to build any backlinks to it. This is all with just some keyword research and good content.

You're right... I'm gonna say BOTH.

Sorry but the Internet is filled with sites that have great content and get zero traffic. Having great content is just not enough anymore and hasn't been for a few years now. The problem is that there is simply too much competition and while content is super important, if you don't have any links to your site you have zero credibility and no one will see that content.

The best way to do both is to create some link bait for your site that encourages people to link to you. Free PDF's they can download, free tools or utilities, etc... tons of options here. But no matter how you slice it, you will need links... and lots of them...

You really can't just pick one if you want to rank well. Onsite and Offsite SEO are BOTH important!

Simple answer:
- 1 unique article on your website per week,
- at least 3 unique articles on 3 new web 2.0 sites with backlink back to your website (be smart with keyword research here and do not forget to activate the web 2.0 site).

If you will do this consistently and with precise keyword targeting, you get traffic and rankings.

It should never be either or - do them both for the most effective results.

What's you goal - get better ranking or get more sales? If you want to increase sales, just drive more traffic to your site.

Links are great, but at the end of the day someone has to have content. The key is having "great" content. Like has been said earlier, if you can write content which is so great that other people will share it, then focus on content. If not, then link, link, link!

Great content first, without that there's nothing to link to! Even if you did no link building at all, your great content would rank itself, people would find it, and the links would come naturally like they used to.

SEO is a viscous cycle but you will need both in order to rank well. Unfortunately its not as easy as "deciding" which route your gonna take and have the search engines rank you. You will need solid content, and a good amount of links to really make something happen with your rankings.

There's no easy road to the top, it takes hard work and dedication to really see results.

The ideal answer would be 'both' as you've - albeit indirectly - pointed out yourself.

Good content isn't going to get you rolling all by itself. You need to get out there and let people know that you're posting out great content. You can leave detailed blog comments on other, relevant blogs which will drive targeted traffic. You may guest post on other blogs for the same effect. You may leverage the content on your blog and create videos utilizing your expertise on the niche and put them on Youtube, iTunes Podcast, Doc sharing sites, etc in their respective formats. This will get your content out there and people will come to your website to look for more.

Whatever you do - you shouldn't sit back and think people will come even if you have a great website with tons of quality, helpful and expert content. As long as you're not spamming the internet, getting out there and interacting with others in your market in a way that it shoots both the birds (i.e. initial traffic and backlinks) is only going to help.

Once you have that initial bit of targeted traffic trickling in, your content would do the rest. In the longer run, you'll build up a loyal following who will subscribe, come back to read your new content, share your content (tweet, likes, etc) and you keep doing the same thing. Keep expanding your reach and at some point, you'll reach a critical mass where your readers/followers will do the needful. :-)

Of course, this is a very long term strategy and not a hit-and-run marketing campaign. Marketing is all about building trust and everything - your content, your product, your entire branding - caters to that. Once you've built trust, its easier to sell.

It actually may not rank at all. Search engines have no way to tell if the content is good by reading it - unless there's a manual review. There are other outside factors that give them a hint of how good the content might be and getting out there, telling other people that you exist will help you get going.

This is like asking should I brush my teeth or comb my hair every morning.

You could probably get away with not doing one for a few days, but it's a both and.

The ratio I generally recommend is 80/20.

80% of time on content.

20% of time on linking.

Links, brother. Lots of links.

Waiting for your (stellar?) content to be discovered and linked to is a sure way of going broke. Like the star actress bussing tables in LA... being great just isn't enough. You need somebody to vouch.

Why do you think mediocre actresses (and mediocre content) can still kill it? Especially when so many better options go undiscovered? It's all about the links.

I will go for new content but make it sure the quality of it.

I'm just curious, is there any content already on the site? This may sound like a stupid question but you can't build links to get traffic if there's nothing for people to engage with. Or just a few pages of content.

You'd be wasting your time. You gotta have content and a lot of it to get people interested.

How about both... in the same way that Alexa is (I think) implying-

Write amazing content, then get other websites to syndicate it for you (so other blogs in your niche, for example)

Then you have solid content AND backlinks as they were originally intended.

Why just pick one?

The answer is both.

In some cases you need to continue adding fresh content (example: fashion niche).

In other cases you just need to build links (example: golf niche).

It all depends on what keywords you are targeting and how your competition is ranking to determine the correct ratio.

The answer is obvious - for better ranking you need to do link building.

I think content..

But both works better in getting high rank.

i think you should do both : )
as far as i think Content matters but more then that you should go for some backlinks too because adding content will not work as there are many websites on internet who have content but no visitors so your first target should be some visitors that you can get by doing some blog commenting that will benefit you alot Backlinks + Instant Visits from those blogs =)

i think both must come hand by hand together. it not use if you have 1-2 content and ton of backlink

Better ranking where?

On the pages of a search engine? Build links.

In the minds of your visitors? Post content.

But which to do?!

Hint: SEARCH ENGINES NEVER BUY ANYTHING

think of it as this " Content is King, Technique is Queen"

I would ask Bread 'OR' Butter?

Combination of both links and content tastes good.

GO for CONTENT IF U WANT SINGLE ANSWER.

I noticed that sometimes less backlinking is the result of quality content. Noticed I said "less?"


regZ

Post new content.

I've tried focusing on just backlinking and just good content. I got decent results both ways, but combining the methods was the best way to get results quickly.

Try to build a website with good, unique, content and then start backlinking. Experiment and find out what maximizes your time and provides you with the best results.

You should do both. Content is very important, but if you don't do the backlinking the chances that you're going to reach your audience are minimal.

I think doing just 1 is very poor technique. I use unique quality articles on all of my sites then build quality backlinks. I have been doing well with micro sites and am starting on my first few authoritative domains.

I'm discovering that once you have a larger site that has many pages ranking well for targeted keywords, new posts rank well more quickly (i.e. with less or no link building).

Since discovering this I spend more time writing content than linkbuilding.

However, I still do linkbuilding - especially to my pre-selling pages and squeeze pages - it's just that I dedicate more time to content.

It's getting momentum for a site that's important. Once other sites link to you and your site is trusted in the search engines, your posts will rank more quickly.

As long as links help search engine rankings, I'll be building links.

Picking either one out two probably won't work well. Contents are just as important as building links. Having high quality contents but without proper link building won't get you anywhere in the search engine. In vice versa having high quality links won't work either without unique contents search engine appreciate.

Both are neccessary, but ......

Did you know you can actually boost your rankings by adding content to your site if you link the content properly?

For example. Lets say you want to rank a page (page A), on your site that gets a lot of searches per month and the competition is average to hard.

To give yourself a boost in ranking, create 5-10 more pages on your site and link them all to Page A, within the body of the content. And don't have any other links on those 5-10 pages (except for neccessary ones).

Then what you do is backlink your Page A, and also the 5-10 other pages you created. When you backlink those 5-10 pages, the link juice helps Page A rank easier because google sees it as an authority type page on your site. And google counts links within content more highly that "navigation" type links.

The whole thing will make Page A rank faster and easier.

Best

In my experience. Content will only get you so far.

For example.

I'll make a new site. Get some content up there. And kinda forget about it.

Then I'll look at it sometime later and see that I'm listed in the top 100 sites for a pretty tough keyword.

Then I get re-motivated to work on the site and get to back-linking.

I say keep working on ranking on the first page on google for your keyword. Getting a lot of links to your homepage is the foundation of a site. Don't make new content until your current homepage/posts rank well in google and your making money.

I would also like to say both. But first, write a new content for your site then build links to it. Combination of a good content and high quality link building will have greater outcome.

Building Backlinks will get you Traffic and i recommend you for the same.

What is the use of a nicely built, well decorated store if it is not known to the people?
Similarly, when you have good content but there is no one to read it, its all in vein.
Therefore, you should do both.

Going back to this topic, when I get time I will write a little case study on how I have hit page one for my main search term for a site I started a few months ago, and get dozens of Google searches a day with almost NO backlinking, just great content.

The thing with focusing just on content is that you MIGHT NOT rank for that holy grail keyword you were aiming for (although I fully expect to grab the no. 1 slot sooner or later), but you sure will rank for a lot of long-tail keywords.

And for me at least, since I pretty much hate backlinking - it is MUCH more FUN writing content on a subject you are interested in, than throwing up crap and then trawling the net for backlinks, or throwing automated crap at the crap to get it to stick.

I am not saying this is possible in any niche, but what do you think, if you are trying to rank a low-competition EMD-type site, is it easier to rank by hurling shedloads of links at it, or by just writing one quality blog post on the subject per WEEK, or not even that? I know which I'd rather do.

In my opinion you should build initially let's say 10-12 quality post, then building backlinks like crazy. After that initial period 1 post/month would be enough, while backlinking should never stop.

In other words writing 5 articles/day is not useful if you don't rank them (aka backlinks).

unique content and links. both are very important.

Post really good content. Content that must encourage users to share it with their friends/network. Good content is far more important than backlinks.

Both. Google goes all wet for fresh quality content. But you can't rank good (or at least keep good positions) without some proper backlinking.

-m

There is no way you can build links without content they go hand in hand. however if you know your content is good then add the content you shall somehow get traffic.

It's just not true that good content won't 'rank' without backlinks. What we really mean when we say this is that it may not rank for the ONE (or several) keywords that we have optimised it for. It can still 'rank' for plenty of other keywords if it is good content.

It is a different matter if you are ONLY writing content to target specific keywords that have more than a basic level of competition. Then, sure, you probably will need to backlink.

Not everybody agrees with that definition of 'content' though...

If you have already quality content, then just go for links of course.

Content is King....

link building is very important for getting SEO thanks