Links vs. Content

by Scott Allen

You’ve probably heard over and over that “Content is King” in SEO. Well, maybe in 2000, but not in 2007. In reality, Links are King, but Content is still the foundation of the kingdom. There was a great discussion about links vs. content on V7N Forums, and I’ll revisit some of the thoughts I shared on that thread.

1. Links rule for SEO.
   The site with the strongest relevant link profile wins.
2. Content rules for conversions and sales, and it breaks ties when two sites have link profiles of similar strength and relevance.
   You can have all the traffic in the world, but who will buy from a site that is poorly organized, confusing, or full of crap content? To get maximum conversions and sales, your site must be compelling and easy to use. So, once you get people to your site, make sure there is something to keep them there. Also, when two sites have similarly strong link profiles, Search Engines use what I call their “Plan B” rating - they will evaluate the content, and see which is more relevant to break the tie. This doesn’t even come into play though if one site has far more (and relevant) backlinks.
3. Bad content will make it harder to get links, and conversely, good content *can* make it easier to get links.
   Who wants to link to a crappy site? On the other hand, if a site has some awesome content, design, tools, or something else that people can’t help but link to, you’ll get more links. (But only if they can find your site in the first place.)

For maximum success with SEO, it would be wise for most sites to do AT LEAST some basic on-page optimization as a backup to the link building. (Also, you should consider that proper use of Title and Description tags, site structure, search engine friendly url’s, proper use of 404’s and sitemaps all can make a difference if you even get included in the index, and can play a heavy role in keeping the site out of the supplemental index.)

The search engine algorithms give a higher percentage weight to inbound links and much smaller percentage of weight to on-page content optimization. There is still SOME weight given to site content. Otherwise sites wouldn’t rank for anything at all. however, it’s impossible to rank with content alone. I think it could be best explained that they look first at links and then second at content optimization. The best SEO does both knowing that links are key and puts 90% of the focus there, but still does the content optimization, because content can be a tiebreaker and keep your site out of the supplemental index.

Tags:
seo | webgeek

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