What is more important, Link Aquisition or Content Creation? Which is most cost-effective, and results-effective?
Let’s look at the benefit of creating content. Content is permanent, and it also adds other criteria the spider looks for. Eg: kw density, hyperlinks, word count on page, and relevancy factors.
Although, writing quality content, and relying on it to lift your search engine rankings is more of a gamble than buying monthly links. Because, you’re hoping someone strong will link to you. Basically, you’re hoping for the viral aspect ( or linkability ) of the content. Whereas buying links, is quick, easy, somewhat guaranteed, but more expensive than Content Creation.
Generally speaking, you’ll get more “lift” from buying links…and it’s a quicker short-term solution. Also, buying links solves the dilemma of not having linkworthy content.
Ideally, you should try to have both. Link aquisition & Content creation provide a 1-2 punch. Even if you have a kick ass piece of content, buying links will give you visibility, then more people can link to you. Meaning, if you have content that’s awesome, but noone knows it exists, you wont get links.
Ok, but the question remains….how about the value of buying link worthy content vs. spending the same amt on links? Hmm. I’m guessing most SEO consultants will probably say that linkbait is much better than buying links. The problem is getting that content out there. Social bookmarking sites are good for that.
My guess is that plenty of journalists are scouring sites like Digg & RSS Search everyday for fresh content to write about.
Content creation can also mean just creating additional webpages with any kind of unique content. More pages indexed is a good thing, and will add to the site’s overall SEO power/relevancy in the Search Engines. Basically, by creating content, even if you just have pages indexed, and even if its mangled text, you will get some additional traffic…and/or possibly scraped text.
No related posts.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This is a great topic. I’ve probably spoken with a couple hundred clients who have this very concern.
Most of the sites that advertise with us, for example, are not blog sites where the creator/author of the site actually has the gift of being able to write an article/post/or any other body of content that has the ability draw natural links. Quite the contrary. Many of them are just selling a product or service and want better rankings in the SERPs.
When they ask, “What’s more important? Content or links?” you’d think my natural response would be ‘links’ (just given the nature of what LinkWorth does) but surprisingly I ALWAYS say, “You have to have both. Period.”
Too many inbound links with zero or minimal quality content to support them is extremely fishy. Why would that many sites link to you if your content is crap? On the flip side, even if you have wonderful content, you might still need the boost that quality, relevant links provide….yes, even if they are ‘purchased.’
Balance is the key. SEO has so many moving parts that each aspect should be addressed carefully. It doesn’t stop with content & links, obviously, but when you have both of these two issues covered, you can do extremely well in the SERPs.
Sorry to be so long-winded, but again…I love this topic!