Creating Good Content Vs Building Too Much Links: Where is Your Focal Point?

Recently updated: May 17th, 2024

Handled well, Content Marketing and Link Building have a symbiotic relationship. Content marketing can produce exceptional link-building and conversely building links can lead to some great content marketing. While they are two completely different SEO practices, when combined can produce great SEO successes.

The essence of content marketing is to create content to attract and motivate buyers through the entire marketing funnel towards the desired action of purchase. Link building on the other hand refers to the practice of creating backlinks to improve rankings in search engines.

The goal of content marketing is much larger which is why its relevance and importance have only increased over the years, whereas link building has slowly lost its sheen both due to updates in Google’s algorithm as well as its own limited application.

Synergistic Association between Link Building & Content Marketing

Till some time back SEO practices were focused mainly on creating backlinks to boost search rankings but as Google updated and refined its search engine, search engine marketers have come to realize that while link building is useful, creating too many backlinks serves no purpose whatsoever and can in fact be detrimental to the interests of the website.

But that does not mean that link-building has no relevance whatsoever. No matter how good your content is, it holds no value if no one sees it. Even good content needs to be marketed to draw attention to it, which is where building links is important.

However, building too many links just to improve search ranking is no longer a good SEO practice to follow and should be avoided altogether. It is better to focus on creating great content that can be marketed and link-building should be undertaken only where it holds relevance and can further the cause of content marketing.

Many SEO practitioners make the mistake of sacrificing long-term benefits for short-term gains by using link building as the primary SEO tactic rather than content marketing. Sure, backlinks can help you jump up the ranking list but only for a short period, whereas content marketing can help you boost rankings for a sustained period.

A DIY experiment to check the importance of Content Marketing

You can conduct a little experiment to check the importance of Content marketing. Build one page with good website content along with proper on-page, build another blank page and create backlinks for it. You will invariably notice that the 1st page with good content will index faster and keep going up the search rankings consistently.

The blank page with back links will show a great jump in rankings for the 1st week and possibly the 2nd and will start to lag behind post that and traffic to the link will start dropping as well. All this shows that content marketing plays the most vital role in SERP and building links can only add to the content marketing effort and not replace it.

Develop quality content that can be effectively marketed and used to improve search rankings through organic growth in traffic including link building.

Content is a prized asset for any website which can effectively be leveraged to generate quality backlinks. As this article from Search Engine Journal shows good content makes the process of building links much easier and faster.

SearchEngineJournal: “GOOD content is something a link builder can leverage. If you’re willingly spreading poor and irrelevant content just to get link equity,”

But what exactly do you mean by good content? Any good content in any form or shape will invariably possess the following characteristics:

• Thoroughly researched
• Has something of value to present
• Targeted towards a specific audience group
• The message is crisply and presented

Creating good content over a long period no doubt requires an investment of resources and people, but the results more than justify the investment. Webmasters love sites with good content mainly because they know that is precisely what users are looking for.

Content marketing creates a cyclical chain of value, good content leads to webmaster publishing, which in turn attracts links, which again leads to improved search rankings and more traffic.

Content marketing serves other important uses as well which are extremely helpful from a long-term business point of view:

Leveraging Social Media

Content marketing can help leverage social media to champion the cause of your brand and build a deeper connect with your target audience. The more your content is liked and shared on social platforms, the greater the chances of building a connection of trust both with online audiences as well as with Google Webmasters.

The net result is a sustained high search ranking as well as a steady inflow of visitors to the site through references and links.

Establish your brand as a thought leader

The other big advantage of content marketing is that it can help establish your brand as an authority and thought leader in your specific domain of operation. Publishing blogs and articles which provide interesting insights and are of interest and relevance to your target audience can establish your reputation as a credible brand that can go a long way in attracting both customers as well as prospective employees to your company.

Successful content marketing requires putting audience needs first, which is the golden rule for any kind of marketing. By bringing back focus on target audiences, content marketing has ensured that SEO practices are once again designed to keep the long-term interests of the brand in mind rather than short-term gains through link building.