Several of my unique blog posts & photos have been picked up by very high profile websites/blogs (without me noticing until I realised my traffic had quadrupled). It does happen, but you can't rely on it as your only link strategy. So no, its not a bunch of crap. Just because people aren't voluntarily linking to your websites it doesn't mean it doesn't happen for the rest of us...
Doing everything you said (backlinks, hustling, whatever) with great content will yield better results than with poor content.
I did not read all replies, but the original poster has a valid point. Some replies seem to miss the point. He isn't saying NOT to write good content, his point is, just because you write good content does not mean someone is gong to link to you. Does it happen where someone puts a link on their site to another site because of content, I'm sure it does. But most do not. In my research, I visit hundreds of sites with quality content that is valid for my theme, but I'm not going to put a link to them on my site. I may bookmark them in firefox browser to find them again or create a shortcut on my desktop, but to put a link on my site -- hmmm -- not me. Those who do link to other sites is because it offers some kind of service or script that is beneficial to the site. Those who have the skill to program or write a good script, is probably the ones who get great one-way backlinks, but I believe the poster is talking about pure content (words). In that case, I agree with him.
You gotta have both, you could have all the people coming to your site, but if you don't have good content or any content, they will either a) not stay or b) not return. Writing good content is too keep visitors coming back, and if your site is not content based you have to have another reason to keep them coming back. YES...without writing article and etc no one will see your site but ALSO you have to have something to keep them coming back.
It all depends on the content. For example, we offer free website content that links back to us and this gives us a ton of backlinks. And some of our popular SEO Tools, like the Google backlinks checker gets linked to just because people love the tool, so it all depends.
I agree with the OP except if you have high quality content that worth linking to and of course only few can write viral content.
If you write good content and social bookmark it, people will start coming and perhaps even linking to it. That's what's happened in my experience, at least.
Link your post cheered me up, thanks, to some degree I agree with your comments. People are too often heard to say 'add content to your site and you will be fine' maybe they only say it because 2 trillion others utter the same words. The problem is people are being vague in the extreme, below I will explain about content, its implementation and how it benefits a website. Linkmaster, don't bang your head against a wall, the strategy works as my own site ranks highly in ultra competitive sectors. The term unique content is surprisingly difficult for people to understand, as they read it as 'copy content from other sources' or copy and amend content from another sources' not write your own content from scratch. It's true, Google loves content it is a major aspect in the indexing process to index a page Google, removes the stop words, such as ....it, in, as, and, is .......the remainder of the text is shoveled into Big G's machine analised and given a score based on the content and other factors. A new website should be viewed as a newborn child that needs nurturing, inbound links and content are its food. Implementation of content, now here is the tricky part. The benefit of adding content is simply, the Internet is a Global community, the more you give the more you will benefit (over time). The problem lies in content implementation. Ideally new content should be given its own page a search engine friendly platform, with a good URL, for example, a new page on Car Parts in London should have a URL, something like www.mysite.com/car-parts-in-london.html it is then simply a matter of doing a spot of deep linking towards this page, programmes like ping.fm certainly help. The secret of owning a successful website is not just content, it aint just links, it certainly is not meta tags and sitemaps it is a combination of everything, mixed with hard work over a long period of time, the last part people certainly struggle with as we are not all blessed with a sound work ethic and dedication.
You gotta have both, you could have all the people coming to your site, but if you don't have good content or any content, they will either a) not stay or b) not return. Writing good content is too keep visitors coming back, and if your site is not content based you have to have another reason to keep them coming back. YES...without writing article and etc no one will see your site but ALSO you have to have something to keep them coming back.
I personally don't think people just come back to a site because of the content, although it does play a major part. Business websites need to validated and give a feeling of trust to the visitor, this can be done by implementing certain features. A few days we launched a new website for one of our clients www.theprintedbagshop.co.uk the idea was to work on the things mentioned above. The website is fortunate enough to rank very highly for a wide rang of keywords, it is hoped the new site will improve the conversion ratio
The original poster is right. Especially in highly competitive niches where every website in that niche is money oriented, these sites are not going to be linking out to just to do a good deed. Instead they will view you as a competitor. In many niches I do affiliate marketing for I NEVER seek links from other webmasters. I don't want to reveal my cards to them. Why should I point out my site to them so they can check out my backlinking structure and outdo me in the engines? Sure, they might notice my site over time any way as I start to kick their butt in the engines, but why alert them to my site? See, this whole idea of building "friends" on the Net is so 2005. The Net is not a buddy building system. Well, it certainly can be if you're just having fun building a blog without monetizing it and you truly want to just link to and from other "friends." But business competitors are not your friends. You need to be careful about how you approach competitors. Only offer a link swap or suggest that you'll write a free article for them in exchange for a backlink at your peril - remember, you're basically showing your entire business to them. If you are more "stealth" about your business and rely upon a lot of manual backlinking you'll do just as well - no need to seek "friends." Dan
lolz i really like the title..... keep it up have a blog with this type of titles people will really like that blog lolz
lolz i really like the title..... keep it up have a blog with this type of titles people will really like that blog lolz
Sure they do. I have a pretty basic site, no flash, no frills, but lots of good content. And I get about 9,000 repeat visitors each month. They're coming back to the content.
I really understand your frustration. I myself have been writing good and unique content for one of my site for about 1 year. I have gathered hundreds of pages of unique content. However, after submitting to some directories and submitted my rss to rss directories and so forth, visitors started to came, commented my articles, and linked to them from their blogs. After 1 year I have found out that my work hasn't been for nothing. P.S - Good things don't happen overnight.
Content needs link love in any niche. Since it takes time to write an article or money to pay someone to do it for you induced link action/comments never hurts & Web 2 makes that possible.
Quality content is only the first step, for people to link to you you need to share the content! Set up a technorati account, use digg, delicious, distribute your articles and include a link to the original content in the link, bookmark your content in all the bookmarking sites you can find! Eventually people will read your content a link back to you, but don't expect to base your link strategy only on content writing! I don't like to promote my site this way but I recommend you read our blog seosapien . com / blog / you'll find many articles on how to promote your site and content. Do not get frustrated! SEO is a long term work if you want to rank for keywords that will actually generate traffic and money, it might take several months but once you on top you'll be happy about all the time you spent optimizing and building links.
It seems you don't need content to have a high SERP, you can get that with a ton of backlinks and good SEO. However, no one is going to come back to Your Site if you don't have quality content.
That's right. It's not hard to get first-time visitors. But they will become repeat visitors only if they consider your content to be worthwhile.