As I get more into this SEO thing, I notice in doing SEO on my own site that some of the methods that I read or I'm advised to take conflicts with what I actually see and I'm just trying to clear this up a bit. In doing SEO on my site, a number of folks said I should put more content on my home page, but when I take a look at some of my competitors sites, I notice that these folks don't have much content on their home pages either. In fact the site ranking #1 in Google's search results for my key phrase doesn't have much more content then I do, but they do have a ton of backlinks. So my question is what's more important, backlinks or site content?
They are both VERY important. You need the links to rank. You need good content to get people to convert (whatever that means for your particular site) once they are on your site. Good content also leads to more and better links... natural links. Good content causes users to tell their friends about your site. There is a constant struggle between what's good for SEO and what's good for users. Good SEOs make good decisions when such conflicts arise. In most situations with a little thought you can find a way to accomplish both a good user experience AND help your page from an SEO perspective. If no good compromise can be found for such a conflict, I tend to side with what is good for users unless it is something absolutely crucial to SEO. On-page factors including content carry little weight in comparison to off-page factors (links). Some estimate about 20-30% of rankings are determined by on-page factors and that the remaining 70-80% are the result of off-page factors. So giving up a little from an SEO perspective in favor of making the user's experience a better one typically only has a very small negative affect from an on-page SEO perspective.
Well...if some body has fetched more customers through good back linking..and dont have enough good services or content to make them stay..it wont work for them as well. So better to have services and things that you like to offer people good..If services are good..they will bring more customers by word of mouth only.
My honest opinion is that the question is irrelevant. In a competitive niche, you need both. One without the other will lead to failure. In your case, however, I think it was recommended that you add text content to further optimize your page. Yes, you can probably overcome your lack of content with more backlinks. But regardless of how many backlinks you get, your ranking will be better with better on page optimization, so I don't see why it would be a question.
When I would have choose I would go for the backlinks because I had the same experience as you, but I am continuing to do them both!
Talking strictly about SEO backlinks are more important IMHO... There are millions of sites with almost no written content that rank well. For example search for "free email", Hotmail will come up first and there is nothing but a form there. In this case the "content" is the application but google can't see it, it only sees the millions of users who naturally linked because of the application quallity. So still the content has to be there, not for the SE but for the users. And having good content will also increase your changes of being naturally linked.
Content is vital. If you are in competitive niche, you can have a link building war - but google does look for a forgotten little thing called keywords.
Awesome feedback...this discussion has certainly increase my knowledge on the subject. With the fact that it's much easier to create content then to get backlinks, I'm thinking the easier route for me would be to create the content and then work on getting backlinks since both are important. However, since you can over time acquire an infinite number of backlinks I think that's where I should put most of my efforts once the content is in place. Agree?
Right now, its all backlinks. Its pathetic, you could have one word on a page with 2000 backlinks and be ranked #1 for that word.
Yeah.. Both Quality contents and Backlinks are very important for SERP. So you can concentrate and give the importance for both.
I think combination of Unique site content and quality back links will help you to win battle of SERP over your competitors. IF you have only 1 thing from content or back link then it will not benefical. like your site has good content but without back link your site is not going to rank. this is the importance of back link. if you have only back links and your content is not up to the mark. when visitor landed on your site and found that your content is not good then they will exit your website. so it will harm your business. so better having combination of good quality site content + back links. if you need my help then let me know.