Anyone else notice links don't seem as important?

I have two blogs that are pretty much in the same niche, and they have about the same amount of content.

I built a lot of links to one of them over the past 6 months, and it's not ranking much different from the one I've just put posts on (and haven't built links).

Both of them got about 50,000 visits last month and both are doing well with Adsense earnings.

These links are pretty good quality too (in-content links from bloggers, broken link replacements, etc.)

Makes me think good content and keyword research are all you need these days.

Anyone else have a different experience?

 

The high quality of content is important to attract more visitor to your website.

Engaging in social media marketing to promote your content is the best way.

So, makes more good content and keywords to gain more audience.

 

Hey Sloth, are you linking the sites to each other, if you are then the link juice is possibly being shared to the site you haven't built any links to outside of your own link.
Is that a possibility? Regards, James

 

Backlinks are still important. However, if your site is well optimized with unique, quality content then this will help a lot in terms of ranking ability. I obviously cannot rate the quality of your links without analysis but you should stick with high quality guest posts (unique content) on relevant, trusted sites. I find these work really well today with ranking and also getting your content shared.

 

Good content has and always will be important. In competitive niches it requires both, though. Hard to rank for anything even remotely competitive without link building.

 

Links are important, industry related links though. Don't go linking your egg shop with a bread shop google just ignores it.