SEO - Content vs Backlinks

I am the operator of a year-old website and for the past month, I've been working on building links. I have seen my SERP rankings improve slightly.

However, I have seen much talk about how SE's are relying less and less on links and more on unique content to base their SERP's on.


What baffles me is that I'm ranking better for my main keyword than a site that is not only older than mine, but has thousands of more links than my site does.

Could this be because Google thinks the "content" of my site is better than the other sites? And, in your opinion, does an active blog help a new website than a *realistic* link building campaign?

 

Content is a strong ranking "factor". I often rank high in Google and especially in Yahoo without having any backlinks. The point is in balance beetwen well searched keyword phrase (put it in the title and anchor text of all your INTERNAL, and inbound links) and the competition. If a choosen topic is not covered well by others already, you have good chances to rank well.

In high competition environment you'll still need good backlinks - relevant (not always necessary...) and with high PR (but again this maybe changed lately).

 

there are 200 factors that go into play involved in the google se algo that determs your search placement..

 

Building links is important for any competitive industry. Not all links are created or valued equally by search engines. One good link can be worth one-hundred or more junk links.

Content is important, but not content just for content's sake. Your content must be valuable to your target market. Your content should be link worthy.

 

take a look at this PRO! he knows better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCFx7X5bB9A
but I don't know if you can understand him! hahahaha

 

I will give my vote for building strong backlinks which will contain your main keywords
Unique content is appreciated, but serps want to see if other people likes your unique content by searching for backlinks to your site

 

What I still don't understand is that my competitor is ranking worse than I am, even though the site has far more links, and links from authorative sources - something which I could only wish I had.

Both of our sites offer identical products and very similar services to go along with said products.

 

content is the king, if your content is unique, you does not need much promote, and the visitor will come true.

as one of my friend, he write good content,
he never promote much his website, and he get PR 6 from PR 3 in just short 3 months times.

"Content is the king"

 

From what I have read and what many experts (Fishkin, Wall, etc.) say is that Google focuses mainly on links, title and h1 tags and urls, while Yahoo seems to focus on content, meta tags as a whole, and links to an extent. We have achieved Google top ten rankings for many clients without worrying too much about content.

 

focus on quality backlinks.

 

I do pretty well with well structured internal links and good content than I do with backlinks at this point.

 

Properly SEOed links are very important and if they match the <title> that they are linking to, then this is great. Your content is then the next important element.

As for why you are linking higher than your competiton, you have done a better job of SEOing the page and your content is liked better by Google.

 

content is just words on a screen read by a program.

 

The reason links have lost their power is because some people thought (still think) that 1000 PR 0 links should get them on the first page of Google. So, they create 1000 blogs, that point to their money site.

Guess what? They SE's aren't impressed.

Links are still important, but the SE's are looking at the quality of links, not the quantity.
And, that's were CONTENT comes in. If you have quality content on your websites/blogs then quality websites will give you a one-way link. After all, if your content is giving value to their customers, why shouldn't they point to you.

But, if you're consumed with created 100,000 AdSense pages a day, then no one will link to you.

 

Makes sense to me.

Oh the wonders of SEO. If my market knew anything about optimizing for search engines, I wouldn't stand a chance

 

I had 2 sites de-indexed in August. Over 100 backlinks to each from a wide variety of domains.

They were probably what Google calls thin affiliate sites.

I did have unique content on each site, but probably not enough of it.

AlJ

 

Well mate!!
As they say "content is the KING in SEO" but with it a proper meta tag optimization is also required to get good Search engine ranking.

In my opinion your website is on top because:
1. it is well meta tag optimized than your competitor.
2. Content is rich.
3. May be your competitor has done excessive link building
4. May be you have more quality backings than him

The List will go on.... The Bottomline is Till you are on top "You are the best"


Sara

 

I agree for all the comment !!!!!!!!!
Ultimately It's true "Content is King" in SEO

 

There's some more seo tactics that work incrediblly well that go beyond just good content , internal and external linking. I would be willing to share this info with serious SEO'ers in a pm only.

They are whitehat methods that work exceptionally well. However, most people just don't get it, so I won't explain to the public.

Think I'm bullshitting you, look at this keyword that I targeted today "yellow pages financial crisis"

In less than 4 hours, I now hold the number 1 position very strongly.

 

That is probably because your site is the only one which matches the exact phrase for yellow pages financial crisis.

I am not telling that you are not good at SEO. Just my thoughts about this particular search term.