In my opinion,you should have good content,then optimizate your site,such as keyword,title,description,backlinks.Then your site has a good rank on search engines.
Well i'm also wondering about backlinks and how google index website. I have found something strange, using a specified keywords i have deffierent results display on page 1 of Google, any one can explain for me?
Agreed with others. Combine backlink and unique contents for your site, your ranking position in search engines will be higher.
I had a site that was no.1 in google for a long period and had some good links into it. I had a legal dispute over the domain and was forced to remove all images/text etc including meta tags and left a blank white page. For 3 months whilst this legal dispute went on, the site remained number 1 in google. It is a relatively competitive marketplace within which I trade. As much as I would like to believe content is king, I have to beg to differ. In my opinion getting the right backlinks can be more than 80% of the battle to getting number 1 for a certain keyword.
it is true that both are important for ranking. But quality backlinks are more important, as many sites have good contents, but not enough backlinks, then poor ranking, such as many blogs. you need to have backlinks to rank high.
If you have lots of BL ,but weak, non updated content then you just gonna need more and more BL to stay afloat. Because the bounce rate is going to be high. It may be a strategy, because some people will click your ads on the way out.. But if you have good BL and fresh content, that is updated daily, then your website will gain in SERPs and stay there.Which will give you traffic and visitor$. In any case you need BL to get your site out there. At the same time you need a content to support and keep on raising the traffic. BL+content=$traffic$ My point is: BL or not, with content or without, to make more $$, you need more traffic.
I would call it as a Tie between both the factors. After all its not good to reject one and its good to have content oriented backlinks and the vice versa