We have all heard the two main schools of SEO thought: 1) that content is king 2) Links are the most important factor in ranking. But has anyone actually done a real authoratative study on the actual value of a decent, good piece of content? What is the actual value one can on average expect from a decent page of unique content that they add to their homepage without adding extra backlinks to that page or anymore than maybe an internal link or two so the search engines know it exists when they visit? I'm not talking about super link bait like the stuff on damninteresting.com, but I'm also not talking about crap content either. Just good, decent content minimally SEO'd if at all, well written and with interesting points and something of value to the reader. Is it worth on average $10 a year in adsense revenue? $10 a month? I would be interested, as I am sure so isn't everyone else, in knowing the true value of content by itself. What have you found your content to be worth? Do you find ads, affiliate programs or selling your own items to make better returns?
It's virtually impossible to say that one or the other is more important because there's always this annoying word that will come into play, namely "depends." No, not adult diapers, but rather it depends on other factors in each specific situation. The industry, your objectives, and the specifics about your target audience provide too many variables to make this an easy question to answer. For example, the value of a page of decent content that deals with a topic that is of interest to web-savvy readers might yield more value than a page of equally decent content that deals with a topic that is of interest to people who don't use the web that much (i.e. gamers vs. senior citizens). Then again, senior citizens have more disposable income than gamers, in all likelihood, and so 1/10 the traffic from senior citizens might yield more results if you're selling something. Perhaps senior citizens are also more likely to click on Adsense ads, even if you're not selling something but attempting to get revenue from ads. But then again, if your objective is to get people to download something gamers might be much more likely to do so than paranoid seniors. So you see, it gets complicated real quick, and we haven't even gotten to the point of comparing content to backlinks. However, I will say this--if your first goal is to get a certain page to rank for a certain keyword phrase, then content should come first, and links second, because you could have all the links in the world pointing to your content but if the content itself doesn't lend itself well to ranking for that keyword then the links won't help much. As for most of the content my company produces, we worry much more about creating quality content than getting links back to it. For more info read theorganicseo.com/for_beginners/creating_content_for_search_engine_optimization.html and theorganicseo.com/tips_and_techniques/good_better_bestwriting_content_for_search_engine_optimization.html.
Content and Links are both important, that's why there's two methods use to optimized a site which is on-page and off-page optimization. on-page is about optimizing a content while off page is all about getting links to improved SERP. I think this two are connected, you have to create a good content and build links to promote and improved your site SERP. I also agree to utah-seo very well said.
How long does it take on average for Google to update links in your backlinks? It seems to take forever.