Which one is more important: content or backlinks? You may find out which one matters the most and where to focus on getting more and better-converting traffic.
Today’s Ask SEO questions are from Swet in California asking: What matters the most in SEO: Is it the quality of links or the quality of content? This is a great question!
It’s all about the quality of content and not the quality of backlinks. But that is not only from an SEO standpoint; it is from the all-channel standpoint.
Many people disagree, but you must provide a quality experience on the website if you want quality backlinks. According to Search Engine Journal, if you take the other route and you get tons of traffic from the quality backlinks, if the content of the website doesn’t satisfy the needs of the visitors, the traffic becomes useless.
Backlinks help build trust and authority for search engines. Quality backlinks can bring new customers, leads, and readers. It comes from relevant sources, such as trade publications, major media, and niche blogs.
Backlinks are good if the experience on your website is poor and visitors simply bounce. Thus, quality content is more essential than backlinks.
Content includes:
- The text on the pages, categorical structure, wording choices for navigation, breadcrumbs.
- You will see:
- On the page
- The background
- Videos
- Layout of the content
- Product manufactured and sold directly. The content is the official product page, and it is yours, and that content is link-worthy.
All need to remember that SEO is a small part of the picture. SEO can bring sales and traffic, build brand recognition, and fill email lists. Quality content converts PPC, affiliate, influencer, and social media traffic that keeps the email list engaged and removes competitors from specific keywords that backlinks can’t rank you. Companies must not rely on one channel, including SEO for revenue.
When the search engines find your link plan, you will be devalued or penalized for the unnatural link scheme.
It is what your content does. It serves as the foundation of bringing your conversions, readers, and quality backlinks.
Think this way. Think this way: If you build tons of quality backlinks and the content for the website is garbage, you are just wasting all the effort.
After you have quality content, the visitors remember the experience they had before and skip over in the future.
All traffic in the world never matters if you can’t convert the traffic into sales, leads, subscribers, or increased page views. Bouncing visitors costs server bandwidth and advertisers that normally spend high CPMs for the ad spaces.
It is why quality content is more valuable than the quality or type of backlinks. Websites can rank based on the site structure, quality content, and external linking.
After getting those first few rankings, you can start to get sourced and the backlinks of the site start growing naturally. Once links start coming in, it is when it becomes easier to get more backlinks by pitching the journalists and other high-quality sources.
Many people will disagree. But, the bottom line will be providing a quality experience. on the website if you want quality backlinks.
Focus on the content first and build quality backlinks.