Prioritizing Content vs. Links: The Benefits of Each

Today’s leaders of SEO are content and links, but why are they so important? Does one have priority over the other? What’s the best option for improving your rankings on search engines? Even among SEO professionals, there is a debate over starting with content or links to get the best results for your website.
Benefits of content marketing and utilizing links for your SEO strategy compose a large part of the digital marketing landscape. It seems that every time you find an advantage over one, the other comes back with one as well.

Content

“Content is King,” the phrase we all know and love (and are probably tired of hearing) definitely holds credibility. When someone searches for information, they’re not just looking for an accurate answer but also a unique, all-encompassing interpretation.
Neil Patel brings up a specific case study in his blog post covering links vs. content. Brian Clark of Copyblogger created an online empire by starting with strong, informative content- for free. There were no links; the site’s popularity came from the high quality information provided which was easily accessible and free. This made it natural for other sites to link to it and viewers to visit, all without an advertising or sales team.
By creating great content, your site will be more reputable and naturally attract attention that increases your search engine rankings. Even Google acknowledges that content is the number one determinant in their ranking system.
The content is a base of your site, and a big on-page SEO component, that keeps viewers coming. If you put out ideas no one has published before or information with a unique perspective, you can become an authority that others reference. Specifically, powerful external sources can arise from other high-authority sites when you’re putting out good content. The benefits of content marketing can work wonders for your business no matter how big or small.

Links

Building links on external sites is a huge part of off-page SEO and, when done properly, boosts your site’s search engine ranking. For this reason, many SEO professionals prioritize their link building with new websites.
Links are also important for gaining visibility from the search engine, not just viewer exposure. Crawlers, which visit websites to gather information the search engines use to create entries or updates, can find your site easily when there are more links available.
Natural links are especially important in the ranking of your site. When other sites link to yours because of the stellar content, it’s a pat on the back that Google recognizes and rewards. Additionally, it’s recommended that there is at least one external link to each page of your site. Basically if it weren’t for links on your site, it would be impossible for it to show up on a search engine. The best way to benefit from this is to use best practices with back linking so they build your reputation and credibility instead of tearing it down.

So, Which One is Better?

The important thing to remember about the benefits of content marketing and links is that they both have great advantages on their own, but using them together is what really makes a difference in an SEO strategy. You can have your content planned out but if there are no links to the site, no one will even see your amazing content. The same applies to links; you can have thousands of links on the web but they’re pointless if they link to nothing.
If you can avoid it, don’t use content or links alone. In the case that your budget or company size limits you from doing both immediately, start with content so in the best case scenario there is at least something that has the potential to be linked to.