Remember that famous line muttered by all SEO experts back in the day - “Content is King”? Well those days have been long gone for a few years now! A semi-decent website with enough backlinks can easily outrank a website that has tons of content in today’s search engine world. Inbound links are the single most important factor in search engine optimization for getting your site to the top of the SERPs, and don’t let anyone else tell you differently!
The more advanced SEO experts probably have known this for quite some time now, but when I surf around many of the webmaster boards I still see a lot of confusion out there among webmasters. Many of these webmasters, after spend several days doing on-page optimization for their site, decide to start doing some link building. They get a good number of inbound links from directories, posting in forums, social bookmarking, etc. thinking their website is going to shoot up in the search engine results, but it doesn’t happened leaving them scratching their heads thinking what went wrong. Next thing you know they stop their link building journey and find themselves posting on boards like Digital Point or Webmaster World looking for advice on search engine optimization and why their site isn’t ranking high. This is where I catch myself reading their forum post looking for advice. The two mistakes these webmasters just made are 1. they stopped link building because they didn’t see immediate results in their website ranking and 2. going on a forum asking for advice is getting in the way of what they should continue doing, link building.
In addition to being the most important factor in today’s SEO industry, gathering inbound links is also probably the most time consuming and frustrating part of search engine optimization because there are so many variables that the webmaster has no control over: sites remove links constantly, sites get closed down, sites don’t want to waste their link juice by linking to you, Google tells you not to buy/manipulate links or you’ll be banned, etc. - the list goes on and on! In addition, when there are no immediate results to show for all those long hours of hard work the frustration continues to add up even more.
Webmasters have to understand there is a huge lag time between the actual link building tasks and the benefits that come with the link building process. This is where many webmasters get caught up! Our natural tendency during the link building phase of SEO is to gather a good number of inbound links over a couple days or weeks, and then wait for the search engines to recognize these inbound links and rerank our site in the new position. Once the search engines update the rankings and your website position in the SERPs several weeks, or even months, usually would have past. This is the wrong way to build inbound links; instead webmasters should gradually but continually add inbound links to their website, never stopping the process in anticipation of waiting to see what their new rankings will be when the search engines update or maybe because they are disappointed they don’t see immediate results from all their hard work. Persistence and patience is key when it comes to link building!
Now that I have explained the importance of inbound links, and how to go about the link building process, there is one catch to this whole “It’s All About Inbound Links” post. If you remember in my opening statement I mentioned that inbound links are the most important factor for SEO and mediocre websites with enough inbound links can outrank websites with tons of content. Although true, here is the catch: Even though inbound links are the driving force which push your site to the top of the SERPs, once you get to the coveted first page results you better make sure your website looks like an authority site for that particular topic, which means having tons of unique and exceptional content! The reason I say this is the search engines scrutinize websites taking their top SERP placements more than websites ranking, lets say for example, in the 1,345 position. There is more manual intervention and policing at the top of the SERPs, compared to a more algorithmic ranking of websites on the lower end of rankings. Getting your site ranking in the top pages of the SERPs puts it under a magnifying glass so to speak. When you have reached this stage in your search engine optimization journey without a doubt having unique content and looking like an authority site can bump your site up those few extra spots and help your website maintain its position in the SERPs. So even though inbound links are the most important SEO factor, coming in a close second is unique, quality content and tons of it!!!
Content isn’t king anymore, inbound links are, but content comes in a very close second!
P.S. - I know I said I would wait until after the new design was up to make another post, but I was getting the blogging itch and couldn’t wait.
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