This was one of the hottest discussion topic for SEO experts in 2015 and holds equal importance in this New Year 2016. It’s a concern for many newbie SEO professionals as well as online businesses whether content marketing or link building can help gain higher rankings in Google? Or which is more important?
Let’s take a glance at some basic things about link building and content marketing you must be aware of before you compare the two for their importance in the SEO space.
Link building
Also known as outreach, link building is a process of contacting relevant and authenticates websites or blogs in order to earn quality links. There are mainly three ways link building is performed: manual link building, paid links and organic links.
The process of manual link building involves keyword analysis, which makes SEO professionals, like us, aware of trending keywords or phrases in your niche. Once the SEO specialists know which are the most commonly used search terms for your products or service, they look for relevant websites/blogs/directories to set up manual links.
Paid links are considered as a bad SEO practice. In this case, every link you gain has some monetary amount affixed to it which you need to pay. Organic links are a fruit of a powerful content marketing campaign. Such links hold most important for Google search engine algorithm too.
Content marketing
Content marketing is about creating and distributing quality content to gain attention from well-defined target audience. It can draw in profitable results for your business if you have the right strategy in place. Guest posting is a form of content marketing. Videos, social media shares, blogs, email letters, etc. are a part of content marketing strategy.
For a successful content marketing campaign, you will need to focus more on quality and relevancy of content instead of quantity. Relevant websites gain higher index in Google’s search algorithm when compared to site’s brand authority. Content marketing doesn’t result in one day, one week or one month. You need to make regular, consistent efforts which will need some specific skill-set and a plenty of time every day.
There exists a powerful relationship
The equation between content marketing and link building are at core to any SEO strategy. You need to follow the best of industry practices used for link building in order to make the most of your content marketing.
An excellent content marketing strategy will make a large amount of link building to take place. Provide valuable and relevant content to your target audience as it will eventually help you gain higher rankings in Google. So, combine link building with your full-proof content strategy for some real measurable benefits.