Center for Internet Marketing
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The Links vs. Content "Debate"

A debate of sorts is raging in the search engine optimization community, about whether content or linking is the best path to top rankings. This debate has been played out in all of the major search engine discussion forums and has become fodder for countless blogs.

In this article, I lay out the claims of both sides, reaching the conclusion that neither strategy is sufficient by itself. The number of people who truly believe you can do one without the other is small - they just happen to be extremely vocal.

The Case For Linking

The proponents of linking have a simple argument, which centers around the text used in "incoming links." Incoming links are the links pointing to your site's pages from another site. When certain words are used in the text of those links, your site is more likely to rank well for the words that were used.

Search engines now put so much emphasis on the text contained in links, that it is nearly impossible to achieve good rankings for competitive or generic search terms without an active linking strategy. Therefore, the argument goes, you must focus on cultivating incoming links with your targeted keywords.

They will cite countless examples of sites that rank in the top 10 with little or no content, and in many cases, where the words involved don't even appear on the page. This happens mainly with Google, but Google is still a dominant force in the search engine world.

The Case For Content

Rather than focus on highly competitive search terms, content advocates prefer to use "SEO copywriting" methods to enhance the content of a website, and cover a broader range of search terms.

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