Create content or more link building?
-
For those of you who have been doing white hat SEO for many years, I'm curious what % of your time (and/or how many hours/week) you spend on 2 activities:
-- creating new, original content for your site
-- work on getting links to your existing content
I find that working at getting links via article marketing, guest blogging, forum posting, etc, is an open ended time suck that never ends. But maybe a necessary investment for sites that have fewer external links than their competitors (?).
Adding unique original content to my site is also time consuming, and I'm not sure about the short-term vs long-term benefit of it.
I'm curious if you guys who rank in top 3 positions of the SERPs split your time evenly between link building and content building, or if you spend more time on one than the other? And does the answer change for a site that's been around for a while and already has several hundred external links and several hundred pages of original content?
Where should I spend my time on a site that is 8 months old, has about 90 pages of original content (all with good on-page SEO), and several hundred external links (with mostly relevant anchor texts)? My goal is to rank higher for the key terms people search on to find a service like mine. Currently I'm on page 1 in SERPs but not in top 3.
-
Boy, this is a tough question because it varies from site to site, page to page, and keyword to keyword. We publish new content every day and much of it is exclusive to our site. Beyond that I focus primarily on creating content to capture long-tail traffic.
To begin with, I would ask myself the following questions (which you may have already done)...
- What keywords are really driving your business? Have you pinpointed which keywords are most likely to lead to conversions? Make sure you are building links for the keywords that lead to revenues...not just visits.
- Of the keywords pinpointed in #1, what does the competitive landscape look like for each? Be sure to prioritize which keywords/pages you are working on based on a combination of potential return and level of competition.
- What links do your competitors have? Is there an opportunity to catch up by getting the same links?
Second, there is always an opportunity to combine content generation and link building. Try to identify content other sites need or are lacking. Create that content and then reach out to let the site owner know so they can point visitors to the page.
Finally, to avoid the huge time suck (or to manage it), consider scheduling link building time and content generation time throughout the week to help yourself be focused and efficient. Jot down content ideas and/or potential linking partners whenever they come up. Then on during your scheduled times, work through your list of ideas / sites.
All that being said, there is no 'right' answer. Link building and content creation are both difficult tasks that take time. Which reminds me...have you considered hiring an intern to be your content writer? Just another idea...
I'm pretty sure this doesn't answer your question, but I hope it helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
link building
I want to know is there any way of increasing DA/PA of the website? Is there any benefit in ranking if we increase PA of specific page? Recently my website DA is 6 i want to increase it 30.
Link Building | | hfameraya1980 -
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
We had a blog that has been inactive since 2011\. Now since the website is redesigned and we are working on link building, is it advisable to use the old blog content in the new blog?
The content of the old blog belongs to the company, hence no issues of copied content. The options I have are: 1. Use old content as is 2. Re-use old content in more interesting format i.e use info-graphics and the likes 3. Do not use any of the old content. Create new content
Link Building | | Tusk2Tail0 -
Link Building Services Post Penguin
Hi Can anyone suggest a link building service that is of higher quality and still works nowadays? All the private networks were deindexed and it looks like we're left only with blasting software, which i don't really like. I am doing research on link building now and i can't seem to find any service that meets the quality of BMR or other deindexed Homepage Networks. Thanks!
Link Building | | comancsm0 -
Are you using ArticleBase.com for link building?
I'm digging my way through my competitors' link profiles on OSE and came across one that had been using a site called ArticleBase.com Apparently you can publish articles for free and browse other published articles for usage on your own site (provided you follow their TOS). It actually seems like a nifty idea. I'm wondering if anyone has utilized this site for re-publishing content and building external links. Worth the effort? Thanks!
Link Building | | TBiz0 -
Contests For Link Building?
I have been seeing a trend that a lot of people are hosting contests with prices in the high end XXX $ or low end XXXX $ as the first price. Usually it's arranged via a number of sponsors and you'd have to link to all the sponsors using the keywords given. Some people provide a text file with everything pre formatted to make it easy. I have seen several sites paying 50$ to be part of a contest so that they can get some link juice from participating sites. Since the prize money is huge, many people will participate and will get lot of links. There was a person who built an entire business out of this (Not naming him. He's still doing the same thing but with a small twist). What's your take on such strategies? Don't you think it's high time Google caught these sort of "link schemes"?
Link Building | | ConversionChamp0 -
Creating new url structure for inbound links
In an effort to make is easier for our clients to link to content on our site we intend on creating a simpler url structure for them: site.com/1234 will 301 to site.com/xyz/abc/1234-this-is-where-we-want-you Is there a danger of creating new 301's just for this purpose, the goal here is to make it easier for clients to link to content and thus garner more inbound links.
Link Building | | antiquesearcher0 -
If I write a PR release on a site such as PRweb with anchor-text links that is picked up and published by other news sites, do the engines consider this duplicate content or additional, beneficial links?
I recently wrote a news release on PRweb that was picked up identically by 8 other news websites, with the same anchor-text links as the original. Is the reproduction of duplicate content and links across different websites like this to the benefit or detriment of SEO and ranking power? Some of the links are: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/eventa-new-eventa-christmas-parties-website-is-launched-648923?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Alert&utm_content=pressrelease http://www.prweb.com/releases/christmasparties/neweventasite/prweb8562064.htm Many thanks!!
Link Building | | RobertHill0