Link "Building" or "Earning" Which one are you doing? Both?

[BrettDixon]

I'm curious to see how SEO's interpret this section of the Google Webmaster Guidelines on Link Schemes:

The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.

(Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en)

I'm not asking what you "should" do, but rather what do YOU do... Do you interpret this as:

• Create awesome content and the links will come?
• Create Awesome Content and Outreach a bit?
• Perhaps you don't follow it all and concentrate on building links over content?

What do you do and why?

Discuss!

[BrettDixon]

I too follow this approach Lesley...mentioning the subject of a blog and asking for comments / or just telling them you've written about them really is a good way to get the content "out there" especially if these companies are very active and influential.

[vmialik]

Hi Brett,

• Create awesome content and the links will come?

• Yes thats exactly what Google is implying.

• Create Awesome Content and Outreach a bit?

• Yes on this too, the way I interpret what you said however is, create awesome content and tell people that you have created it, share a link on your twitter, G+, Facebook, etc. this is totally fine. What I am not saying is going out and bluntly asking/persuading/paying people to like share or link to your content.

My thoughts here.

[LesleyPaone]

I fall into the category of creating good content and links will come. Not to say that I don't out reach, I do both. I write a blog on an e-commerce package, and when I have a post that mentions another company I send them an email asking for a facebook post or retweet.

I think people try to churn out "good content" too often and it doesn't work. On my blog I get about 1k uniques a day. Which for my niche, I would estimate I am in the top 80%. I write a new article about every 2 weeks or so, they are technical articles. But at the same time, they are generally good articles. A few months back I had an article retweeted by hosting company, picked up by hn, and posted on reddit. It got 50k unique views in just a couple of days. Good content gets passed around, bad content gets skimmed and forgotten about.