When the content and pages that they provide are optimized with good content and link building, this results in more leads for marketing and a much stronger brand.
The question is: which one is a better investment for businesses? It’s not an easy question to answer, but there are a few hints that search engines might be leaning towards one or the other.
Here are the arguments for both sides.
Creating quality content requires dedicated effort
Quality content helps generate leads like no other method. However, creating a steady stream of good content is a very challenging task. You need to be able to guarantee your visitors regular quality content that will inform and educate them on a variety of topics, while also keeping these topics relevant to your market.
Even experienced content creators find this to be a challenging endeavour.
Despite this difficulty, content remains an integral part of every marketing strategy. While creating content might be difficult, it’s something that is easily marketable. Businesses with a consistent content output generate a significantly larger percentage of leads compared to businesses that post content on occasion.
Keep in mind that one blog post or infographic per day isn’t nearly enough to boost numbers. What you need is a steady output of 3-5 pieces of content every single day. Many businesses only create content on a weekly basis, which is a lot less effective at garnering the attention of website visitors.
Link building isn’t very difficult
Link building often prompts complaints from clients. If your link building strategy isn’t doing well, you might have to ask yourself how you’re trying to acquire links. The answer is often bleak and shows an ineffective application of the strategy.
Proper link building is considered a relatively easy part of digital marketing strategies and a good strategy goes a very long way when applied correctly.
If you’re only using your blogs and social media posts for the foundation of your link building, you’re not effectively utilizing it. You have to build links using diverse tactics that complement one another.
If you allow others to syndicate your content and feature it on their website, you can get the credit and links required to build a strong portfolio. Linking to others’ blogs on your own website will often have them returning the favour not long after.
Make sure you have press releases ready for big announcements and promotions. Alongside a strong social media presence, these tactics will help you build all the links you need.
Focusing on link building has become less effective
Many marketing firms take their link building very seriously, getting as many links as possible to hook up to their content. While this may have been an effective strategy in the past, times are quickly changing. There’s no reason to focus on quantity over quality anymore, especially when building links.
This is due to the recent changes introduced by search engines like Google. Content that’s centred around the lowest common denominator won’t get you as many points as it used to. Junkies SEO tactics and keyword-riddled pieces of content are quickly skimmed over by search engines and disregarded. High-quality informative pieces are what both search engines and visitors are looking for.
Links come naturally to content
There’s no avoiding link building in your digital marketing strategy, but it doesn’t have to be your primary focus. Content can be just as effective at generating leads and building links. A high-quality piece of content will naturally attract links, as visitors and social media followers will be inclined to share it. This is why so many businesses are moving away from link building and focusing on their content.
To make your content effective, you have to optimize it for a variety of metrics. Applying proper SEO tactics is crucial if you want your content to be visible. This is the difficult part of getting content out there.
Most businesses won’t have the resource or knowledge to optimize every single element of their website and content marketing strategy and help reach their full potential. This is why they often utilize the help of GWM Brisbane experts to optimize their websites and content.
Delegating this task to more experienced marketers allows you to focus more on the quality of the content and how it’s displayed on your website.
Future trends will impact link building
It’s hard to say where Google and other search engines will take their algorithms, but the current trends are providing us with enough information to make an educated guess. As algorithms improve, they move away from recognizing large numbers of links as a surefire sign of good content. Instead, search engines seem to be favouring content more and more.Â
If this trend continues, it’s likely that focusing on link building will become an even less effective strategy as time progresses.
There’s no way to be sure of this, but it seems consistent with Google’s search engine policies. They want to give users a steady stream of content that is guaranteed to pique their interest.
While building links provides a great short-term boost for content, it’s the content itself that needs to be improved. With further improvements, search engine algorithms will be able to better detect whether or not the content that’s linked will be of use for users. Making the content more informative and useful will guarantee more hits and leads, while link building will only do so much.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to be said about content marketing and link building. They’re both important parts of the marketing strategies of businesses all around the world, but they’re not on equal footing as of right now.
Given enough time, it seems that proper content marketing will prove to be more effective and lead to better results for businesses. Still, link building remains strong and it should be part of any business’s marketing strategy, but the focus should remain on improving the content.