Content marketing is in some ways even better than link building as a SEO strategy. If you make the shift from search marketing to content marketing you will see an almost immediate increase in search engine ranking and organic traffic to your site. Google and other search engines are placing more value on natural links, authorship and social signals so it won’t be long until content marketing becomes a much repeated buzzword.
So much analyzing goes into some SEO campaigns that many times too little is actually done. While it is important to analyze, you must focus on doing or your site will be left behind. One very important way to take action is to add more great content to your site so that you can begin attracting links.
Link Building is Short Term – Here’s Why
If link building is your main or only SEO strategy you should expect that any rewards you get will not last for very long. Search engines are clued in on these tactics and they are constantly on the lookout for links that don’t seem natural. Any temporary benefits that you get from link building won’t last if the search engines suspect that you are acquiring links in less than ethical ways.
If you focus on content marketing as a strategy you will find that backlinks will be the natural result of that strategy. Focus your attention on providing value and encouraging others to share your content instead of letting the search engines dictate your actions and you’ll see that the benefits will be longer lasting. A link building strategy will work but it will not stand the test of time.
Put out great content and you’ll get traffic from it year after year. That traffic will come from referrals, search engines and even social media. You will get more in the long run when you target your audience instead of just the search engines.
Links No Longer Valuable? It Could Happen
There have been so many changes in SEO that it will come as no surprise (at least to me) if Google and other search engines decide to remove the value placed on links. Even today we can see that publications with lots of shares are making their way to the top of search results. Who’s to say that this won’t be the deciding factor in the future?
Although Google has made it clear this is not used as a factor in ranking, a piece of content that is shared often indicates that there is some value there. Google wants to serve up valuable content so they might one day look to social media to determine where the value is.
If you’ve been hit hard by algorithm updates and don’t know how to pick your business up its times to come up with a strategy to publish and share great content and promote it. When you do this you won’t need to rely so heavily on search. It’s possible to see almost immediate results but even if you don’t you can be certain that your efforts will one day bring rewards that last.
1 Comment