SEO can be very temperamental, especially when done incorrectly. Once you have been hit with a penalty, it can be a tiresome task to get that penalty removed. This is why understanding everything there is to know about content marketing vs link building is very important.
While both content marketing (such as content writing) and link building have their advantages and disadvantages, one clearly outweighs the other, which you will soon come to understand for yourself. Here are 3 things to think about when investing in content marketing vs link building:
3 Things To Think About When Considering Content Marketing vs Link Building
1. Measuring The Value
If one thing is clear, it is knowing what can easily be measured so you know whether your investment is a good one. Link building can be a fairly difficult factor to measure because of the amount of unpredictable expenses that are involved with it such as outsourcing fees, blogger fees, sending products for review and more. While it isn’t impossible, it is very hard and can take up a lot of time just measuring whether it has value.
On the other hand, content marketing can easily be measured by using tools such as Google Analytics which will let you track how much revenue is generated from each web page or blog posts. You can discover how many natural backlinks your content generates. Measuring the value of content is much quicker and easier than measuring the value of link building.
2. Au Natural
If there is one thing that Google algorithms love… it is anything au natural. Google constantly talks about how important it is to generate natural backlinks rather than build them, yet so many businesses are still working on building their backlinks. This can be a huge waste of time, if you are creating links that have little to no value.
Content marketing is the best way to generate natural backlinks, but it will only do so if the content is unique, extremely helpful and interesting. Publishing something that has been done before isn’t going to get you backlinks from reputable news websites. Creating content that is filled with unique data and research will.
Link building isn’t natural as you are going out of your way to ask websites to link to you rather than them finding your content interesting and wanting to link to you.
3. Outsourcing Costs
If you plan on outsourcing then an important thing to think about is how much it is going to cost you. Finding an expert link builder is a lot harder than finding a copywriter and because it is so hard to find a good link builder, they will charge a lot more for their time than a copywriter would. There are plenty of link builders out there who offer to get you 100 backlinks for $5 however these should be avoided like the plague… even if they do come with good reviews. The likelihood is that those good reviews have been left before the Google algorithms have had a chance to crawl these links and penalize their websites.
Conclusion
Hopefully now you have a much better idea of our opinion on whether you should invest into content or link building. We believe that if you create quality content, then the links will follow. Spending time to acquire links that provide little to no value (in our eyes) is a waste of your valuable time. If you have any questions or want to learn more, please send us a message.
