This statement may come as shocking, but in SEO only links matter. A page can have zero content, even its title tag can be off and it would still rank just as well provided it has good links pointing to it.
Why am I saying this now? Because there are too many so called “SEO experts” and “gurus” that preach all kinds of SEO techniques, most of which are complete waste of time. Only links matter. Period.
Now, don’t get me wrong, you still need content and a well structured site because even if your site ranks high it won’t mean a squat if you don’t make sales. And your content is what converts your prospects. So you better have that one right.
However, when it comes to pure SEO, there’s just one important variable – links. Need proof? It’s the classic of SEO. As long as almost all results for “click here” returns pages that don’t even have “click here” in the title, it will stand true.
What does it all mean? It makes things very simple. You don’t have to stress out over content length or keyword density, you don’t have to stress over your site structure and internal links. All you have to do is… get more links. High quality links, I might add.
And also don’t forget that all content you write is only for your visitors, not for the search engines. The bots couldn’t tell a difference between a shopping list and a scientific research, but your visitors do. So don’t even think about writing something just for the search engines if it doesn’t add value to your visitors – that’s a waste of time, yours and that of your readers.
Thanks for reading!
I disagree that it is *all* links. Backlinks do play a major role, but a website with very few backlinks will be ranked based on its “relevance”, which is derived from keywords in the content. Yes, you can be ranked without any content.. but it does add to your ranking for specific keywords. Without keywords in your title, meta tags, and content, search engines wouldn’t know what to rank you for! Especially when your backlink anchor text isn’t relevant, like your “click here” example.. that site might not be highly ranked for the keywords they were actually going for.
Depends on how you look at it. I agree with your point of view, but I also agree with the one I made in this post.
What you described, the “on-page SEO”, is actually just making the site search engine friendly. It’s a design issue. So you can say that a search engine friendly site can rank with zero SEO, but when you’re trying to rank it for a particular keyword it all comes down to links.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that SEO is simple when you have a user friendly site – it’s all about links.
Not only links are the only in SEO, there are other factors like proper keyword, sensible contents and backlinks that play a pivotal role in ranking. Thanks for sharing this nice piece.
As I said above, things like content and keywords and everything that is considered “on-page SEO” is the issue of creating the site. Of course you need a site before you can rank it. But the process of actual ranking is all about inbound links, provided you actively seek to be ranked, i.e. do SEO.
What’s more important and what shows the preferences of search engines, is that you can rank a completely irrelevant page for any keyword you want by building enough backlinks. If there are other pivotal factors, how come their absence doesn’t prevent from ranking?
interesting! when you say high quality links, what do you mean? any specific choiuces like, articles, press releases or if you have anyother choice plzz share it with all of us here
Content and networking are both important for SEO. Links without relevant content is useless, as is content without enough ‘linking’.
@Jeffrey Gross: by quality links I don’t mean any specific type of site/page/content but rather links from high quality sites themselves as well as prominent pages on those sites. How many and what quality links the site has? What PageRank? How many links are to the page you’ll be getting link from? Is the niche and content related to your site? Where the link will be located (at the bottom of the page, or at the top, in relevant context)? Those are the main questions I answer to tell the quality of a link.
Interesting post. I agree with you. SEO is all about links. If you have a good content on your site and if search engine spiders doesn’t find your link, then your good content is limited to your visitors only.