Comments on: Content vs SEO – Which Will Win? (The Answer May Surprise You)

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:54:57 +0000

Great content gets backlinks naturally. If it doesn’t, it’s not great enough. Only a little push at the beginning gets the ball rolling. Consistent great content gets subscribers, which creates an army of backlinkers as soon as new content is published.

By: Stan The Man

Stan The Man — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:27:23 +0000

I knew you would say that
Me, I prefer backlinks. I can rank anything with the right links, but I can’t rank great content without backlinks. Though is debatable, I think I would choose backlinks over content.

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:01:39 +0000

Content, every time.

By: Stan The Man

Stan The Man — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:45:16 +0000

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the reply, I thought I was missing something. Now it makes sense. Would be interesting to read something like: Content or backlinks? What would you chose, if you have to choose on of these?

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:35:20 +0000

Scott, thanks for your comment. It was great to meet you at BlogWorld (well, before it, actually). Look forward to meeting you again in the future.

By: scott penton

scott penton — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:32:39 +0000

Agree about content vs. SEO, you really need both. Nice meeting you too at the tweet up before bwe09 at the Monty Carlo. Take care

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:23:20 +0000

Stan, it seems people want to make this issue into an “either/or” situation. Because so many people (wrongly) believe that, I’m essentially baiting them with a provocative title. If I just wrote: “There is no difference between content and SEO” as a headline, nobody would be interested.

You should use related words in your title, of course, but you would be amazed at the number of people who don’t. I’ve seen blogs that are supposedly about a particular subject, and not seen that subject mentioned by name anywhere on the page.

By: Stan The Man

Stan The Man — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:51:37 +0000

I am not sure I understand the title here. What do you mean by that? When you write something, don’t you consider a title, don’t you use a few related words in that title? Don’t you link internally using that title and keywords? Isn’t that SEO?
So both work together, you don’t choose one over the other!

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:48:45 +0000

Dave, yes, age can matter a great deal when it comes to this. Ranking #1 for keywords only matters if there are enough searches on those keywords to matter. It’s easy to rank for worthless keywords. I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, I only mention it because your comment reminded me this is a “DIY SEO” issue.

By: Allen Taylor

Allen Taylor — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:03:41 +0000

Michael, it’s been great watching you move from obscurity to dominate your keyword space. I’ve enjoyed watching someone deliberately target a phrase and consistently aim for the top spot in their niche while producing content worth reading. That’s how SEO is supposed to be done. Too often, people make one of two mistakes:

1) Write great content with SEO as an afterthought – if at all;
2) Write great SEO using content with little or no value.

The proper way to do is to write great content is also great SEO. Few people do it so well.