In this article, I lay out the claims of both sides, reaching the conclusion that neither strategy is sufficient by itself. The number of people who truly believe you can do one without the other is small – they just happen to be extremely vocal.

The Case For Linking

The proponents of linking have a simple argument, which centers around the text used in "incoming links." Incoming links are the links pointing to your site's pages from another site. When certain words are used in the text of those links, your site is more likely to rank well for the words that were used.

Search engines now put so much emphasis on the text contained in links, that it is nearly impossible to achieve good rankings for competitive or generic search terms without an active linking strategy. Therefore, the argument goes, you must focus on cultivating incoming links with your targeted keywords.

They will cite countless examples of sites that rank in the top 10 with little or no content, and in many cases, where the words involved don't even appear on the page. This happens mainly with Google, but Google is still a dominant force in the search engine world.

The Case For Content

Rather than focus on highly competitive search terms, content advocates prefer to use "SEO copywriting" methods to enhance the content of a website, and cover a broader range of search terms.

The proponents of "content strategy" argue that the highly competitive or generic search terms are not the best targets for search engine optimization:

- It is difficult to gain and keep top rankings for competitive search terms. For extremely competitive terms like "computers" or "pizza," dozens of SEO consultants are trying to land clients' sites in the top 10 positions.

- Generic search terms may bring in less "targeted" visitors, who are less likely to take the desired action (buying a product, etc.) when they reach your site. Someone searching for "computers" may be a student working on a term paper, not a potential customer.

- Because of the expense of an intensive linking strategy, competitive search terms are simply out of reach for many web sites.

Should You Ignore Half Of The Internet?

A recent study by OneStat was released in February 2004, with the somewhat misleading title Most People Use 2 Word Phrases in Search Engines.

Their statistics show that searchers are using longer and more complex search terms, which you would expect as searchers gain more experience. Two-word search terms are the most popular (at 32.58%), but that doesn't really fit my definition of "most people."

At any rate, OnStat's numbers tell us that half of the Internet is still using very generic (1-2 word) queries, although the number has declined from 53% to 51% in less than a year, with one word searches declining from 24.8% in April 2003 to 19.0% in the latest study.

Proponents of linking should take comfort in the knowledge that 51% of searches were for one and two word search terms. The flip side of this coin, of course, is that 49% of searches used 3 words or more, and this number is rising.

My conclusion, based on these facts, is simple. Focusing on one side of the equation (content or links) represents a decision to ignore half of the Internet.

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Determining A Strategy

For many search terms, it will be impossible to achieve top rankings without quality incoming links which include the targeted keywords. This would include almost all highly competitive, highly popular, and generic search terms.

Conversely, for very specific searches, it's not practical to achieve good rankings through a linking strategy. In these cases, you either have all the words on your page or you don't. If your page doesn't contain all of the words used by the searcher, it's not going to appear in the search results.

Now that we all understand why neither content nor links is a complete strategy by itself, the decision comes down to how you want to allocate your resources. Making a good decision depends on a careful assessment of the "keyword space" around your site, a review of existing content, and an accounting of your incoming links.

Assessing The "Keyword Space"

Every website has certain keywords, topics, and concepts that naturally fit with its targeted audience. In order to make effective decisions, you need to begin with a thorough assessment of those keywords.

At SEO Research Labs, we use a step by step process to identify these core keywords and concepts, using the Wordtracker service to estimate the relative popularity of each search term we find.

About The Author
Dan Thies owns the SEO Research Labs, providing keyword research services to webmasters, site designers, and search engine (SEO/SEM) consultants. He offers coaching to web designers who want to "take the plunge" into offering SEO and SEM services, based on his top-selling e-book "Search Engine Optimization Fast Start," which is also available from his website.

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