Link Building vs. Content Marketing?

Link Building vs. Content Marketing? Choose the Right One for Your Business

When it comes to developing a strategy for your online business or website, sooner or later you will be facing these two ways.

Let me define briefly what each strategy is about:

Basically, link building means advertising your site’s address in other places. Among the best places to attach your links are: blogs, forums, social media, and many other places that relate to your niche. Just make sure that you are not creating spam! If you decide to follow this strategy, you could rank your site among the first places even sooner than expected.

Content marketing means to develop high-quality content, with plenty of useful information and with a coherent structure. A good content creator knows that this strategy is not only about writing, but also about providing your target audience with useful videos, podcasts, slides, e-books, etc. When it’s done correctly, this strategy can really build up a great reputation for your site.

So, should I choose content marketing or link building?

On the next lines, I will give you some guidelines that will help you choose between these two strategies. These have worked pretty well for me, so I think you’ll find them useful.

But first, let’s outline the basic points that you must take into account before choosing the right path to follow:

Time span

When do you plan to achieve your business’ goals? List all your main and secondary goals, then see if most of them are short term or long term goals. This first step will define the right strategy for you as I will explain below.

Resources

Right now do you have everything you need in order to achieve your goals? Don’t forget that time is also a resource. Make a realistic list of all your available resources and see if those will be enough to get the results you want within the time span you previously defined.

Team

Are there any other people who can help you? Whether you are a one-man team or you are lucky enough to be part of a great group of people, define your performance as a whole. Then evaluate if this performance will be good enough to reach your goals within your defined time span and making good use of the available resources.

Time to make the right choice!

If you see that most of your goals are short term, then link building is the best path to follow. On the other hand, if you noticed that you have plenty of time to reach your goals; a better strategy would be content marketing.

If you realize that you just don’t have all the resources to develop all the media that would improve your content, then choose link building. Not doing so may result in valuable time lost or depleting all your resources too early. Keep in mind that if you do have all the resources you need to develop a content marketing strategy, not using them timely could result in negative results as well.

If you found out that you have an awesome team that will be able to produce top-quality content during all the time you have to reach your goals, then content marketing is the way to go. My best advice, if you are a one-man team, would be to put your effort in link building once you have developed your first set of content.

What if I try to follow both paths at the same time?

You are free to do so, but I seriously wouldn’t recommend utilizing link building and content marketing at the same time. All good online marketers know that eventually you’ll have to switch from one strategy to the other if you want your business to remain among the first places in search engines. I suggest that you thoughtfully evaluate your current situation and your goals; do it twice or even three times. Then, start developing your strategy with the path that best adjusts to your status.

Don’t allow your first choice to blind you from switching to the other strategy. The truth is that most high-ranked sites got there because the developers knew that link building and content marketing work best hand-to-hand. Experience will show you the right times to switch from one strategy to the other.

Conclusion

Whether you decide to choose one strategy or another, the first step is to be realistic about your expectations and available resources.

Once you’ve made up your mind, implement that strategy to the fullest. However, keep an eye open to know the right time to try something different.

And finally, remember that even when link building has proven to show faster results, none of these strategies will work from one day to another. Make sure to give each strategy enough time to reach its full potential before switching to the other one.

If you have tried any of these strategies and got good results, I would be more than happy to read about your success. Also, feel free to post any comments or suggestions that you may have.