What is best for SEO? Content or links?

My new website is on page 1 for its keyword after about 4 weeks. It made page 2 after 2 weeks. I added new content and posted links.

Could I have achieved page 1 without links? Is content alone enough?

Posting links gets really boring…

both. and links IN you content as well.

I think a poster addressed this but it all depends on how competitive your keyword. If you do a Google search in quotes and the SERPS don’t show many sites on page 1 with the keyword in the domain and page title, then by doing just 2 things with decent content will get you ranked high. If there isn’t much competition that is.
Now, the backlinks are telling Google that these are the sites that think so highly of your site they want to link to yours. Having few high page rank site backlinks is better than many, many low page rank website backlinked to your site. But yes, the more backlinks you have, preferably high page rank sites, the better chance you stand of getting to and ranking high on page 1, even if the content is so so.
It’s an odd game to play. You just never know what Google thinks of your site but be patient, give it time, always try to improve your content, and build backlinks slowly.

in a way the question is a bit too narrow. first, we don’t know the particulars of your niche, so it is fairly competitive, that’s quite a different story in gaining traction and rising in the serps. it’s been said a million times but it’s still true, that content is king, without that you don’t get to first base - the spiders now are extremely smart and have all sorts of ‘language skills’ so they know the different between writing at the 2nd grade level and ‘high school’ level grammer, syntax etc.

we also know there are hundreds of factors that google and the engines use to determine relevancy and give ranking. you have mentioned two of those factors, good writing/content, and sometimes lots of it/many pages, as well as links. also don’t forget that your site architecture is also a main factor ingredient in how the spiders rank not only individual pages but whole sites. your site is a big cloud a big bag of words that gets indexed, cached and reviewed again and again and is rated compared to what others in your field have up there. so having quality and quantity of backlinks is a major factor (also who you link out to), as well as the quantity and quality of your content, site architecture, the use of keywords and their syntax and supporting kewords and modifiers, raw link juice from backlinks, the authority, trust and age etc of those pages/sites that do link to you, the IP diversity of those sources better to have a wide variety/types of domains that link to you etc etc.

the basic purpose of link building is to build trust and authority which is pretty much now the 2 main factors in serps/ranking.

If you have good and quality content people automatically give reference to your site and you will get links.

According to me content and links are both important for SEO.

for me content are more important than links…as SE give more importance to your content…and you will get links only for your content…

In my mind, both are important. Content will definitely help you get higher rankings. Link will also get you up the ranks. but Both will work better hand in hand.

early, links are good, but for the best, content is king

all the answers are there in the thread… all subjective - take what you can and run…

Thread closed

This isn’t a chicken or egg situation though. You need compelling content first and then you should have no trouble in having lots of people help you out with links.

Both contents and links are important. Some sites have great content but few links. Others have mediocre content but lots of links and are able consistently rank high on the SERPs.

I think both of them are important. Your website will down if lack one of them

Yes. Especially for low competitive keywords, this is very possible =)

An age old question. :slight_smile: I will answer it this way:

When you get traffic, your site needs to be so good that people want to come back and tell their friends. If you fail in this area, it really doesn’t matter how many links you get, and this IS the area most most people fail in the most. Get this part right, and you will be successful on the net.

It depends how competitive an area your website deals with. If the site deals with a niche area, you don’t to generate a lot of links yourself - links will develop organically if the site is good enough, and that can be enough to get you right up near the top of the list. If you’re in a more competitive field, you might need to push a bit harder on the links yourself to secure those places. But ultimately, what wins the battle is content. Without content, your site is nothing. If your site doesn’t have good content, Google will drop it quicker than you can say “hot potato”. And even if, by some fluke, Google does give you a better rank than your empty site deserves, visitors will come in and bounce out like they’re on bungee ropes, and if you can’t get visitors to stay on your site, you’re not going to build a successful business.

Content is king.