If Content is King, Linking is Queen
Linking is Queen - Content is King
Posted by Adam Hayes
If Content is King then surely Linking is Queen. And we all know who really rules the kingdom.
I came across a great article that built on the well known saying that content is king by saying that "Content is King, but Linking is Queen." Content and Linking go hand in hand if the site is going to really work. There is a lot to be said about linking and getting quality inbound links. Even if you have GREAT content, it won't mean a thing if it is never seen. With the advent of PageRank and the current "Link = Vote" mentality, linking has become the desperately needed "fix" for all website designers.
Unfortunately this has caused some desperate measures by some website designers to get a hand on "the Queen". For example:
- Long signatures at the bottom of forum posts
- Junk forum posts of "LOL" just to get another link
- Junk comment posts on blogs
- SPLOGS - weblog sites which the author uses only for promoting affiliated websites. The purpose is to increase the PageRank of the affiliated sites, get ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed
- Reciprocal Linking
- Tri-Linking
- Link Farms
- Paid Links
- Viral Marketing
- and much much more...
But the search engines don't just sit around letting people abuse the system. They in turn change their algorithms, add properties like rel='nofollow', punish people that sell links, and other "checks" to keep websites in line. Unfortunately this has made getting real, high quality backlinks much more difficult. It has also increased the "awareness" of search engines so that they examine not only the quantity of links, but the quality as well; does the linking page relate to the page it is linking to, etc. Side note... has anyone else found this difficult. I don't know about you, but my competitors [who is in the same genre or business as me] really don't want to link to my site. Go figure :(
For the time being (until some other better method is found) Content will still be King, but Linking will be Queen. And I don't know about you, but the Queen around my house sure has a lot to say about what the king can and can't do.
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