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Two of the most commonly used terms by bloggers and webmasters are backlinks and content. A site must have both else it will not rank in first seven pages of world’s busiest and largest search engine, Google.
Backlinks aka inbound links are the most important criteria Google considers for ranking content of a website in their pages. One can easily prove this. Search for a product in Google. Popular sites with 1000s of backlinks will occupy first few pages.
A site that does not appear in search results is:
- Of poor quality.
- Penalized.
A site with tons of ILs will not rank high if it does not have good content. It may suffer from manual action penalty or Google de-indexes them because the owner/webmaster has created backlinks artificially.
Websites have no reason to provide a backlink to your site unless it offers compelling content. Hence, it is easy for search engines to identify low-quality sites spamming other portals.
Content and Backlinks are interdependent. If a site has quality content, authority websites will frequently mention it or link the pages in their articles. Low-quality articles will never rank high in search engines.
What is high-quality content?
Grammar error and typo free well researched and unique content with minimum 300 words. You can create posts of good quality with Grammarly, White Smoke, Ginger, etc. The latest version of Yoast plugin includes several new features to check your WP post quality. You can use it along with the Grammarly Chrome extension.
What are quality backlinks?
Inbound dofollow links from high page rank, domain authority sites. For example, Huffington Post, Times of India, etc. One should avoid creating links manually. A dofollow backlink from a renowned website will push your portal higher in search engines.
Content vs backlinks : What you should focus on?
If you don’t want your site to suffer Google algorithm penalties, focus only on content. It is difficult to get natural backlinks.
