Avoid The Either/Or Mistake: Content Marketing And Link Building Complimentary, Not Conflicting SEO Tools

By John Lavitt | May 15, 2014 |

Before we go into the details of avoiding the either/or mistake when it comes to content marketing and link building, let’s provide a couple of definitions. It’s important that everyone in need of this information knows what we’re talking about. After all, without orientation at the beginning, how can you be convinced by the end?

What Is Link Building?

First, link building is the process of acquiring links from external websites, social media users and other entities on the Internet in order to improve search engine rankings. The process of link building is to build a connected network for link exchanges with relevant sites. By having sites that relate to the keywords of your business or industry link to you, you demonstrate that your site is of value.

What Is Content Marketing

Second, content marketing is the creation of relevant content that inspires a visitor to remain on a site and ultimately take an action. By understanding your potential client audience, you can furnish a site with content that fits their needs or cultivates a desire to work with you. First-rate content is a balance between effective visitor conversion strategies and germane content that has actual value beyond basic marketing. By fostering value, content reflects and enhances the quality of the overall site.

Search Engine Land Analysis

Content Marketing + Link Building

According to an insightful article in Search Engine Land by Erin Everhart, the very idea that content marketing is going to replace link building as an online marketing tool is just silly. At the same time, the belief that link building can allow a website to do without content marketing is absurd as well. Rather than waving flags for one side or the other, today’s search engine optimization professionals must understand that content marketing and link building go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other. At Open Interactive, the marriage of link building and content marketing has been honored and respected from the beginning.

Content Marketing Generates Links

There is no question that effective content marketing leads to the generation of links. At the same time, the process of link building also results in the introduction of great content on a website. By link building with outside experts in an industry, you connect both with websites that have real value while at the same time expanding the boundaries of your content marketing. It can only help a website to add in new viewpoints that display an openness to innovation and an understanding of an industry’s diversity.

Creating Valued & Linkable Content

A reliable way to complement content marketing with link building is to create the content in a medium that is valued by a prospective client. Blog posts, infographics, videos and white papers are all effective ways of communicating that can generate links. Such content designed and promoted for link building should be readily available and freely accessible. Most people will not link to content that is behind a action wall, even if the only thing needed to view such content is the submission of an email.

The Strategy Of Obtaining Expert Content

Another very effective strategy to generate links through content marketing is the recruitment and leveraging of experts. By including exclusive information from industry experts on a site, it is very likely such information will be linked to by external sources. Sometimes an amalgamation of an expert’s work is enough to give the feel and look of original content. By getting permission through ego boosting to use such material, you can connect content marketing to link building. Proven strategies to generate such content are the inclusion of expert viewpoints, news coverage of experts, and social media sharing.

Fostering Win-Win SEO Scenarios

Expert content when obtained and generated should then be promoted through LinkedIn and Twitter to niche writers. By promoting such content to a variety of industry voices and participants, the chance of generating valuable links significantly rises. By building relationships within an industry-related network, you can turn an old cliché into a living reality: I’ll scratch your back if your scratch mine becomes I’ll post your content with links if you post my contents with links as well. Such website-based relationships foster win-win scenarios in terms of both optimization and lasting content value.