There sure is a lot of interest in SEO ranking factors:
There have been major studies done on this, notably by both Moz and Searchmetrics. These are groundbreaking pieces of research, and if you're serious about SEO, you need to understand what these studies say.
That said, these are too complex for most organizations to deal with. They need a simpler way of looking at things. At Stone Temple Consulting (STC) we deal with many different types of organizations, including some of the world's largest companies, and some of the highest-traffic websites in the world. For most of these companies, understanding that there are 200+ ranking factors does more harm than good.
Why, you ask? So many people I talk to are looking for a silver bullet. They want to hear that they should only change their heading tags on the second Tuesday of every month, except during leap years, when they should do it on the first Tuesday, except in February when they should change it on the third Monday. These distractions end up taking away from the focus on the two things that matter most: building great content (and a great content experience) and promoting it well.
Today's post is going to lay out a basic approach that most companies can use to simplify their thinking about SEO, and keep their focus on the highest priorities.
What Google recently said
Here's what Google Dublin's Andrey Lippatsev said in a Hangout that I participated in on March 23, 2016. Also participating in the Hangout was Ammon Johns, who asked Andrey what the two most important ranking factors are:
Andrey Lippatsev: Yes. Absolutely. I can tell you what they are. It is content and links going into your site.
There we go, that's a start. According to Google, it's links and content that are the two biggest. Hopefully, the idea that content is a big factor is obvious, but below I'll break out more what great content really entails. In addition, you can see some backup for the power of links in the study I recently published on links as a ranking factor.
Should we think of the world as consisting only of these two factors? It's quite simplistic, and possibly too much so, but let's try to simplify this even more. How many organizations would dramatically improve their SEO if they focused on creating great content and promoting it effectively? I can tell you that from my experience these are two things that many organizations simply don't do.
Does that mean that we can take our two factors and put them into a (purely) hypothetical ranking score equation that looks like this?
I actually think that this equation is pretty effective, though it has some limitations and omissions that I'll describe in more detail below. You also need to think about the concept of "great content," that will get a high Content Score, in the correct manner.
What is "great content?"
If we step back and think about what makes up great content, it seems to me that there are three major components that matter:
- Relevancy
- Quality
- The overall content experience
The first part of this is simple. If the content is not relevant to a query, it shouldn't rank for that query, ever. That makes sense, right?
The second part is also pretty simple, and that's the notion of quality. Does it provide information that people are looking for? Is that information relatively unique to your site? Clearly, it makes sense for the quality of the content to matter a lot.
We can combine the notions of quality and relative uniqueness into the notion of material differentiation. Rand covers this brilliantly in his Whiteboard Friday about creating 10X content.
Creating the 220,001st article on how to make French toast is just not going to cut it:
You need to create something new and compelling that also offers a lot of value. That may not be easy, but being the best at something never is.
If you're in a competitive market, it's reasonable to guess that your top competitors are making great, relevant content on topics that matter to their target audience. For the most important queries, it's probable that the top 5 (and maybe more) pieces of content in that space are really, really good (i.e. more comprehensive than other articles on the topic, or brings in new information that others don't have).
The third part encompasses many pieces.
- Is your content well-organized and easy to read?
- Does it effectively communicate its key points? How do people engage with it? If they land on a page on your site that has the answer to their question, can they quickly and easily find that information?
Once again, you'll find that the major competitors that rank in the top of the SERPs all handle this pretty well too.
Let's now take a look at what the role of the content score in ranking might look like:
Note that the Y-axis is "Chances of Ranking," as opposed to "Ranking." Nonetheless, this curve suggests that the Content Score is a big one, and that makes sense. Only the best of the best stuff should rank. It's simple.
Digging a bit deeper on what goes into content quality
But what about title tags? Heading tags, use of synonyms? Page layout and design? Stop and think about it for a moment. Aren't those all either part of creating higher-quality content, or making that content easier to consume?
You bet.
For example, imagine that I wrote this piece of content:
It could be the greatest information in the world, but it's going to be really hard for users to read, and it will probably have terrible user engagement signals. On the other hand, imagine that my content looks like this:
Would you say the quality of one of these pieces of content is higher? I would. The second one is much easier to read, and therefore will deliver more value to users. It will get better engagement, and yes, it will probably get linked to more often.
Why do links get separate treatment?
You could argue that links are just another measurement of content quality, and there is some truth to that, but we give them separate treatment in this discussion for two reasons:
1. They're still the best measurement of authority.
Yes, I know I'm ruffling some feathers now, but this is what my experience after more than 15 years in SEO (and seeing hundreds of SEO campaigns) has taught me. To get and sustain a link, someone has to have a website, has to be willing to modify that website, and they have to be willing to have their site's visitors click on the link to leave their site and go to yours.
That's a pretty material commitment on the linking site's part, and the only incentive they have to do that is if they believe that your content is of value to their site's visitors.
Why not social signals? While I've long argued that they have no impact except for aiding in content discovery, let's for sake of argument say that I'm wrong, and there is some impact here, and explain why social signals can never be a critical part of the Google algo. It's simple: social signals are under the control of third-party companies that can make them invisible to Google on a moment's notice (and remember that Google and Facebook are NOT friends). Imagine Google giving Facebook (or any other 3rd party) the power to break their algorithm whenever they want. Not happening!
2. The power of links should cause different actions on your part.
What is that action? It's called marketing, and within that discipline is the concept of content marketing. Done the right way, these are things you should do to raise the reputation and visibility of your brand.
In fact, this may consume a material amount of your entire company budget. With or without search engines in the world, you've always wanted to do two things:
(1) Make really good stuff, and
(2) market it effectively.
In 2016, and beyond, this will not change.
No doubt, part of attracting great links is to produce great content, but there are other overt actions involved to tell the world about that great content, such as active outreach programs.
Expanding on user engagement
Many have speculated that Google is using user engagement signals as a ranking factor, and that it will increase its investment in these areas over time. For example, what about click-through rate (CTR)? I discuss CTR as a ranking factor here, but to net it out simply, it's just too easy a signal to game, and Google tells us that it uses CTR measurements as a quality control check on other ranking signals, rather than as a direct signal.
You can doubt Google's statements about this, but if you own or publish a website, you probably get many emails a week offering to sell you links via one scheme or another. However, you never get emails offering you CTR ranking schemes. Why is that, you think? It's because even the scammers and spammers don't think it works.
Important note: Rand has done many live CTR tests and a number of these have shown some short-term rankings movement, so CTR could be used in some manner to discover hot trends/news, but still not be a core ranking factor.
What about other user engagement signals? I'd bet that Google is, in fact, doing some things with user engagement signals, though it's hard to be sure what they are. It's not likely to be as simple as bounce rate, or its cousin, pogosticking.
Pogosticking sure seems like a good signal until you realize there are many scenarios where they don't work at all. For example, when users are comparison shopping, they'll naturally hop from site to site.
Finding good user engagement factors that make for really reliable signals is quite hard. Many have speculated that artificial intelligence/machine learning will be used to derive these types of factors. Here are three pieces of content that cover that topic in some detail:
- The Machine Learning Revolution: How it Works and its Impact on SEO, an article here on Moz by yours truly
- SEO in a Two-Algorithm World, a Powerpoint by Rand Fishkin
- The Past, Present, and Future of SEO, an article by Mike Grehan
Information architecture
Having a solid information architecture (IA) that Google can crawl and easily find your content is also a major requirement. In Andrey Lippatsev's response, he undoubtedly presumed that this was in good shape, but it would be wrong to leave this out of this discussion.
At Stone Temple Consulting, we've helped tons of sites improve their organic traffic simply by working on their IA, eliminating excessive page counts, improving their use of SEO tags like rel=canonical, and things of this nature. This is clearly a big factor as well. Usability also feeds into IA, because people need to be able to find what they're looking for on your site.
What I've left out with the two-factor model
First of all, there are other types of results, such as images, videos, and maps results, that are opportunities to get on the first page, but the above discussion is focused on how to rank in regular web search results.
To be fair, even in the regular web results, I've left some things out. Here are some examples of those:
- Local links. I'm not referring to "local pack" listings here. If I search on "digital cameras" right now, in the regular web search results, I'll see some listings for stores near me. Clearly, proximity is a very large factor in ranking those pages.
- Query deserves diversity. An example of this is the query "Jaguar." Chances are that my two-factor algorithm would rank only car sites in the top 10, but Google knows that many people that type that query want information on the animal. So even if the two-factor algo would slant things one way, you'll see some animal-related sites in the top 10.
- In-depth articles. This is a feature that's hard to spot in the search results, but sometimes Google includes in the bottom of the top 10 results some pieces of content that are particularly comprehensive. These are for queries where Google recognizes there's a decent chance that the user is engaging in extensive research on a topic. Here's an example for the query "constitution":
We conducted a small sample review of 200 SERPs and found that about 6% of the results appeared to be from factors such as these. The two-factor model also doesn't account for personalization, but this post is looking at ranking factors for regular search results other than personalization, which, of course, also has a large impact.
Looking for ranking hacks?
OK, I'm going to give you one. Make your content, and the experience of consuming that content, unbelievably good. That's step one. Stick to your knitting, folks, and don't cop out on the effort to make your content stand out. You have no choice if you want to get sustainably positive results from SEO.
Don't forget the overall site and page usability, as that's a big part of what makes your content consumable. This is a critical part of making great content. So is measuring user engagement. This provides a critical feedback loop into what you're doing, and whether or not it's working for your target audience.
Then, and only then, your focus should turn to marketing that will help drive your reputation and visibility, and help attract links to your content. Here it is in a nutshell:
If your content isn't competitive in relevance and quality, links won't help. If it is, links will make the difference.
Your content has to be elite to have a chance to score highly on any given competitive search result. After that, your superior marketing efforts will help you climb to the top of the heap.
Hi Eric
Great post
Google is constantly changing ... that the way to do SEO evolves and changes in a way that serves you today may not serve tomorrow
However, several aspects, such as your point out (Quality links, quality content, differentiation, web architecture ...) are the first step for a SEO strategy works perfectly
Hi Eric,
Great post, the best thing about your post is that you have brought everything back to basics of SEO. The organic backlinks and content is major contributor to SERP ranks, along with user engagement and keeping the whole process real.
I also believe that there would be future upgrades and updates to google algortihme, however basics will almost remain the same and timeless.
Regards,
Vijay
Interesting read! I would like to take this article as a basis regarding what are the main (and sometimes only) priorities on SEO for the majority of clients. I am part of a web design & development agency and, to be honest, most of our clients just want a great website, content that fits their brand values and to show up on search.
It is vital for us, the agency, to concentrate our effort and their budget on those two main areas that you mentioned, creating valuable content and promoting it right.
I absolutely agree that great content is vitally important. I have achieved much greater success moving sites from the bottom of page 1 to the top of page 1 by addressing content than from additional link building. And by this I don't mean typical onsite optimization of existing content but by adding new content and/or adding to and rewording existing content.
Interested to hear if you think that traffic through third party links are important?
Hi Elanor - I don't know if traffic through 3rd party links is important or not as a specific thing that Google would measure. However, it seems likely to me that Google would prefer you to be obtaining links from place where your target audience actually spends time, rather than abitrary third party web sites.
I find myself arguing with people about this often, who think links are the be-all, end-all of SEO. It has to start with great, well optimized content. Without that, you might be able to get SOME links but you cannot possibly get GREAT links. Well done!
I still have a problem with people who do not understand Rand's study, however. You said, "Rand has done many live CTR tests and a number of these have shown some short-term rankings movement, so CTR could be used in some manner to discover hot trends/news, but still not be a core ranking factor."
Of course they were short term results. The people who clicked on the links only did so in mass numbers for a short period of time. In a real world scenario, those clicks would occur every day, which would lead to a permanent ranking improvement. Could it be gamed? Perhaps. Chances are, Google has a way of filtering out click bots or penalizing sites that would utilize them. They probably have a pretty good notion of which IP addresses have real humans behind them and which do not.
Thanks. Good point on links working for good content. Although, I believe they still work for anything, you just need less is your content is good.
Agree with that following three factors are required for great content:-
Lack of above mentioned point we would not able to deliver quality content. and yes link and content both are vital part of SEO rankings.
I have found similar post which help to evaluate your SEO content and boost sales.
For me this is huge as just making is simple is the best move every time. For me creating the quality content and then linking appropriately is the key to success. Although there are many different ranking factors just be a source for the information that drives your clients and that will be the authority that drives search. It does not matter about the competition as you can be the source they go to also for articles and pages about that topic.
As the evolution of search grows everyday the basics are what stand strong and this article makes that point even more. When you are creating awesome content people will like and that will drive your authority.
Great contribution to the community thanks.
A useful post!
It is clear that Google changes its algorithm as he wants and we have to be informed of each change and studies carried out by experts.
Importantly, as we say customers of our agency, it is essential to design a good web structure to work with effective SEO strategies focused towards quality links and content. Otherwise, it causes the opposite effect, besides causing not report any conversion.
Hi Erik,
Great! I found it clear as crystal. Thanks.
High quality content + High SMM → High UX + High quality inbound links → High rank score
Of course, some clients are difficult to convince with regard to a good SEO equation, perhaps because it is difficult to calculate in advance, like most traders do, how much the reward will by investing in a full SEO equation.
Thinking about metrics that can help with the probability of success by adding them to the SEO proposals, somehow, it is hard to invest in something - whatever - which depends on algorithms that change, and also not having the factors under control. On top of that - as with all equations - all the factors must be in place, to have a chance of success.
Well Researched Eric, it was pleasure of reading this useful post regarding SEO ranking factors. I do agree with information architecture (IA) that you mentioned in the post, I have had one website which was quite not doing good in SEO and I implemented (IA) in which I focused on website navigation, implemented canonical, sitemap, blog tags, categories properly etc.. and after those changes I got to see that site (IA) is one of the most valuable ranking factors which I also believe.
Hi Eric
This is a fantastic post. according to me these 3 factor also play important role in your ranking factor
Great Post!
Google has a long history of famous algorithm updates, search index changes and refreshes.
Regardless of that the points you mentioned always proved to be at the top-notch.
I am going to start by being annoyingly pedantic. Sorry - but bear with me: It's relevant.
Ain't no such thing as "relatively unique". It is or it isn't. It's a binary thing is "unique". Only possible for one thing at a time.
Content can be great or not great and be unique or not unique.
n a competitive market, with sites selling similar products or services it is almost impossible to be unique. And, if even one of your competitors is as good as you are at what you do it's pretty darn difficult to create unusual, accessible content that tempts people to take action more effectively than any other site - because we are all playing the same game.
So, whilst quality content might be the aim it's an arms race where one effective site will leapfrog another time and time again. The resources a brand needsto devote to this just keep getting bigger.Paid search looks like a more tempting, more predictable and less costly option. Moving toward a CTR model for SERPS makes sense to a marketer because all I want is the click - and as many of those I can get then, if my message and my offer is good, I'll get the sale.
OK, I agree,quality content is vital, no visitor is going to buy my product if my site doesn't have good stuff to say that they find useful. But, the average user is going to get that wherever they click on the top five in the results generated by any reasonably discriminating search term.
So, speaking here as a client who might hire most of you guys, I don't get it. We can't be unique, because we exist in effective, competitive markets. Creating unusual, effective content is a game that demands more and more resources (to generate, quality, distinctiveness or frequency).
I don't have an answer. I'm hoping you guys do.
Hi Andrew - I disagree on the point about relevance. If a user does a query for "best boston hotels", and article about "best places to see in Boston", that mentions some great places in a subsection in the article, is somewhat relevant to the topic, but not nearly as relevant as an article that is 100% focused on an article solely about the best hotels to stay at in Boston. See what I mean? That's what I mean by "partially relevant". Hope that helps.
Also, a unique approach to content is usually achievable in most markets (but probably not all). Most companies don't invest in their on site content, or content marketing, anywhere the way they should. That's good news, in my opinion though, as it spells opportunity for those of us who do!
Hi!
I always try and correlate SEO efforts and jargon with scenarios that people are familiar with. SEO (as I see it) is simply building your business to be as efficient as possible. You would not go into a shop, if everything was impossible to find and all the products were randomly placed on the floor and unpriced. And you would definitely not go back. It's all about accommodating your customers and if you can make it as easy as possible for them, you've come a really long way.
Over are the days of meta keywords and keyword stuffing and boy am I glad! There is nothing worse than visiting a page that is stuffed with keywords and it takes away much of the focus.
Good and straightforward article Eric, as usual. Kudos!
Best,
Hi Eric,
Great post, thanks! Didn't know the term "pogosticking" is used in user behaviour. Content and link ranking factor significance are something that is talked about constantly and this post just proves that one more time.
I am a huge fan of keeping things simple. Honestly just paying attention to your website...build it correctly (technically), put useful, relevant content on it, smart interlinking, smart use of Titles/Meta...over 75% of the work is done at that point. Then just get some relevant, quality links and you'll rank for anything.
Not 'if' you'll rank...just a matter of 'when'
A thoughtful article Eric, thank you! You didn't mention RankBrain's role in Google's quality evaluation though, and I suspect it's role will increase dramatically over the next couple of years. Whether you call RankBrain machine learning, a neural network, or artificial intelligence, it is Google's effort to evaluate the quality of content. I believe that RankBrain will soon be the primary determinant ranking search results. I'm not saying that RankBrain will be a factor in some simple algebraic expression determining rank. I am saying that RankBrain will actually determine the ranking.
Links are a surrogate for content quality. As RankBrain improves, the surrogate becomes less important. As a long term strategy, you should be focusing on content quality.
Hi Paul - my point of view on RankBrain is quite a bit different. You can read about it here: https://www.stonetemple.com/rankbrain-myth-busting.... Basically, my understanding of RankBrain is that its sole purpose is to help Google better understand user queries That's it. It won't replace link algos, Panda, or other algos at all.
However, the more general concept of machine learning or AI may be what you really meant to focus on. I agree that these will play a bigger role over time. However, as someone that has built a few different machine learning algorithms myself, I believe that Google will be slow to replace successful human generate algorithms with machine generated ones.
I'm not saying it won't happen, just that it won't happen as quickly as many people think. And even when it does, well still come back to similar factors, such as content and links.
Hi Eric, I've just read your article and I suspect you're being a little too conservative.
I did graduate work in linear and non-linear programming and mathematical optimization and got into neural nets a bit as a defense contractor. The major limiting factors for neural nets in those day were processing power and data. Those limitations have diminished over the last couple of years.
I haven't found any Google explanations of what RankBrain actually does. The explanations of people in the SEO community tend to fit it into the mental model of the "algo" which seems to be a linear equation of "factors". I truly doubt that these "linear regression like" models have much usefulness anymore. There's a tendency for all of us to assume that the tools of the past will be the tools of the future.
My view is that those old search factors will diminish in importance in the near term. I expect that Google is using or is near to using its formidable processing power, Big Data, and neural nets to evaluate content for meaning and quality. My guess is that Google's AI is doing more than just evaluating queries -- it's evaluating the content served in response to queries and then learning from each searcher's actions and improving incrementally with each search.
Maybe I'm wrong -- it's not the first time! We'll see.
I've noticed the more advanced one gets in their field, the better they are at distilling hugely complex topics into simpler concepts - and you've done a great job here Eric!
Query deserves diversity - haven't heard of that before, but have seen it so often in the search results. Glad there's a new term we can use now!
Question on pogosticking - do you think it's plausible that Google is using the Chrome browser not as a direct ranking signal, but as a way to learn which queries lead to multiple tab opens at ones for comparison shopping and therefore some queries are understood as multiple clicks not being pogosticking, while other queries are pogosticking? Also, is it possible they could detect whether through Chrome or through other means which links are being opened in a new tab so that the pogosticking signal isn't seen as such?
That's a great question! I was wondering the same myself. When I shop, there's quite a bit of 'open-in-a-new-tab'ing. I don't know that I'm pogosticking per se, but I do know that I've left sites that are helpful and have quality pages. Sometimes they're just memorable enough that I trust I'll get back to it.
Hi Joe - I'm sure they use Chrome to gather data in some form, but it's hard to know how. Could they be trying to model consumer usage patterns with it? Possibly, but I honestly don't know.
"Pogosticking" added to vocabulary.
I've seen sites with small content but still ranked well for certain keywords. Then, I realized that they had the advantage of links coming from high-authority sites.
Thus, the bottom line is if you don't have great content, build quality links; and, if you lack backlinks, write impressive content.
Welcome to SEO.
I can't tell you how many times I've quoted Andrey L. from Google regarding links and relevancy. I wish it weren't so surprising to website owners. You can see them on the edge of their chairs when you tell them you know what the secret formula to search rankings really is. When you give them the answer they shrug their shoulders in a dejected fashion.
"Building great content (and a great content experience) and promoting it well." There's three points here. Each one just as important as the next. Succeeding on this side of the scale (as you illustrate) will always far outweigh the other 198+ items that can improve search rankings. The only problem is the work required to do it. It's SO much easier to throw keywords into the title tags and call it day.
Great article, Eric. Thanks for posting.
Great article. I've got to be honest - I've always focussed more heavily on links than on content score. But I think its time to re-think that to take things to the next level.
Enjoyed reading this. Solely focusing on content will not get you far just as solely focusing on links won't either. Together, it's a strategy for success!
Hi Eric, great blog post, thanks for the tips.
Hi Eric,
You bring up some great points. I do think the quality of links from an Organic perspective and Local perspective will differ though. When attaining links for local, the websites in question will not always be high quality due to the fact that many small businesses have outdated websites, small budgets and little know how, nor are the small mom and pop shops trying to build links from high authority websites. Local links are more of a play on quantity rather than quality at this point.
Agree on all of your points for Organic. Nice post and insight!
Hey Eric,
You and Mark have both been around long enough to see how overcomplicated us SEOs like to make things. Great distillation of those years of experience here.
you have pointed out the major parts which would highly effects the site's ranking.
Thanks for sharing, this article contains all the feature you have mentioned and i.e
Hello Eric, that was a good read. I just wanted to know that out of inbound and outbound links which is more effective? which should we concentrate more on?
I think great content should be the best way to make ourselves different and I agree with you that links are currently a substitute for quality content, Thank you for an interesting post post!
I am also very sure that link a significant factor in determining the rankings. Only, of course not all of the links will provide a good impact on website ranking.
Eric, this is awesome. I have long thought that quality content, overall experience, and backlinks are what matters most. This article clarified that for me, especially hearing it from Google. Thank you :)
Great post !! I have enjoyed reading this and taught me many new things. We must always have a clear strategy before starting, follow it rigidly and with patience and we will achieve our goals.
Eric you have covered almost all aspects which is important for content and SEO ranking.
Hi Eric,
It is a very good post !!
Definitely quality content and quality backlink help the website to get ranking in search engine result page.
Thanks,
Hi Eric,
Your blog is very informative.
Hope you will keep on posting informative blogs in future.
100% agree with you Eric that the below are most important factors for Great content and ranking in Google search:
The link should always be a pert of it for a website.
Great article. So it's clear that if you have great content links will help. But will links from spammy sites hurt your rankings? Also, are there any go-to ways to prevent spam sites from linking to you?
Hi Jonny - no great way to prevent someone from linking to you, but fortunately, the great majority of us don't really need to worry about it. The best thing to do is to monitor your link profile and do your best to disavow the crappy ones as they come in.
Hi Eric,
Your article was highly relevant to the link that led me here and the title too.
The quality of your content was engaging and gave me some clear ideas on a good approach to SEO.
I found myself at the end of the article without any "drifting" of my concentration.
All in all this artilce proves your point perfectly.
Good article, thanks.
Content is king and this will always be the case. If you've got unique content with high PR backlinks you're in good shape and on your way to ranking above the competition. Take a look at https://bisoncoolers.com/ to get a better idea of how to create a usable environment that's worth sharing and designed to convert.
There's no one game plan that works for everyone so feeling out your target market is critical when it comes to ranking. Usability and unique content is the trick and core of obtaining decent SERP's.
Think human and you'll do just fine. Use automated software and you'll be sorry in the long run.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for a great post. I do have query on following 2 points -
1) Is there any tool available for checking Information architecture? 2) As per your post Eliminating excessive page counts - For my ecommerce site, how to know my pages have excessive page counts? Any tool or method to check?
Thanks!
John
Hi Eric,
Can you please revert on my above query?
Thanks,
John
Links = OVERRATED!
The only thing missing here is any data to back up theseclaims.
Hi Eric,
Very good post. I've also read the other one you published about links as a rank factor and would like to ask you and the community about your experience.
Is really interesting to catch all the possible links if we think they're not penalized?
I'm tired to see websites with tons of horrible links from incredible countries with not relationship with the content and very good projects with very good content. Results? Good positions in SERPs for the ones with more links.
What do you think about mass link collectors?
Thank you again for the post.
Hi Abel, sad to say, but you're right, sometimes people with crappy link profiles do indeed rank, even with poor content. Fortunately, it's getting rarer though, and it's crazy for any real business to use mass link collection (to use your phrase) as a strategy. Better to play the game for the long haul!
My experience is that content is the king but without links is very difficult to rank. So, its important to dedicate efforts to both areas. From four months ago I spend time in backlinking periodically and the results are very good.
Regards,
Czd
This is such great, informative information and I am going to try some of these!
[link removed by editor]
Not some of these but you should try all of these.
Great article Eric
Thanks for the tips