Awesome to see you again! Have you already subscribed to the RSS feed so that you don't miss anything? Go ahead! Don't miss any yummy SEO/Marketing Talk!

GoogleSo I’m always reading around forums, blogs and social networks; listening to what people say, think, and have questions about.

I saw someone ask about the fairness in link building. It was something to the effect of if you’re busy building good content and your competition is busy building links to outrank you, how fair is that? I’m sorry but this is the marketing world and all is fair in love and marketing.

Yes, you should build good content. But yes, you have to have links too. You can build good content for 2 years but if your competition builds enough links in a matter of months, they may just outrank you (I only say ‘may’ because there can be other contributing factors but you STILL need links).

We’ve done campaigns where a client puts up a new site and even though their competition has been around for who knows how long, we catch up to them with links. Do I think it’s unfair. Nope, you gotta do what you gotta do to get to the top and get those clicks. And I’m oh-so certain the competition is doing their fair share of link building!

It’s simply not just about how good your content is. Now don’t get me wrong, the better your content is, the more people are likely to link to you and help you spread the word so that ultimately you do get links but it’s a question of whether or not you care to wait for years potentially to get enough people to link to you on their own to rank you on the first page (unless you’re some HUGE name or brand, you may be waiting that long).

We all want to be found, we want to be on the first page, we want clicks, we want visitors, we want profits from our hard work … all is fair in love and marketing.

~k, Visibility Specialist
@areaK on Twitter
@areak on Facebook

Creative Commons License photo credit: Daquella manera