Most online marketers ask themselves this question, what is more important: To increase the uniqueness of the content, tags and technical issues in a web site, or to start a linking strategy?
My research makes me incline towards working onsite factors first and to build linking second. Why? Well let’s say that you have 2000 quality back links to a site. The site has mostly duplicate content and sneaky redirects and text cloaking. On the other hand, let’s say that you have a site with 20 back links, but its content is unique (it is very likely to get natural links), it uses clean Xhtml and CSS, and has no DNS problems. Which one do you think that would rank better?
With phrases like “content is king†and “linking placed the king its throne†no wonder why so many clients have a hard time prioritizing their efforts.
Now, lately I have been in contact with clients with massive web sites: 500 000 pages and more. In these cases, no matter how fast you want to make every page unique, you are going to need deep pockets. Content, keyword analysis, keyword selection, and unique tags take a lot of man hours. In my opinion, a good technique with massive websites is to start writing unique content and tags from the home page – deeper. Then start a not so aggressive linking campaign, while using near a third of the budget for paid advertising: Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing for example.
This strategy would ensure short term visitation, increasing conversion rates and increasing visibility in the long run.
Let me know what are your preferred strategies for big sites by emailing me at: big(at) Merkados (dot) com.
