Content Marketing vs Link Building

Content marketing strategy and link building are both reputable features of a digital market. Over the years since the evolution of the internet e-commerce businesses have continued to improvise ways to grow a business and make sales through online marketing.

Content marketing team of experts put in marketing efforts to build a brand that speaks authority and credibility.

The most important thing to do before you embark on these digital marketing strategies is branding. Most business owners refuse to pay attention to minor details that can revamp and drive customers to your page.

Nevertheless, both content and building links are SEO elements that help brands rank on search engine results pages for visibility and sales. Combining both features is a deal breaker for your business because both work simultaneously to boost productivity.

For a successful content marketing strategy you must create content that impacts your target audience while link building campaign requires brands to building links through paid ads, landing pages, inbound marketing, and other related techniques to promote the visibility of a brand. 

This article explains how both link building strategy and online content marketing can impact a brand, also sharing valuable tips on how to implement them.

What is Content Marketing?

Many people perceive this as creating a guest blog post, press releases, articles, or writing product base content. Although these are part of the content marketing efforts, there is more to it than just creating content.

Creating content requires an intentional act of providing useful information consistently for your target audience. It’s a long term process that requires a lot of hard work together with other content marketing strategies to build a brand’s identity.

What is Link Building?

This is the process of acquiring backlinks, from other websites to your own site. This is solely done for search engines and rankings. A popular website that provides content that is useful has authority and can build backlinks easily to drive organic traffic. Also, link building efforts are required to earn links pointing towards driving traffic.

Content Marketing vs Link Building – Which is Better?

A lot of people encounter this dilemma before taking up a digital marketing campaign. They get confused about what best to embark on for their brands, not knowing which to take up. The truth remains both are best practices for any brand although the former is much more valuable than the latter. 

Both are essential tips for SEO campaigns and marketing, this is why you can not engage in one and avoid the other, both work together for effective results. 

Let us see the difference between content marketing and building links.

Natural Way to Get Links

Crafting amazing content is a natural form of link gathering because it requires people to share blog posts through social media platforms, or links to your piece when it impacts value to your audience. 

Linking requires requests for backlinks or paid links solely for visibility and this is an unnatural effort on marketing.

More Scalable than Traditional Link Building

You can easily measure the progress of content compared to links. Although links are mainly for search rankings, it is difficult to estimate or measure their impact on your business.

A list of measurable content marketing examples includes the number of website visitors, the number of sites and links generated per content, and the usefulness of keywords for search intent.

More Cost-Effective than Acquiring Links

Content is a budget-friendly technique that utilizes the efforts of affordable copywriters that can boost content through creative writing. While building links can be a tedious act, it is expensive and requires a massive sheet to track links used to generate traffic. 

You can plan on the best way to reduce content marketing costs based on your budget and follow the right marketing strategy that suits your brand

Builds Relationships Better than Link Building

Content creation is a conversational process and can help build communities and relate valuable information about specific topics. People who engage more on social media are able to buy products online judging from people’s reviews on those products. A link can not boost connection, but solely on its objective of gaining links.

Builds Customer Loyalty

It is easier to market products to returning customers than new customers. This will help the company save more money to invest and engage in other marketing structures. Building content that is impactful for your clients will help them build trust. Furthermore, it can be challenging to build loyal customers through link building strategies.

Google Update Recovery is Easier with Content Strategy

Google updates are challenges in general marketing concepts. It is easier for content to be recovered after an algorithm update has been issued compared to link gathering. 

Broken links can cause havoc and updates made can either remove links or redirect based on the current update. Webmasters encounter more difficulty in repairing broken link building than content that has been penalized. 

Content Marketing Builds More Longevity than Backlink Building

Content has a sustainable impact on your company compared to link gathering. Contents stay longer on your website page as long as it is relevant and updated while links often lose their value over time. It doesn’t matter how long content was written, if it’s useful for people it can still drive traffic and increase conversion rate.

Proactive Measure Compared to Link Building

Proactive measures such as the deliberate act of distributing content across various platforms. It can be social media marketing in order to reach a wide audience and t direct them to your web page once they find your content valuable. 

How to Build Links through Content Marketing? 

No doubt, you can generate links through content writing and boost your SEO techniques accordingly. However, It is now hard to obtain a backlink using link building techniques, which can be time-consuming. Let us see how you can build links through low-budget marketing.

Create a Case study

Mapping out how you want your work to be done is a great way to start your content campaign. People would like to know your values for each project you tend to launch. This will impact your brand by creating value for potential customers. 

As soon as you publish and distribute your case studies to the digital space, it becomes easier to gain access to links naturally.

Create a Team of Marketing Experts

This is a valuable asset every business relies on for a successful project. A team of professionals can contribute to advertising content, either through journalists or the help of reporters to craft topics that are relevant to the audience. That way you can earn backlinks from content created and distributed.

Engage in Interviews

Trying to schedule an appointment for interviews can require a lot of time, but if put in place you can interview experts from related industries or host on your blog to earn links. You can focus on topics that answer your audience’s questions and share tips or guidelines that are insightful to solve their needs. 

Crafting a Long-form Guide

Creating guides can be a valuable approach to adding high quality links to your website. These guides can be educational content or informative content about a specific product or service. However, it must be high quality content that will impact your audience to make them stay longer on your page.

Collaborate with Complementary Brands

This is another way to earn links and also gain a new audience. Brands with similar interests can leverage this opportunity on a content campaign. 

Note (this doesn’t mean collaboration with competitors), for example, if you are creating blog content for an apparel brand collaborating with a jewelry brand by highlighting the importance of stepping out with these basic accessories while looking elegant in a dress.

Use of Infographics 

This is a good tool for adding links to your website. You can use images or video marketing concepts to attract visitors to your page, using anchor text to highlight your piece. Using unique quality content such as infographics, can attract publishers and bloggers to your page, creating valuable links to gain visibility.

Take Advantage of local PR 

No matter how big you feel your brand may be, it is important to leverage local publications such as online publications and newspapers which connect brands in a particular location. Local links seem easier to access while retaining their authority and relevance within a locality. 

Utilizing digital PR can help you secure features in these local publications, enhancing your brand’s visibility and credibility.

Most site owners gain quality backlinks from creating blog posts through keyword research and incorporating Google trends.

Create Research Papers and White papers 

This is a great way to earn a niche specific link. It’s a B2B necessity for brands to share knowledgeable information about a product or service through research. This can be done by teaming up with an institute to research topics relevant to your products. Then you can reach out and promote industries related to your niche, to learn links.

Conclusion 

The relationship between content marketing and link building is not far-fetched as explained in the article above. However, you need to understand what first step measures to embark on for a successful business. 

Content creation continues to be the best approach, as its result lasts longer in future and is sustainable for most brands.

While building links is challenging, its impact on business is to create website visibility and awareness, which every business needs for sales and engagement. Also getting an SEO content marketer in the field can help you diversify your strategy while trying to rank on Search engines.