Jim Gives SEO Tips

Jim’s got a weekend series of good Q-and-As on all sorts of topics. See Google’s Florida Update, Keyword Research, Link Building and Linking Out.

I take particular interest in Jim’s comment on linking and content.

Often in my past I used to say “90% links”…but ya know, today it’s so much both that I’d say it’s equal…with only 1 (content or links) you’ll get nowhere. I might have once said things like “Content is King, and Links are Queen”…but again - you need them both to survive today.

I agree, they are evenly matched these days. That, and I’ve always thought too many name-brand SEOs concentrated a little too much on links for my tastes (if only in conversation) and almost completely disregarded the content side of the equation - it’s absolutely a symbiotic relationship.

I also like his advice about finding authority sites to link out to:

For example….if you sell “shoes” and we were creating this expert resource page for you, I’d start by searching Google for site:.edu shoes to find quality pages…hum…#3 looks good “History of Shoes” at www.otal.umd.edu/~vg/amst205.F97/vj08/introduction.html that’s one I’d add…prob with the anchor text of “History of Shoes Page”…then I’d find a few more nice .edu’s…then I’d maybe grab some .gov’s by searching for site:.gov shoes and I’d grab some of those….(and give them good anchor text…yes, linking out to related site with “shoes” in the anchor text I belive is good.

While the SEO benefit is up to debate, linking out to quality, related sites definitely benefits the end user, which is something the search engines have professed their desire to rank by.