Court Tuttle is an internet marketer. His blog used to be in the number three spot on the front page of Google for the highly competitive keyword "internet marketing".

He had a following. He posted daily. Good, informative, original posts.

Then he abruptly stopped. His posting frequency became sporadic. Was it blogger burnout? A busy summer? Personal issues?

August 12, 2008. It all becomes clear, in his post entitled "Content Has Never Been the King", he tells his loyal readers that his sporadic posting was on purpose. That content was not king, after all. How did he know this? Despite his failure to update his blog regularly, he still had his much-coveted Google ranking for the keyword "internet marketing".

His post sparked a heated debate. I can't say with any certainty, but I think it ticked somebody off enough that they reported his site to Google. Poor Court's site did not fare well after the manual review. Poof! Gone from Google, just like that...

September 8, 2008. He posts a retraction. "As It Turns Out, Content Is King." A transparent attempt to regain favor with Google. Only time will tell if it works.

So, is content king?

"Content or Links?"

That's a question I see posted over and over again on various niche marketing forums.

If you would have asked Court on August 12th, he would have responded "backlinks", but quite a few of his internet marketing readers would have disagreed.

Many of us do what we do because we want our site to be at the top of the search engine listings. We need free organic traffic to thrive. Our investment is measured not in dollars and cents, but in an even more valuable commodity - time. For obvious reasons, we want to know how our time will be best spent...

Should we take the "content is king" approach with our niche sites?

Or, should we be out there hunting down as many backlinks as we can get?

Unfortunately, it's not an either/or situation. The problem with asking the question "content or links" is that it presumes that one of the two is more important. In reality, they are very much dependent on one other.

If you focus primarily on content, and spend the vast majority of your time writing unique articles and compelling posts, but never spend time promoting that material - well, it's not likely you will have much of an audience, simply because they will never find you.

However, if you slap up a few ho-hum articles, and then get right to work commenting, digging, bookmarking, submitting, trying every trick you know to backlink your way to search engine domination, you may get a fair amount of visitors. But how many of those visitors will become buyers, or repeat visitors, or RSS subscribers, or better yet, referrers? Yeh, not many...

So, you see, to truly succeed in your niche, you need the best of both. Update your site frequently with original, useful, well-written content. Spend an equal amount of time getting the word out. Leave relevant, well-thought comments on related blogs and forums. Network with others in your field. Submit to the top directories. Be the expert.

There are no shortcuts. Yes, it will take time, and hard work, patience and persistence, but if it was not worth it, then no one would be in this business.

Back to Court's dilemma.

Starting off, Court Tuttle did everything right. He built a content-rich site that he promoted like crazy. Visitors came. They liked what they saw. They subscribed, and bookmarked, and commented, and promoted. He was the expert.

When Court posted his infamous August 12 entry, he screwed up in a big way. He forgot about his audience! In doing his "experiment", for lack of a better word, he left them hanging without a clue. And when they did finally become clued in, they sure didn't like the reason!

You see, Court forgot that his audience really could care less about his top keyword rankings. It was important to no one but him. For any that did care, it was only because it made him a more credible expert worth reading.

Court's not alone. As internet marketers, it's so easy to get caught up in the search engine game. What do you think about first when you write? Is it your competition? Your keyword? Keyword density? Article length?

Or are you thinking about the individuals scattered across the world, who are taking time out of their day to stop by your site or check their RSS readers to see what you have to say.

So, what do you think, is content king?

Did you find this article helpful?

Do you want to grow your niche business? I'm just getting warmed up, so subscribe to my feed or bookmark my site. You are not going to want to miss what's next...

Be Sociable, Share!

•