The only formula for guaranteed success

I was chatting with a client this morning and he was asking me a ton of questions and at some point he asked me if there are any other tools similar to alexa.com but more accurate.

I told him I don't know any because I don't use them and that because they're time consuming and do not provide any real value. I told him instead, I focuse on original content and quality backlinks.

Then, the discussion went to a point where he understood that quality backlinks are directly linked to original content.

While I always say SEO isn't about formulas ( strict keyword density values and things like that ), I think this one is a "formula" that everyone should take into consideration and do not give a wide berth to it by employing black hat techniques:

good content = good backlinks = good rankings = traffic => money

Many people here know it, but I thought it'd be helpful to post it and maybe help others to remember it, stay away from complicated routes and choose this simple one which always work. Good luck!

Hi sensei,


I do not share the enthousiasm of the others about your message. Your statement is basically true, but it does not define what is a good content.

The science and the art of SEO (optimization) is to more clearly define what a "good content" is and to simultaneously use other ways to attract attention to a web site. What we need to know are ways to:
- increase the quantity and quality of the content with reasonable efforts
- get more good backlinks for a given content
- adapt the content to get more traffic (the traffic is not proportional to the "quality" of the content)
- adapt the content to increase the conversion rate

Jean-Luc

Wait for a lottery jackpot of 140 million and buy 14 million tickets... semi-guaranteed profit $126 million

What about the commercial sites out there?

They're not content based sites, and it's not as easy as generating 'content'.

Your formula works for blogs and other content sites though.

You need to implement it in regards to your field. If you cant really add that much content, adapt and write the best content you can for that area then get quality backlinks to your website from relevant websites, then continue on this theory, adding content dependent on your niche topic first, getting links for that topic etc. It is a cycle that will never fail to increase rankings in the serps. Or at the moment anyway.

Im unable to give rep on SEOChat 'Invalid ticket bla bla bla' but thats bang on mate.

Of course theres people who do this stuff at a different level to most, but once you get the basics of how SEO works then it really is a case of just doing what you've mentioned above.

Id also say good work ethic is a must.

If you dont write the best content on the web and your site does not attract that many other sites just naturally linking to it, you have to work a lot harder/smarter than most to achieve descent results for your site/customers.

Good post sensei. You will never be penalized for good content and/or relevant backlinks.

What is "good content" then? It is easy to write the formulas but not so easy to write "good content" unfortunately.

It does not matter what subject matter is contained within a web page... you can always have good content. Some say what about a commercial site...

If you are selling widgets... you can always have a world class glossary on only widgets (link bait), or the history and manufacture of widgets (link bait), or a section on use of widgets (link bait), design of widgets (link bait), the biography of the inventor of widgets (link bait), etc. Your content is only limited by your imagination and your willingness to work.

I honestly can't believe people don't know what good content is.

Think of yourself as a visitor to a website. You typed in 'baking cupcakes with icing' in Google.

When you arrived, did all your questions get answered?
Did you come away with something of value? In this case, do you now know how to bake cupcakes?
Did you receive any tips/tricks that you hadn't known/seen before? (don't put icing on when cupcakes are hot!)

All in all, good content is something that when you go to a site all of your answers/desires/wishes get fulfilled.

Content = answers, it's upto you to listen to what the questions being asked are. Let's not expect something for nothing here... work for it.

While I'm extremely tired at this moment because I spent the last 8 hours at the University and haven't sleeped for 16 hours now, when I checked this thread and saw there are quite a few posters who are questioning the truthfulness or at least make some points that the "formula" I posted is not complete, I decided to not go to bed before I try to give some answer regarding my initial post ( thoughts ). I like when I get this kind of feedback, it's really helpful .



-(1) knowing the market you're competiting in or having a passion for the domain you're competiting in should be what you need to increase the quantity and quality of the conten with reasonable efforts - this is also something quite known around here as far as I know, I'm not saying it for the first time;
-(2) given content gets links if it's... quality ( I'd say quality content is genuine content, interesting content, news regarding a given event in the market you're competing in, something others aren't able to provide. But, for example, if you write an article about Football World Cup 2006 in Germany now, you'll probably get some backlinks to it, but if you'd have written it in mid 2005 or before the Word Cup 2006 started I'd say you've gotten WAY more links ).
-(3) indirectly it IS. Good content, as said so many time before, attracts backlinks which help your rankings rise and provide your site with more SE traffic. But don't forget that backlinks are not helpful only in terms of SEO, there are signifiant amounts of traffic comming via those backlinks too.
-(4) I'd say this is also related to knowing/enjoying your market/field/domain of action.



I don't buy lottery tickets, I don't like the concept. SEO could be compared with lottery IMHO, but it's way easier and simpler and while of course you need a bith of luck to get into the top, you don't need the HUGE luck you need to win the jackpot you're talking about. Plus, in SEO you quite can MAKE your luck. Also, if you decide to do it on your own ( which is not that hard if you have a passion for it and the time to put in ), it costs nothing.

joedavies1987, see SEO_AM's second post in this thread plus here are a few points from me too.

For example, if you're selling gold balls ( but it works with pretty much anything else ). Put up a contest, offer a personalized ball or something like that, write about famous people in that field ( example: Tiger Woods and anyone else ), write about your personal golf experiences, post pictures of yourself playing gold, offer free wallpapers ( related to your field ), offer free advices to people asking you related questions ( based on those q/a you can created FAQ sections which can attract nice amounts of backlinks ) and way more. IMHO, the possibilities are endless.

That's why I say SEO is not about formulas and that's why I put formula between " " in my first post. You need creativity, not formulas. You're just looking for someone else to simply give you a way to build content/links. That's not enough, if you want to succeed, you need to innovate/create yourself. I still have to pass some tests/exams for this myself, but I'm trying to let myself be creative regarding content/links.

Btw, GroupMaster made a great post too.

That was a joke! ...noted off of "guaranteed success".

Got it, but I wanted to state that and maybe give those who spend their hard earned money some food for thought before buying any more tickets.

Please say why you disagree and also correct me. Please don't let me mislead the others.

I told you to negatively rep me in the other thread if you think I've said something wrong or misleading and I'm glad you did it, but please explain why you think that, it would be of great help for me.

The foundation - principles are exactly right.

Your response is more "Marketing Driven". In marketing you do testing.

The answer to each of your questions, is test your content. You add and remove content based upon performance, and yes, traffic can be proportional to quality if you promote the content to the right people who appreciate the quality with a fat juicy quality link.

It is a short answer, but I believe it is qualified adequately enough.