Links Vs. Traffic: Which Is More Important?

[Connor]

There has much fanfare made of link building as part of Search Engine Optimization. In fact, if you Google “website traffic” and “link building” you’ll find that there are only 12,700,000 results for “website traffic” (without the quotes) versus 42,900,000 results for “link building” (again, without the quotes). Judging by these numbers, you’d think that link building is more important. There are some folks who would likely tell you that is the case. I’m not one of them.

Links are valuable. The right links are most valuable. But not all links will provide your website with value. Even if you get a high PR site in your niche to link to you and give you a boost in search engine juice, if that link doesn’t deliver targeted traffic to your website then it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a link.

Traffic makes you money. The best a link can do is push you up a few notches in the search engine results and send you a few leads. It’s up to your website content to close the sale. Without traffic, however, no matter how good your sales content is, you won’t last long online. That’s why it is important to make sure all of the pieces fit together and work together for the common good.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, and some of them involve link building. The two do not necessarily go hand in hand, though often they do.

Here are a few ways you can drive traffic to your website:

Search Engine Optimization
Article Marketing
Blog
Social Bookmarking
Reciprocal Linking
Link Buying
Directory Submissions
Online Advertising
Press Release Distribution
Social Networking
Pay Per Click Advertising
Viral Video Marketing
Podcasting
And that’s not all. There are as many ways to drive traffic to your website as there are link building methods. Actually, even more. In terms of Search Engine Optimization benefit, link building is far more important, but in terms of ROI, traffic is what will pay your bills - if, and it’s a big if, your website is capable of converting. So which is more important? Link building or traffic? You tell me.

Nick Stamoulis