Content Writing vs Link Building: Chicken or the Egg?

I recently wrote a blog post on how to write an awesome post per day – every day.

In that post, I described in detail what I personally do to accomplish all the daily writing tasks on my to-do list.

Then I get a follow-up comment with a good question, which I am about to answer.

Here’s the comment from Chris Hoff from tiresonsale.org:

How much time do you spend getting backlinks versus creating content?

There seems to be a wide range of opinions. I’ve heard of folks focusing on cranking out new content and forgoing backlinks as well as others who say the vast majority of their time is spent getting links, like 80-20.

It takes me forever to write a half decent blog post so I’m wondering if I should focus on becoming a better content producer or backlinker. Thanks!

Very valid question.

Should you quit blogging?

Not everyone is born to be a writer, and I include myself in the same category.

However, blogging is first and foremost about WRITING!

So my first instinct is to say “Chris, I think you are in the wrong business model!”

But then I’d have to say the same to myself and many other bloggers I know.

So let’s get down to business and see if we can figure it out.

First of all, I need to refer to the previous post I wrote that separates all blogs into 3 different categories:

1. Blogging for SEO – when you start a blog just to support your main site with links and fresh content.
2. Blogging for branding – self-explanatory: you reinforce your existing brand through a blog.
3. Blogging for money.

Original post:   Anyone Should Blog? 3 Types of Blogs and 3 Ways to Handle Them

Since I don’t know what kind of blogging Christ is talking about (the link in his comment clearly lead to a niche site that he was doing some link building for), I’ll assume we are talking about “make money blogging“concept, since the first two are pretty straightforward and boring to talk about.

The chicken or the egg?

So you write a couple of good posts, do lots of link building, push those posts up the search engines, and then what?

Organic traffic will come, see that you don’t have much to offer as far as content goes and leave.

On the other hand, you are all about writing content. You write so much content, as a matter of fact, that you don’t have much time to do any link building.

The latter applies to me. I’ve been blogging daily for several months now and found that I had not time for anything else but content writing.

Well, sure I got a lot of natural links – meaning that you liked my content enough to link to it and I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.

However, natural link building is never enough, especially for a competitive niche like mine.

Yes, the answer is very obvious; however, a lot of us, bloggers, have a hard time finding it.

YOU HAVE TO FIND A BALANCE.

You can’t just do content writing without link building, as well as link building with not much content.

Killer Tool for Non-Writer Writers

…if you dare to use it, that is.

Don’t remember how I found this tool, but it’s awesome to keep your writing churning.

It’s dirt cheap ($10) and this is not an affiliate link: http://writeordie.com/buy/

Here’s what this application is about:

Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.

Killer Posts for Newbie Link Builders

Now that we dealt with the content writing issue, let’s get back to link building.

If you want any organic (READ: free and targeted) traffic from search engines, you pretty much HAVE TO learn how to do link building.

Your other option is to outsource the task.

However, I’ve searched far and near for a good link builder who knows what he/she is doing, but is not charging an arm and a leg for it – turned out to be an oxymoron.

Plus even if you do find someone, how would you know they are doing a good job if you have no idea how to do it yourself?

Here are some great posts for you to start learning about link building (I would read them in the order I listed them):

1. SEO Traffic Basics: Reciprocal Links, Backlinks, Keywords (REALLY basic basics)
2. Link Building Mixology: Your “How To Do It The Right Way” Guide
3. Link Building: What’s Naughty, What’s Nice?
4. Link Building Tip: How to Get 10 High-Quality Links In 30 Minutes Or Less
5. One Way Linking Authority Codes (yes, you’ll have to cough up about $10 for it, but trust me – the info is well worth it.)

As you can imagine, I have a lot more written on the topic, but the above posts should have you covered.

Marketing Takeaway

I’d like to get back to “finding balance” thingy I briefly mentioned before.

Most bloggers are overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid.

Finding balance is the single trickiest thing we have to do to become a success.

As for me, I have to cut down somewhere.

Daily blogging is sucking the blood out of me; I don’t have time to network, to build links, to visit your blogs, etc.

I will find my balance, I have to.

Image credit: http://www.quitor.com/

So, what are you going to do about it? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

If you like this post and think it would be valuable to your followers, share the ish out of it for me, would you?