Firstly I must say that I am glad all the work I put in at the gym has finally paid off and for you to finally recognise me as the muscle bound hunk that I am!

I cant believe that I am sitting in Thailand and felt the need to reply to this debate. There was never a real debate, I understand and accept that content converts visitors into customers yet I put forward the importance that should be placed on obtaining high quality links in order to generate as many relevant and targeted visitors as possible. Through many different sources I may add all of which are within different stages of the decision making process and interested in the product/service before finding the website *Exhales.

Additionally (blah blah word for you there lisa!)i cant believe i have posted on a blog without using the name tag to obtain a link back to a site!

Frodo (a tanned version) x

aw we miss you Sam and your random rants. Can't believe you replied from Thailand, you are a true SEO geek! I like it =)

ps: "additionally" doesn't qualify as a bla bla word..you can do better than that. Has the sun affected your ability to converse in a blah blah manner Mr.Murray?

Thanks for replying from all the way over the otherside of the world!!! I know it must have been hard to find the internet there......like a homing device with you!! Does your argument still stand that links are MORE important overall? Just intrigued.

I love these kinds of posts.
My favorite quote is, "Without links there is little or no chance of ranking on the first page for any competitive terms."

Perhaps you should've had my face on the image saying, links links links:-)

Content is the winner. Without decent content you are just Google Bombing. But good content will still gain you longtail traffic.

Content wins... Links definitely help, but then again good content will automatically gain links? Right? :)

im sorry but content wins the battle, links are great but really i just focus on a few key links that are proven performers and focus on content...

without content you are just another site that goes up in SERPs quick and down even faster

would love to be better with links, or on a beach drinking beer in thailand, but until indian firms stop spamming cheap links, ill focus on content...

Thank you for your comment Dave.

I completely agree. ALthough we all realise the importance of links it seems that content wins hands down..... Google always prides themselves on ensuring a good user experience and delivering relevant websites to search ratio. Any yet, it seems that with links being such a major factor in the ranking algorithm, more and more websites are ranked in the top positions with poor or irrelevant content. If websites have to compete for top positions based on the relevance of content, is this such a bad thing? NO SPAMMING ALLOWED!!

Although it does seem like both content and links are important, I would have agree with content more. It is true that more links will get you ranked higher in the SERPs, and that will bring more traffic to your site. But if you have poor content on that site, then the bounce rate will be very significant. However, if you have quality content, then the traffic (definitely less than a site w/ more links) will be more interested in the content and in the end more likely to come back and convert. With good content, you will have more people coming back for more and in time gain that high ranking the way you would with a lot of links. My two cents..