-
Is Content Alone Enough for Tough Niches? My Thoughts on Recent Google Updates
Posted by on August 17, 2024 at 12:34 amWith all the recent Google updates targeting backlinks, AI Spam and paid guest posts, I’m starting to wonder if just posting quality content is enough—especially for tough niches like real estate, locksmiths, legal, health, and other competitive small businesses.
In my experience, while topical authority and well-researched content can work for low to medium competition, the tougher niches seem to need at least one powerful backlink combined with some natural links (if done properly) to see noticeable improvements—sometimes within just a week.
Curious to hear your thoughts. Are you finding that content alone is enough, or are certain niches still requiring that extra push?"
-
1 Reply
-
Google is not targeting backlinks or AI content. Google has been targeting link spam – which are links exchanged for services or money. AI Content is not banned or targeted. Google targets machine-scaled content including those with AI and/or “human” content.
Content doesn’t rank itself. Content is the claim – everyone is making the same claim. Google is not a content appreciation engine.
-
“With all the recent Google updates targeting backlinks, AI Spam and paid guest posts, I’m starting to wonder if just posting quality content is enough—especially for tough niches like real estate, locksmiths, legal, health, and other competitive small businesses.”
Google is just thinning the heard homie. HCU went after people who ran shitty/linked to shitty pbns that camouflaged themselves with what looked like legit links. Like, I know a guy in town who claims he’s a guru, but one look at his backlink profile shows that right up to the first HCU update he was running canonical shell games and spoofed sub domains and a poorly made pbn to juice his shit – then he got scared and whipped out his credit card, getting shout outs for his company on authoritative domains…still got his ass beat to death with an HCU baseball bat.
“In my experience, while topical authority and well-researched content can work for low to medium competition, the tougher niches seem to need at least one powerful backlink combined with some natural links (if done properly) to see noticeable improvements—sometimes within just a week.”
No, just no, man. I spent years writing well-researched content; it did absolutely nothing because even when my domains had a few decent backlinks, I STILL got outranked by people who knew the actual rules of the game and who the players really were – backlinks from authoritative domains.
“Curious to hear your thoughts. Are you finding that content alone is enough, or are certain niches still requiring that extra push?”
Content will not make you rank. u/WebLinkr will go down in the history of SEO as the one who accurately defined Google’s convoluted cult-like fuckery so well: “Google is not a content appreciation engine”
I’ll take it a step further – Google’s sole purpose is to make money. Why does Google tell people that if you write quality content, they’ll rank?
Because they don’t want their target audience (small business owners/seo copywriters/whoever) to know the engine can be manipulated, and that even though these people wrote really good content, their competitors are still outranking them- why? because they are spending money on Google Ads, so you should do the same!
-
Search engines rank your site based on how you compare to your competitors. Content is important, but backlinks matter too, especially if you’re in a competitive niche.
But only to rely on backlinks, without proper onsite seo or even proper structure, off page is useless.
Biggest mistake in off page I keep seeing folks make is they dont distribute backlinks among different URLs, they keep making links to their homepage or important pages. URLs must be distributed to avoid spamming and pass link equity through the wrbsite structure and internal links.
2nd biggest mistake, they keep using same anchor txt over and over.
3rd mistake is not having a diverse link profile. Many folks only focus on guest posts, which does more harm than any good. Links should be diversified and come from various sources like relevant forums, image/audio/ video links / social signals for diversified approach.
Feel free to add more.
-
I’ve been saying it for years; content is not enough and links aren’t necessity. YOU NEED BRAND. People seeking your business out directly. I consistently see serp ranking improvement when we are running paid ads or biz dev outreach as we are creating a ‘buzz’ about the businesses (subsequently boosting branded search).
Log in to reply.