In a lot of SEO forums, especially the real estate forums like this one, and others, you will find a contingent of people that insist that "great content" alone will result in huge numbers of links to your website.
Well, OK. Sure. I have seen it happen. I can point to a few specific sites where it works like crazy.
However, I think I can point to a lot more sites that have "great content" and nobody cares. It generates few, if any, links on it's own merit. I have evaluated many of these sites, at the site owner's request, when they wanted to know why they were not getting the rankings they had been led to believe were coming their way. Invariably, the lack of link popularity is holding them back, and at times the "great content" they are promoting has no keyword focus that would help the agent in their local market.
Let's expose some gaping holes in the "great content" theory? Not many people are willing to challenge this supposed "sacred cow" of SEO. But if you want rankings, then a willingness to look at this a bit differently might be to your advantage. I also realize that there will be dogged proponents of this that will tell me that I am way off-base, and that anyone who strays from the "great content" approach stands to be penalized forever in Google, or some other nonsense.
First, to understand this, you need to stop looking at your own content with fascination. Once you get away from the "my own content is surely worthy of citation" approach, you can finally begin to see into the real world of linking, not the world of imagined links.
To make my point, I need to ask, how often do YOU surf the Web, looking for fabulous content that is worthy of citation on your own website, unilaterally, with nothing in return, and then you actually take the time to place that link on your own site? Once in a while? Never? Well guess, what? Neither is anyone else. Everyone wants links, but few people are actually placing links for nothing in return.
Which easily explains why those of you who do have "great content" but no significant link popularity to show for it have a hard time getting rankings. We can imagine links all day long, but getting REAL links is a lot more complex.
Now, of the instances where agent sites have both "great content", as well as a lot of links, in a quantity that will make a difference in a competitive market, you need to look at WHAT ELSE is being done to get those links.
For one, you will likely see A LOT of time put toward the content creation. An occasional interesting post or two, on your own site, might get a few links, if you promote it, but large numbers of links come from a large base of content. And generally, for an agent, that content is going to be "real estate industry" content, discussing issues that relate to the agent community as a whole. Controversy helps. That gets other agents exercised about verbally sparring with you, or citing your article in their own blogs.
It is generally NOT content about your own local community, using keywords that will help your own rankings. Very few other site owners really care that much about what is happening in your own market. At least not enough to cite it. Sure, you might get the chamber or the local newspaper to cite it, which is good, but that's two links. Now, granted, a link from the local paper is a good link to get, and you should get them, but for SEO purposes, you can "tap out" the local market for links rather quickly.
Next, the most successful agents who use "great content" to attract gratuitous, un-reciprocated links spend A LOT of time promoting it, in places like ActiveRain, etc. Some of them seem to spend all day in here, only after they are done writing and editing it in the first place. It must leave little time to sell real estate.
Bottom line, if you are not taking that approach toward building your link popularity with "great content", then it is almost guaranteed that you will get very few links from your effort, regardless of how great your content might be. Great content is one way to approach SEO work. It can work, when a very concerted effort is put in place.
I'd say that, based on my own experience, it is probably the LEAST EFFICIENT means of generating top search rankings. In other words, there are other ways to get achieve that end without the need to win a Pulitzer Prize in the process. For far less valuable and precious time required.
Again, there are many paths to good rankings. What many people refuse to do is examine the cost, in both time and money, as well as the expected timeline, and expectation of success, in a competitive environment.
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Sounds good to me. Though an argument might be that the definition of "great" content is that content which is sticky enough or viral enought to get lots of unsolicitated inbound links. The content which most of us write will only ever be "good".