“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” – Bill Gates, “Content is King”, January 3, 1996

For many years, content was treated by SEO professionals with anything but regal regard. Often relegated to subordinate duties – or banished altogether – in favor of aggressive link building strategies, King Content’s ascendency to the crown was delayed.

Instead, black-hat SEO practitioners reigned supreme, bolstered by their armies of link spam, article directories and link farms. The white-hat philosophy of using high-quality, creative content to generate notice and build links was persecuted into exile.

But the evil empire began to crumble in the wake of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, and a new hierarchy has begun to emerge. Content has taken its rightful place at the throne – it’s the key to any long-term link building campaign – and the King is nobly surrounded by fellow royals Relevancy and Relationships.

Unfortunately, there are still many in the realm of guest post link building that attempt to circumvent the edicts handed down by King Content and His Court, stubbornly relying on get-links-quick methods that sacrifice the kingliness and long-term viability of quality content in favor of less regal virtues like quantity and rapidity.

As cream rises to the top of the pail, so too in time will those that heed the decrees of King Content be ascended above those that defy him. In other words – to step away from this silly monarchy metaphor – if you are writing and creating poor quality content and hoping that this will lead you to a mountain of good links, you will be sorely disappointed when you find that all you have created is a pile of crap – and a link portfolio that emits that unmistakable odor which will undoubtedly detected by future algorithmic updates.

The King and You Hopefully you’ve recognized that skillfully utilizing guest posts to obtain and build links will only be a viable long-term strategy when you are generating content that is of such quality that it offers lasting value to the specific community for whom it was created.

Whipping out 500 fluffy words on a subject that you are scarcely familiar with in hopes of duping an unsuspecting webmaster into hosting it with your link is a strategy that has recently become the flavor-of-the-month in some SEO circles, but in the long run will be no match for those that are using an engaging voice to create informed, niche-specific content that experts in a given field will be eager to read and share.

For this reason, some of the top link-building companies have recognized the need to hire employees that are skilled at crafting creative content, and then training them on the ins-and-outs of SEO, as opposed to taking SEO gurus and expecting them to write engaging copy, which in many cases is akin to shoving a square peg into a round hole.

A Queen is Crowned

Relevancy has emerged as the principal compliment to quality content, making it the Queen to the proverbial Content King. The goal of any effective guest poster is to create high quality articles for high-quality blogs on subjects that are relevant both to the website’s readership AND the client for whom you are building the link.

Lazy and ineffective link-builders will no doubt try to diminish the sanctity of this marriage between quality and relevancy by obtaining links with mediocre articles written for websites of dubious relevance. Eventually, however, these tactics will be punished as little more than attempts to manipulative SERPs, while doing nothing to contribute towards a richer, higher quality web experience for users – which is foremost among Google’s stated goals.

The industry’s top link builders have identified relevancy as a fundamental component in the value of a link, as important – if not more so – than simple page rank or domain authority. To this end, link-building pioneers in the industry have begun crafting ways to quantify the relevancy of a given link – and using those figures to predict the link juice received both now and in the future.

The Gatekeepers

If content is king, and relevancy the queen, then relationship building and effective outreach are the sentries, the gatekeepers charged with turning away the riff raff at his majesty’s door. In this kingdom, creating a high-quality, relevant article will do you little good if your outreach is so paltry and ineffective that you are never granted a royal audience to begin with.

Sadly, many are showing up at the gates without any relationships and hapless outreach procedures like the ill-advised form e-mails full of meaningless platitudes that have given all guest posters a bad name. When this method fails, many simply increase their outreach quantity, hoping to prey on websites administered by the lazy and/or stupid. Hopefully it will come as no surprise to you that links handed out by the lazy and stupid will only decrease in value as time marches forward.

Contrast this with the practices of the best link-builders, who realize that there is a lot more to effective outreach than one-off e-mails sent out in bulk. Great guest posters have learned that in order to get links within a specific niche community, one has to actually become part of said community. You can write choicely-worded outreach letters and shoot them out to strangers all day long, but this tactic is no match for someone who has truly dedicated themselves to becoming a valuable member of a vibrant niche-community, making a painstaking effort to build relationships with the key players in that genre.

Realizing Royal Relationships

There are a number of ways to begin building a foundation of effective relationships:

• Social media – engage fellow community members in the social media-scape. Follow them on Twitter and respond to their contributions. Sign up for a Pinterest account and begin posting and sharing graphics related to the community. Everyone is becoming savvier when it comes to social media, so use your new-found shrewdness to become a more active member of the community. We may not know for certain how the popular social media sites will directly affect SERPs for the time being, but we do know that these social platforms are ideal grounds for relationship building, use them thusly.
   
• Blog Commenting – Black hat SEO agents have ruined blog commenting by incessantly soiling the blogosphere with spammy comments. It’s time that we white-hat link builders take the practice back, not as a way to obtain cheap links – that won’t pay in the long run – but instead to help build community. There simply is no better way to demonstrate your authority on a particular subject or niche than by directly engaging with other respected members of that community. Again, it’s about building relationships; build those first and the links will come. Build the links without quality relationships as the foundation and you are simply constructing a house of cards that will soon tumble over.
   
• Source linking – By now you know that plagiarism won’t work and simply rewriting someone else’s ideas in a different voice and passing them off as your own is also a recipe for failure. Your goal is to create 100% unique content, right? Except, that 100% unique content doesn’t exist – and it never did. All writing – nay, all art – is a conglomeration of our own ideas and the thoughts of those who inspired and came before us. Including links within your guest posts to similar sites that offer particularly insightful and relevant work on a given subject is not only the ethical thing to do, but it can be extremely helpful in your outreach campaign. You share some of the credit – not to mention link juice – with the very people that you are hoping will let you through the door. When done correctly, it’s an obvious win-win.

Ceremonial Conclusion

Bill Gates didn’t have SEO specifically in mind when he penned those famous – and ultimately accurate – words quoted at the beginning of this piece. Content has emerged as the backbone of the web and is now surfacing as a pillar of SEO as well, particularly in the world of organic link building. With Google updates undermining the effectiveness of black-hat techniques, relevancy and relationships have become recognized by the best white-hat strategists as the crucial compliments to quality content. There are no doubt other members of the royal court that we can add to Content, Relevancy and Relationships, but mastering those three aspects of the link-building kingdom will put you well ahead of the competition and ensure majestic links and regal results for years to come.