The Chicken and Egg Syndrome - Links vs Content

Competitor has almost no content but ranks # 1

[bullneedsapic]

I have a catagory I'm looking to build a site on "Widget health". Its content driven, but products will fall into the mix. The person with the #1 organic search for "Widget Health" has just a few pages of content. I'm serious not much went into content here. But he has 45 links with all of the links having 4+ PR value. I started looking thru the sites he has linked with. And wouldn't you know it's clear that this guy has built all 45 sites and linked them together. All have very little content, sell advertising and virtually no content. How did these sites get any PR at all? Those links carry a ton of weight with Google. So much weight that it's almost silly that it's a number one search. But 45 links with PR4+ is the chicken and the egg......

Mark

[irishaff]

Id suggest content, which is a good offering to other webmasters when prospecting links. You might get some also without asking if the content is good.

[Marcia]

But he has 45 links with all of the links having 4+ PR value. I started looking thru the sites he has linked with. And wouldn't you know it's clear that this guy has built all 45 sites and linked them together. All have very little content

Go a step further back and see who links to those other 44 sites of his/hers he/she has linking to him (or her), and then go a step further back again and see who's linking to those. That is, if you're really all that curious.

Else, as irishaff suggested, put up plenty of good content and give a try for an ODP listing.

[goneinthesun]

The egg come first, cause we all know that dinosaur had egg.

[Animated]

haha i have a few sites that i link to each other but 45? waaaaaaa
look at his anchor text and page titles the links come from, if they have set it well then thats their advantage.
Their weakness seems to be lack of content so you can make use of that maybe and build a well content page instead

The chicken came first to lay the egg,an egg cant develope by itself :OP
First came the big bang(world wide web)then the website,content,links

[Swebbie]

Does linking to a site from all your others (all one-way links, no reciprocals) create any problems if they're all on the same server? Different domain names, but same hosting server.

[Animated]

>>Does linking to a site from all your others (all one-way links, no reciprocals) create any problems if they're all on the same server? Different domain names, but same hosting server.<<

not really if it doesn't look spammy, but you will get less credit they will get less points then domains from other ips would give you.

[jdancing]

She probably purchased a 45 link package. You need to write some pretty compelling content to get people to link to you in any numbers (especially if they can't find you), so it is best to seed your site with a few paid links.