Lately I’ve been wondering what Google favors more – fresh, unique content or quality (PR 4 or higher) backlinks.
There’s oceans of people that are on either side of the argument. Some say it’s best to have lots of one-way backlinks from respected, authority sites. Others say it’s best to be constantly adding new, unique content.
Personally I think both are useful in their own way. But the nerd inside of me wants to figure out the “magic formula”. Should I spend 50% of my time on each, or 80% on content and 20% on backlinks? It’s quite the quandary.
So I’ve decided to perform a test. The parameters and execution of the test won’t be perfect, as there’s only one of me and I’m not a robot. But nevertheless, I’m hoping it can provide some useful insight into this problem.
Here’s what I aim to do:
- Site A (CONTENT)
- Niche topic to be determined
- A subdomain of an existing generically-named domain that I own (primary keyword subdomain name, with “A” on the end)
- WordPress template with all SEO-related plugins activated
- Initial content will be 2 or 3 posts, keyword-rich, appropriately tagged
- After indexed by Google, I’ll add one new article a day for a month
- Each article will use the keywords that I’m targeting
- Site B (BACKLINKS)
- Same subdomain setup as Site A, but with “B” on the end
- Same WordPress setup
- Same initial content, but each post rewritten to be unique
- After indexed by Google, I’ll add one high-PR backlink a day for a month
- No new posts
Sounds like fun, eh? Does anyone have a prediction on which site will rank higher with Google at the end of the month?

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