SEO - Links Vs Content

Now this is a subject that makes my blood boil. And you will find so much contradicting advice when it comes to what is more important, content or links?

I have just been blogging on SEOmoz with regards to this subject and it is such a split in opinion. Now I usually agree with Rand in most of his advice about SEO, but this is one thing I find it hard to believe I will ever change my mind about.

Basically my opinion is that RELEVANT content is more important, not to mention ESSENTIAL to be able to rank at all. It's just plain logic to me that if you don't have the keyword you are trying to rank well for within your content, you will NOT get to the top of the search engine. It's like looking in the phonebook for someone you don't know the name of? WTF? Exactly, you can't expect to be found for something you haven't listed yourself for, can you. Now that is just the basic, BUT the relevance of your main copy plus other crucial content such as title tags, H-tags, Alt tags etc etc is imperative for your rankings.

Now I'm not saying links are not relevant as well, BUT again it's a relevancy must also connected with what links you have pointing to your site. Now if you have 1000 websites linking to you that have no relevance to your industry this might help your Google PageRank but not necessarily your Google ranking...Google PageRank and ranking well on Google is not one and the same thing. Now on the other hand if you had 10 websites all closely related to your industry, this would really have an impact.

Now another issue when it comes to link building is: what is your goal? Are you looking to rank well on the search engine or getting masses of traffic? Or both?

Basically to sum it up, links can help your search engine ranking position, no doubt, BUT it is not more important than content!