Andrew Heyward Former CBS News president says, "I think there will be a new Darwinism. In an era of authenticity, quality will win out. You're going to see much more emphasis on the highest quality products winning." This theory can be applied to content too. Content, quality content is a sure-fire way to make your website better.

Always try to be a step ahead of your competitor. Whatever he does, you do better. He has more content on his site, increase yours. He has more number of keywords? Well, what’s stopping you? Invest in some retail SEO tactics. So now you have good content and ample keywords. Does that mean that your website is ahead of your competitor’s?

Ah well, horses for courses. Just because you have optimized content doesn’t mean your job is done. You have to give some serious thought to linking. In search engine optimization ‘off page’ factors like link building strategies have a great deal of impact on rankings. Before going for link building, do some research on your competitor. Type in: link: http://www.competitorsdomain.com/ into the Google search box. The result will show the list of sites that are linked to your competitor’s site. Some might be social networking communities, blogging sites, paid links – both one way and two (reciprocal) way link exchanges, some might be directories like dmoz.org or Yahoo, and others might be domain related articles, references or testimonials. Try to analyze how he got these links and go about doing your own retail SEO link building. Steer clear of link farms, low quality links or huge link exchange programs. Link farms are sites that have nothing but links while low quality links are sites with little or no content. Else your site will get penalized or even booted out of a search engine’s result. Target only those links which will contribute positively towards user experience. Get links from authoritative sites, or links from sites that share the same focus as your site. So, I feel relevant linking is definitely the Queen.

I am sure some might argue with me over the fact that I chose link building over interaction, relevance and so on. These factors are important, vital for the survival of your kingdom (your website) but they are not the Sovereign.

Content and linking will definitely make a royal pair and your website can revel in royal success!