Any digital strategy that comes within the scope of content marketing and SEO takes into account two quality indicators that could double the effectiveness of the campaign: links and share (distribution). In general, your content will be recommended as a reference link by other authors if it is informative or interesting enough for them. What you can do is to create manual links in guest posts on other websites. In any case, these external links send visitors to your site, are semi-permanent, and may result in increased traffic and domain authority.

At the same time, quality content will be actively distributed by people in your social media groups. By simply pressing the “Share” button, the content will be seen by those who follow their activity. Distributions have the ability to drive traffic and increase brand visibility. It’s obvious that both factors can help your campaign and serve as indicators of the quality of the content.

The benefits


1a. The important factor here is the influence of links on domain authority. When Google decides the ranking of sites, it analyzes the relevance of a page for organic search and its authority. Its authority is determined primarily by the quantity and quality of links coming from other sites, which serve as reliable indicators. These are the only ways to build your domain authority, so if you want to climb the top of the search, the links are essential.

1b. The links are useful not only for the favorable positioning in the organic search rankings but they also function as regular links. Once inserted into articles or content with sufficient visibility, new visitors to your page are just a click away. An important factor is also the source that hosts the link. So a high-traffic site will be more beneficial than a low authority source.

1c. Links also help you improve your brand visibility, albeit on a smaller scale than other marketing tactics. Seeing the name of your company quoted in important material, it’s possible for users to associate your brand with important original research. So, for links to be more effective, you need to be quoted on a popular website that builds your reputation.

1d. Links are influential because they are permanent or at least are more permanent than social media distributions. Shared items are lost among other news that appears after a few minutes or a few days after distribution. Links, on the other hand, remain and continue to generate traffic and authority until the authors decide to erase them (which may never happen).

Benefits of Shares


2a. Interestingly, one of the most important benefits of distributions is their ability to gather more embedded links. Shares recommend your content to a wider audience, attracting potential authors and influences that find it convincing enough to insert reference links into their content. Without a distribution module on social networks, it’s hard to get even the best of work.

2b. When a material is distributed on social networks, it has the ability to attract traffic from followers interested in the subject. Although it has a similar effect to traffic coming from other sites, the audience share segment is very different. Depending on the objectives of your strategy and the demographic criteria concerned, you could favor one of two ways.

2c. Sharing on social networks brings more brand visibility than links. When a link in an article links to your page, only a fraction of the readers will click and come in contact with your brand. On the other hand, in the case of a share, people see the brand regardless of whether they have accessed the article or not.

2d. In general, obtaining a reference link in an article does not influence the viral potential of your content. At the same time, each share on social networks increases the chances of a material becoming popular due to the possibility of earning new distributions with each original share. Obviously, this is rare and difficult to accomplish, but the possibility of a cascade effect is very advantageous, which can not be achieved through links.

What should you use?


There are several dimensions of online marketing, and tactics like SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing are interconnected. By getting more links, you can add more shares, and more shares help you earn more links. Therefore, it is rather complicated to choose a detached winner. However, we can formulate some clear ideas.

If your only goal is to improve the authority and positioning of the site in search engines, links are the best solution.
Shares help you earn links, but only as a secondary result. Instead, if your primary goal is to grow your social networking follower network, then it is advisable to focus on this strategy.
Finally, if you are interested in building your reputation and attracting more traffic at the general level, you will need to use both tools to succeed. Otherwise, set your strategies according to your current campaign goals.