Do keyword targeted articles internally linked count the same as backlinks in googles eyes

A couple things I've read are 'content is king' and 'google loves internal linking'.

Now through being an expert in one of my niches and writing top quality content I found the content is king thing to be total bullshit without offsite SEO as well- that is my intial appraisal at least. I wrote some grade A articles and I'm still crawling in the back of the serps.

Anyway I have a huge list of targeted keywords so I am thinking of writing an article each for them.

I'm wondering if that will boost me up the serps due to the 'content is king' hypothesis.

I guess my question is more- what is more valuable in serp rankings- writing good content on your page or getting good backlinks. I know you are all gonna say 'both' .

I guess I'll try and see.

The whole "Content is king" thing that Google always peddles is based upon the principle that; if you write amazing content, people will naturally link back to you and thus increase your rankings in the serps.

Simply writing awesome content alone won't give you shit, Google cannot determine what is good content and what is bad content. Ok so it knows how to determine if content is dupe and it can probably go as far as determing if content is 'spammy' by detecting the occurences of common phrases, but as far as the english language goes, Google has no idea whether content is good to read or not.

Everytime I hear Matt Cutts say "Write great content and people will link back to you" I just want to punch him in the face. The reality is that you could write some absolutely amazing content but it might never get picked up by anyone. The guy thinks that spending two whole friggin days writing an article is a good use of your time in terms of SEO.

So, I say concentrate on writing decent content but don't spend too much time on it, the rest of the time should be dedicated to getting backlinks.

So, I guess my answer is this; as long as your content is original and convinces someone to buy your product or whatever it is your advertising, that's all you need to worry about. Then, move onto getting backlinks.

Ye I was thinking you only have to have 'passable' content.

The more I do IM is the more I'm seeing how little content matters. For instance if you have titanium offsite seo to get you on front page for all your keywords the crowd would already be hungry I bet and you'd still get conversions with shit onsite content.

I imagine it wouldn't make that much difference compared to the night and day- success/fail difference not doing seo vs doing seo makes.

Obv. it's better to have stuff legible and streamlined to lead them to sales page but that is only a fraction of the overall process of IM from what I gather so far.

I'm starting to think IM = 5% content/onsite seo + 95% seo.

I'm thinking these idiot whitehatters only say 'content is king' because they just outsource (probably lots of time to blackhatters too ) all the SEO and continue writing their 'quality content' and falsely attribute most of their success to their paltry 'quality content' .

Yes, very good points.

I think a lot of these whitehatters have been around for many years. The thing is; if you have a well established site then your 'great' content will get picked up a lot easier because you already have an active audience, in that case then yes, great content will help you.

BUT, if your in the game just to make the cash money, and your making niche sites to sell products then you can forget about the whole 'content is king' thing, imo

The reason why we have a website is to lead people to either click on our adwords or our affiliate link (...etc), but if your website looks or reads like shit then people will leave before making you money. If I arrive at a website and the first page starts off like this: "welcom to my site on fake doggie poo it's a nice gift for lost of persons..." I will leave immediately because I don't trust what you have to sell.

So, like mentioned above, your content doesn't have to be National Geographic quality, but it does need to be written in decent English and sound good when being read out loud