I would say as well it's BOTH.
But what's more important?
Backlinks.... backlinks....BackLinks....
It takes me 1-2 days to get a great content for my Affiliate site. 2-3 for my own Big site...
But it takes one hell of a time with constant planning, analyzing, shitting there, playing with softwares, kicking G's ass and whatever you like to experiment with with regards to backlinks..
I just conducted my experiment with one of my throw away sites. I'll reveal it here for the sake of this old discussion.
Rank 12 in SERp's(.com) for keyword Chris Hemsworth Workout after throwing just 1day of my campaign. It got indexed directly on Rank 14 and never moved down. It got to position 8 after forcing my links to get indexed. And My plan is to give it daily dosage for a month. Just one thing... Look at the site...
It has NO CONTENT! nothing at all and I'm planning on taking it up on position 1 without content and never update it with only daily links.... I'll just put adsense on it and see whether it will stick to position 1 without the content.
More and more are experimenting on sites like this and this is not a first time (Obviously) just one thing you can take a look at and spend time. Backlinking takes a lot of effort and careful planning. It's not just plan tonight and do tomorrow and never go back. It's a constant process and takes one hell of work for newbies and masters a like.
That's why I vote for backlinks and that's how the bullshit goes
Walter