Oh, I've been down this exact rabbit hole, and the framing as an either-or really does trip people up - beautifully put in the original comment. Both approaches are valid, but they serve such different roles that it's almost like comparing a spotlight to a lantern. A spotlight is intense and directed, but you can't really carry it around without effort. That's a direct link to your services page: powerful when you land it, but almost impossible to earn naturally because no one wants to link to a polished sales page. It's like asking someone to hang a banner ad in their living room - only happens if you've got a relationship or pay for the privilege.
The blog-first approach is more like planting a lush garden of helpful content. A really good guide, original data, a heartfelt case study - people actually want to share those. They reference them, link to them, and suddenly your blog post is a little hub of earned authority. Then you can gently guide that authority toward your services page through careful internal links. It's a winding path, not a straight highway, but the traffic is far easier to attract. Every hop from blog to service page dilutes the signal a bit - like pouring water through a series of filters - but you're still bringing in far more water than you could from direct links alone. It's a trade-off, and a smart one.
What really seals it for me is the double duty this content does now. That cluster of useful, linkable blog posts you build for SEO? It's also exactly the stuff that AI search engines love to cite. So you're not just earning links today - you're making yourself citable in answers tomorrow. A strategy built purely on direct links to service pages misses that entirely. It's like investing in a single gorgeous piece of furniture instead of designing an entire room that people want to walk into and reference. Build the content garden, sprinkle in direct links where you can genuinely earn them, and let the whole ecosystem grow.
