SEO - Content Is King

The art of search engine optimization, or SEO, is a difficult skill to master, in a field of tremendous competition. Sometimes it seems everyone on Earth is touting the latest and greatest in SEO marketing.

The truth is, SEO is an ever evolving art form, since search engines like Google routinely change their search algorithms to thwart unscrupulous web designers and promoters, who find exploits and take advantage of them. Other, smaller search engines and directories must also be considered, as they produce large amounts of traffic as well, albeit not quite as much as Google.

Keeping up with all the changes to the search engines and their individual algorithms is so much work it is almost counterproductive, sometimes not leaving webmasters, especially new webmasters, enough spare time and resources to properly maintain their multiple sites and blogs. Many webmasters hire others to write SEO content and optimize their sites, while some rely solely on external ads to bring traffic, eschewing search engines and their fickle nature altogether in favor of a direct, albeit costly, approach. These webmasters actually tend to be successful, after a fashion. Removing the uncertainty of SEO is a tempting lure, but few can afford to attract visitors this way. Dealing with SEO on your website is almost a certainty, if you intend to earn any money or attract readers.

The basic concept of SEO is nothing new. Since the inception of the worldwide web, people have been attempting to manipulate search engines and their rankings for profit. Showing up in the top search results is a priority goal for most webmasters, and the techniques, tricks and outright cheating has run rampant since the very first search engines were established, and shows no signs of abating any time soon. Learning to master the concepts of modern SEO doctrine is a challenge that today's webmaster has no choice but to embrace and fully understand.

Good search engine optimization is critical to the success of your commercial website. Without the attention of the major search engines, no site can really pull enough traffic to sustain a profit margin for very long. The web and the merchants who do business there are dependent on SEO content to bring visitors and their money to the point of sale, where the actual transaction can occur. You can offer the best product on Earth for the lowest prices, but if nobody gets your message, you will not make the first sale. Customers are as important to online businesses as they are to their offline counterparts, the department stores, supermarkets and outlet malls that dot the countryside. Without a living, breathing human being to hand over their cash, there simply is no business to be had, leaving the business operating at a loss, at best.

But mastering the art of SEO is no small feat, as any visitor to a site that features five pages of keywords strung together and separated by commas will tell you. Simply repeating keywords is not enough, as visitors will quickly dismiss your site as a blatant attempt at stripping them of their cash. Consumers don't like to be fooled or misled, and keyword jumbling is exactly that; Fooling the searcher into visiting a page that is not as relevant as what they may have been searching for will not win any customers for your site, much less a testimonial or referral. Experienced webmasters know better than to participate in these underhanded tactics, as it will only cost them business in the long run.

The most effective way to optimize your site for search engine rankings is to provide a tremendous amount of content, revolving around the main niche topic of the site and featuring a good density of all the keywords related to that topic or niche. Content is king on the web. Performing a search and selecting the right keyword phrases is the first step towards creating your content, but providing valuable information is the end goal of your entire effort. Whether you get traffic or not won't matter in the end, if you can't keep visitors returning to your site, you won't stand a chance, as most readers never make a buying decision on the first visit.

Content with value is difficult to define, but it is generally a good idea to be aware of the needs of your audience and provide what it is that they are in the market for. Once you have defined your market, creating keyword rich ad copy that leads your visitor to the point of sale and still has value on it's own merits is your most urgent priority, as well as one of the most difficult challenges.

Once a sufficient amount of content has been generated and published that meets the standards of your audience, the site can be actively promoted by the usual methods, such as search engine submissions, directories and other assorted advertising.

The choice to pay for advertising or depend on keyword rich SEO content to drive traffic to the product is up to the individual webmaster, but a combination of both is what proves to be most effective in the long run. In the end, content is king. Providing useful, relevant content will produce more traffic and higher rankings than any other method of free self promotion.