Why is Content Important?

Content is the soul of a website. Content is comprised of the words or text on a web page along with the graphics and structure of a website. Today Web content is the best tool for building relations with your potential customers. The look and feel of a site is crucial but quality web content may be more important.

Two of the most popular methods of getting traffic from search engines include PPC – Pay Per Click – and SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

PPC:

Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you choose keywords you would like your site to appear for when a search is performed. You decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose.Pay Per Click is advertising provided by the search engine providers (Google, Yahoo! and others) where you PAY for top placement. Their strategies for placement differ slightly. Some search engines will give you higher placement if your ad has a higher click-through rate (meaning more people click on your ad in ratio to the amount of times your ad was shown), others give top positions to the highest bidder.
You probably already know that surveys are excellent for finding out what your target market wants. But if combined with low cost, quick and dirty Google PPC, surveys can also send lots of targeted prospects to your site every month.

In either case, you PAY. It is a quick way to get listed in the search engines and a smart way to get your traffic flowing – but it is not the cheapest AND you could spend far more than is profitable for your business if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Search Engines: While crawling pages of a website, search engines look for content more than anything else. Search engines can pick up quality content and it is the only factor that they emphasize and value most while ranking a website. For the benefit of their users, search engines try to find the best and most useful content on the Internet for any given set of keywords.

SEO:
Although search engines are extremely competitive (in terms of placement), the major search engines account for over 90% of all traffic. With that though in mind, companies that are serious about earning a share of the internet market should be committed to securing top 10 rankings for the keywords or phrases that pertain to the products and services that they offer.
The best way to ensure a solid return on your website investment is to employ the services of a search engine optimization firm with a proven track record of success, knowledge of current and cutting edge techniques, and experience working with the business community.

There are a lot of companies working ‘behind the scenes’ to help website owners get plenty of traffic from the natural search engine listings. Natural listings mean the search engine has ranked you according to the value it believes your site will offer an individual searching for a specific word or phrase.

Understanding exactly WHAT the search engines want to see when ranking sites requires knowledge of the algorithms. These algorithms change all the time as search engine providers try to outwit the search engine optimizers trying to find loopholes in the ranking system.

Some SEO companies will promise you top spots for a certain cost. Some are honestly creating optimized websites – others may be using techniques that could possibly get your site BANNED from the search engines entirely (once the search engine catches on). However, optimizing your website for better placement in the search engines is a technique that you should become familiar with and use to your advantage.

Both of these traffic methods have their pros and cons for generating traffic from the search engines. You will find out more about using them properly later on. But first you need to know what REALLY works…