Use Content to Build, Advertise and Drive Traffic to Your Online
Business

 Why is Content Important?

Are you new to online marketing? Or are you one of the millions
of frustrated website owners watching helplessly as your site
fluctuates up and down (even on and off) the search engines?

Is your traffic suffering as you try to stay on top of the most
current methods of finding traffic, only to find that they are
ineffective for bringing targeted traffic or stop working soon
after the search engines catch on?

There is a reason that staying in the search engines is vitally
important. The amount of people who are searching for
information online is increasing rapidly.

An Ipsos-Reid poll showed that people are starting to rely more
heavily on the internet with increases in the frequency of
internet usage in North America the UK and Asia. At the time of
the poll 72% of Americans were online within the previous month,
and that number continues to rise.

How are they finding information on the internet?

According to research published by GVU (Graphic, Visualization
and Usability Center), most users – novice, expert, young, old,
male and female – find new websites from two main sources:
hyperlinks and search engines.

Pew Internet & American Life Project also published statistics
about search engine use which indicated that '84% of online
American adults have used search engines. That amounts to 108
million people. On any given day, 56% of those online use search
engines.'

How many of these potential visitors are finding YOUR website?
More websites are created each day leading to increased
congestion and competition for the top spots in search engine
results. How are you able to compete? Well first of all, how do
search engines bring you traffic?

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 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.

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.

SEO:

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…

Content is KING!

Before you start to think that this is another SEO technique
that may or may not work depending on the current algorithms of
the search engines, think about it…

EVERYTHING on the internet is CONTENT.

The internet is a veritable treasure trove of information. Good,
bad, valuable or not, the internet is all about providing
information to people. That is why smart internet marketers know
that people want information from their websites – not just SEO
enriched pages of advertising.

The loopholes that search engine optimizers have been trying to
use for high ranking in the search engine has created a plethora
of sites that boast high keyword ratios, thousands of irrelevant
hyperlinks and sometimes even redirection. These redirected
websites try to create an optimized web page that the search
engines will rank high but actually redirect the viewer to a
less search engine friendly site.

Well, the search engines caught on. The websites that were
getting the highest placements weren't always providing quality
information or useful content. In fact, they not only lowered
the ranking of these sites – they even removed them from the
listings completely.

This sent a shock wave through the internet community and smart
marketers realized that there is only one sure way to convince
the search engines that they were meant to be at the top:
Quality Content.

Not only do the search engines love content, but visitors do
too. By providing visitors with useful information and relevant
links to other sites, they come back again and again! And that's
not the only benefit.

Because website owners are now hungry for content, there is a
huge market for informative articles that other website owners
can use on their sites. By offering information to these sites
in exchange for a hyperlink to your website, you get even more
exposure, both to search engines AND customers.

So, how do you harness the power of content? How do you pull the
most benefit and profits from your information?

Find out right in your next lesson…

In a hurry! Head to the marketing science lab….
http://presssuccess.com/cpl

Sincerely,

Jack Humphrey
Willie Crawford
Diana Barnum
Peter Lenkefi
Mark Braunstein