Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And Why Quality Content Matters

The purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is to increase the amount of free targeted traffic your website receives.

When you have your site indexed in the search engines, that is only just the start.

Now you know the search engine knows about your website, and then then the next step is you want your website to appear high up for your target audience in the search results.

The best way to think about this is NOT how do I manipulate the search engine to show my site above others.

Rather, you need to consider:

"How do I make my website the most relevant and appealing website to my target audience?"

"How do I make it easy for them to find my website?"

"Once they are there how do I get them to take the required action?"

In other words, make your website highly valuable.

The reason for this philosophy relates to what the Search Engine is trying to do. Google for example wants to make the websites it indexes the most relevant content possible.

So it would be unreasonable for a scant reprint article, keyword stuffed, machine generated or poorly constructed flea market site to rank well.

Google in particular is getting very fussy. If there is so much content on the web (over 100,000,000 websites at last estimate) then they have the choice to eliminate all but the most useful pages.

Quality content should be a major focus for any web marketer because it is the main reason why your website will fall or fly. The old method of "article scraping" is becoming a bad idea because recycled content is not as valuable as unique content.

What will rank well is a website that is unique in content, clearly laid out, site mapped, easy to navigate and considered of value to others. (One measurement of which is calculated by how many people link to it).

In summary, building great search engine optimized websites requires some planning. You could draft out your website on a sketch pad, whiteboard or use a template prior to building it. You need to plan around your content.

If you start with the end in mind you will get faster results. Consider how you can find valuable unique content and you are on the right track.

James Schramko ranks on page one in Google for his Coolest Guy On The Planet SEO themed Blog and also creates very high ranking XSitePro websites using the techniques outlined in his groundbreaking XSP Cheat Sheet XSitepro Guide.