subject: How Content Can Really Increase Your Sales [print this page] Search engines don't buy products and services. People do.
To sell your products and services online, you need targeted traffic. Search engines will send you targeted traffic, and a lot of it, if you take certain steps.
The first step in your search engine marketing campaign isn't search engine optimization. Your first step is to understand the internet and how to effectively use it to promote your products and services.
The internet is a content driven medium. Searchers are looking for information. They don't want to be sold to. They want value. You can provide this value through the content you write for your website, as well as content you write for your promotions.
Therefore, you need to develop a complete, content management strategy. Your content management strategy needs to be customer focused, content driven, and optimized for the search engines.
Your content management strategy should consider on page and off page optimization factors. On page factors include optimizing your page for keywords relevant to your page, titles, and descriptions. Off page factors include link exchanges and backlinks.
Once you've chosen the topic for your site, you need to develop your website. Decide what content you will write. Your content should include articles, press releases, and product reviews. You can also create free ebooks, reports, and white papers provided the information you include will be useful to your site visitor.
Before developing your content, you need to do your research. Find out what your readers are searching for. There are plenty of free tools and software on the internet to help you accomplish this task. Simply search for a keyword phrase like "keyword suggestion tools".
When you're ready to write your content, choose two to three keywords and/or keyword phrases in the text for your page. Write your content and then optimize your page for these keywords. You can use free software like Web CEO.
Although on page optimization will help you if you don't have a lot of competition for your keyword phrases, it is not enough if you are targeting high competition words. To raise your rankings, you will need to link to high traffic sites with high page rank. Building backlinks from other websites will also help you raise your rankings.
Do a search in your favorite search engine to find sites you can link to. Study these sites. Check to see what keywords they use to optimize their pages. Find out if they exchange links and request a link exchange.
