Web Site Content is a Balancing Act

One of the raging debates among web site publishers and SEO types is the tug-of-war between writing web site content for actual human visitors vs. the search engine spiders. Basically, it boils down to a question of impressing readers or making search engines happy so they'll send you more traffic.

Well, here's a novel concept: DO BOTH!

It's really not difficult to walk the tightrope if you do some research first. We all want to write compelling content that will grab a reader's attention and hold it. But, to get any readers in the first place, you need to provide content that people actually search to find. Hate to be the one to break it to you, but if you're an expert on a rare bird that maybe 100 people in the world have ever heard of, all the writing you do online about it will go virtually unseen.

That's the conundrum, in a nutshell. Fortunately, there's a pretty simple solution. It's called keyword research. Sounds boring, doesn't it? Well, does it perk you up a bit to learn that spending a couple of hours doing it can be the difference between having a web site that collects dust and one that collects bucks? Thought it might.

What you want to do is build a list of keywords (single words and phrases) that are closely related to the theme of your site, then write a page of content full of information about each keyword. One keyword per page.

Now, here's the key to it all. Don't just pull a list out of the air (or, in this case, your own brain). Why not? Because the keywords you come up with may or may NOT be words that are actually searched for at the major search engines. You need to know for sure. In fact, knowing for sure is what separates a lot of successful niche web site owners from the masses of others who scratch their heads in puzzlement when their sites get very little free traffic.

Wordtracker is a Godsend

So, how can you find out which keywords that are related to your site's theme are searched for and which are not? Suffice to say, there are several options, but the best is a service found at wordtracker.com. These fine folks compile massive amounts of data about the words searchers at the major engines type in when they search. Then they present this data in a straightforward, easy-to-read format that you can check quickly as you build your keyword lists.

You simply go there, armed with a basic idea of which keywords to check out, and wordtracker will give you a thumbs up or thumbs down on each one by telling you how many times each keyword has been searched. It can be very eye-opening. You'll likely discover that some of your most cherished keywords are virtually worthless from a search engine traffic standpoint. You'll quickly learn to check your assumptions at the door when you enter wordtracker's site!

OK, once you've built a working list of keywords that you now know get used a lot by searchers at the major search engines, you'll be way ahead of most of your competitors. The only remaining step is to write some high quality, informative, useful content about each keyword in your list and post it on your site. Remember: one keyword (which can be a single word or a phrase) per page!

If you make your content easy to read and chock full of interesting information, you'll satisfy both elements mentioned at the beginning of this article. Your visitors will get great content, which will bring them back and convince some of them to link to your site. And, you'll have built that content around keywords that are actually being searched for at the big engines. More searches = more traffic. It's that simple.

You'll have a web site that pulls in more and more free search engine traffic as you continue to add content built around your keyword list. Once on your site, your visitors will find information that interests them and, hopefully, compels them to bookmark your site, tell their friends and co-workers, and maybe even give you a link on their own sites!

That, my friends, is how you win at the web site game. As logical as this all sounds, very few of your competitors understand it, let alone actually do it. So, get to it! They'll be eating your site's dust while you collect all the bucks!

© John Schwartz http://www.web-article-w riter.com (all rights reserved)

About the author: John Schwartz is the owner of Web-Article-Writer.com - specializing in providing original, high quality web site content and articles. Our goal is to help clients increase web site traffic through the acquisition of one-way links from related sites and higher search engine rankings.