How to Create Compelling Content

And if you ignore this SEO stuff?
Sure, you’ll get some untargeted “long tail” traffic. But what good does that really do you?
Even with an advertising business model, irrelevant traffic bounces off your site quickly,
leading to disgruntled advertisers who don’t renew. And if you’re selling something, you’re
only burning bandwidth.
The beauty of building a reader-focused online presence based on valuable content is that you
can do well even if Google hates you, simply by getting people to opt-in and follow you over
time.
The cool part, though, is that if you actually follow that path, Google loves you.
Take advantage of that. It’s the critical last mile of a well-rounded and laser-focused online
marketing campaign that makes a huge difference to your overall success.
Traffic has to convert, or why bother?
Now we come to the big point. Everyone loves traffic – it’s addictive and strangely gratifying in
its own right.
But traffic doesn’t pay the bills. It’s people who take the actions you need them to who do. So
again, it’s not traffic that matters, it’s targeted traffic reaching the intended pages.
Here’s the problem . . . too many people think a search-optimized web page or blog post is
some ugly keyword stuffed mess. That might (maybe) be tasty to spiders, but it sends people
running for the hills.
And you just don’t need to create that keyword-stuffed junk.
Danny Sullivan said it well at the close of our recent discussion:
“Unfortunately, too many assume that SEO means trying to trick search engines. It doesn’t. It
simply means building a site that’s friendly to them.”
Part of being friendly to search engines is using language in your content that relevant
searchers are also using. That’s where keyword research comes in.
The 5 essential elements of search engine keyword research
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