Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. To be visible at the search engines, you have to appear in the first three or so pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). The quest for attaining high rankings at the search engines has spawned a whole industry, the search engine optimization (SEO) world.

The long-term strategy to succeed at the search engines is to focus on adding unique content to your site, consistently. Visitors to search engines are looking for content, and if you provide it, you drive considerable traffic to your site.

There are a lot of factors that come into play in attaining high rankings at the search engines. Your domain name, title, meta and alt tags play a role as well as incoming links etc. The weight of Page Rank (PR) in Google algorithms has been a matter of ongoing debate and speculation in the SEO world. Studies have reported low PR sites getting high rankings in SERPS while high PR sites pant at the bottom.

While the weight of other factors in overall site rankings are debatable, there is no controversy as to the role of content. It wins the marathon. Google rode to the top on the wings of content, serving relevant content to searchers. To remain at the top, Google is constantly tweaking its ultra secret algorithms that ensure that relevant content sites rank high in its SERPS.

Some webmasters fall into the trap of focusing on a few major keywords, and going to war with them, instead of diversifying their keyword base by constantly adding new unique content. As thousand of sites go up everyday around the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to win the search engine war for your favorite but highly competitive keywords. Instead of dissipating energy over winning in highly competitive keywords, as you add more content, your keyword base increases and you begin to show up tops for non-competitive keywords.

As you continue to add more content, the trickle of visitors becomes a flood and before you know it, your inner pages begin to draw in considerable traffic. Instead of becoming fixated by the front door (home page), you begin to get hundreds and eventually thousands of visitors that land at your site through your content pages, and eventually get to visit your home page. If you look at your content pages a fish net, the more unique content you add, the more you spread the net, and the more fish you catch.

Developing excellent content for your site does not only bring in visitors, but webmasters too, looking for valuable content to complement their site themes. Quite a number of them will link to you without asking for a link back. This boosts your link popularity and PR, for what it is worth, and enhances your search engine rankings.

By creating an excellent content site, you are creating a valuable resource for surfers and search engines, and they will reward you appropriately. Surfers will reward you by delivering your most wanted response (MWR), be it to place an order, click through to your affiliate merchant sites etc. Search engines reward you with high rankings, which mean more traffic. On the whole, you end up building an online brand and become recognized as an expert in your field. This opens other doors: speaking engagements, partnerships, adverts and endless possibilities.

It all started with focusing on your visitors, and consistently adding valuable content until your site becomes a one-stop resource center for your area of interest.

To win with content, you have to be very patient. It does not happen overnight. Low content well-optimized sites will initially overtake you. It may take anything from three months to one year or more, before you begin to see results, especially if you factor in Googles sandbox effect. If you keep at it and never give up or lose focus, you will begin to see visitors from search engines begin to show up in your traffic logs. It starts as a trickle and builds up gradually. If you check out the search engine for your rankings for that keyword, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that you begin to show up in the SERPS, maybe attain page one.

Your days of obscurity are over. This is not the time to go to sleep. Keep doing justice to your subject matter. Continue adding unique valuable content. Become the preferred destination for surfers looking for content on that subject matter. The world will make a beaten path to your door.

Stay focused.