Content optimization is the most misunderstood SEO tasks. Search engines are not interested in any content. They cannot read. They only look for patterns. The pattern tells the search engine whether the article is acceptable. Not following that format tells the search engine that the content is not good quality.

Visitors on the other hand are looking for three things - a solution to a problem, a way to make life easier, and entertainment.

No one website can be everything to everyone. For every 1000 people who visit a website, only 200 will stay, and only 10 – 50 will buy. When a visitor buys, it is called 'conversion' to visitor.

The percentage rate between the number of people who click a web page and buy is called the conversion-rate. If ten people buy, then the conversion rate is 10/1000, a good conversion rate for an online business.

A good web page need to satisfy both search engines and visitors. Creating good web pages starts when the owner understands SEO strategies, rules, and guidelines.

The Old SEO is Dead!

The first thing that you need to understand is that the internet changed in 2004. All that stuff you are reading about meta tags, keyword density, duplicate content – that is all gone.

The world was introduced to the new internet SEO in 2004 called WEB2.0. Web2.0 is focused on content, not meta tags. In fact, now, in 2007, there are only two meta tag search engines left.

The only reason you need to focus on meta tags now is so that Google's AdWord program can match ads that sell the same content as the web page is talking about and pre-selling.

Search Engine Optimization and Web2.0

Web2.0 is different than any other internet search program in that you are telling the internet what is important and what isn't. Social networking is creating directories that visitors are filling – and the crawlers are reading them to find out what to rank high.

Evern Google's page ranking system has very little meaning anymore. Now, what you need to do is format your articles so that the crawlers can read them, catalogue them, and compare them to the social network to see if they match what people are reading and ‘tagging.'

A Search Engine Optimized article, blog post, forum post:

•Not Longer than 1200 words

•Each article/post is a different length

•Most articles/posts are longer than 400 words

•Headings (H1 and H2 headings) are used – in order. They may be resized to a normal font size to make the web page look better

•No more than 2 - 5% keyword density – this includes the words in the link bars and the graphic descriptions.

•Sub heading appears every 50 – 200 words.

•The first introduction of Important/keywords are bold

An Article at Risk of Banning or that Receives a Lower Rank:

•Doorway pages that have more than 5% keyword density

•All articles are longer than 1400 words

•Hidden content - text is same color as the background

•Loaded keywords – more than 5%

•Misleading meta tags – meta tags do not appear in body of article

•Too many keywords – more than 10 keywords for an article

•Using content from free content sites as the only content on the site

•Plagiarizing content – stealing content can have you reported

•Graphics with no ALT tags – this will not get you banned, but crawlers cannot see pictures, so they cannot rank them. The description tells the crawler what the picture is.

Attracting search engines is only half the battle. Once the search engine brings someone to the web site, the content must convert them to buyers. If this doesn't happen, the web site will not be profitable.