Public Domain

Why is Content Important?
 
Are you new to online marketing? Or are you one of the millions of frustrated website owners watching helplessly as your site fluctuates up and down (even on and off) the search engines?

Is your traffic suffering as you try to stay on top of the most current methods of finding traffic, only to find that they are ineffective for bringing targeted traffic or stop working soon after the search engines catch on?

There is a reason that staying in the search engines is vitally important. The amount of people who are searching for information online is increasing rapidly.

An Ipsos-Reid poll showed that people are starting to rely more heavily on the internet with increases in the frequency of internet usage in North America the UK and Asia. At the time of the poll 72% of Americans were online within the previous month, and that number continues to rise.

How are they finding information on the internet?

According to research published by GVU (Graphic, Visualization and Usability Center), most users – novice, expert, young, old, male and female – find new websites from two main sources: hyperlinks and search engines.

Pew Internet & American Life Project also published statistics about search engine use which indicated that “84% of online American adults have used search engines. That amounts to 108 million people. On any given day, 56% of those online use search engines.”

How many of these potential visitors are finding YOUR website? More websites are created each day leading to increased congestion and competition for the top spots in search engine results. How are you able to compete? Well first of all, how do search engines bring you traffic?

Two of the most popular methods of getting traffic from search engines include PPC – Pay Per Click – and SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

PPC:
Pay Per Click is advertising provided by the search engine providers (Google, Yahoo! and others) where you PAY for top placement. Their strategies for placement differ slightly. Some search engines will give you higher placement if your ad has a higher click-through rate (meaning more people click on your ad in ratio to the amount of times your ad was shown), others give top positions to the highest bidder.

In either case, you PAY. It is a quick way to get listed in the search engines and a smart way to get your traffic flowing – but it is not the cheapest AND you could spend far more than is profitable for your business if you don’t know what you’re doing.

SEO:
There are a lot of companies working ‘behind the scenes’ to help website owners get plenty of traffic from the natural search engine listings. Natural listings mean the search engine has ranked you according to the value it believes your site will offer an individual searching for a specific word or phrase.

Understanding exactly WHAT the search engines want to see when ranking sites requires knowledge of the algorithms. These algorithms change all the time as search engine providers try to outwit the search engine optimizers trying to find loopholes in the ranking system.

Some SEO companies will promise you top spots for a certain cost. Some are honestly creating optimized websites – others may be using techniques that could possibly get your site BANNED from the search engines entirely (once the search engine catches on). However, optimizing your website for better placement in the search engines is a technique that you should become familiar with and use to your advantage.

Both of these traffic methods have their pros and cons for generating traffic from the search engines. You will find out more about using them properly later on. But first you need to know what REALLY works…

Content is KING!

Before you start to think that this is another SEO technique that may or may not work depending on the current algorithms of the search engines, think about it…

EVERYTHING on the internet is CONTENT.

The internet is a veritable treasure trove of information. Good, bad, valuable or not, the internet is all about providing information to people. That is why smart internet marketers know that people want information from their websites – not just SEO enriched pages of advertising.

The loopholes that search engine optimizers have been trying to use for high ranking in the search engine has created a plethora of sites that boast high keyword ratios, thousands of irrelevant hyperlinks and sometimes even redirection. These redirected websites try to create an optimized web page that the search engines will rank high but actually redirect the viewer to a less search engine friendly site.

Well, the search engines caught on. The websites that were getting the highest placements weren’t always providing quality information or useful content. In fact, they not only lowered the ranking of these sites – they even removed them from the listings completely.

This sent a shock wave through the internet community and smart marketers realized that there is only one sure way to convince the search engines that they were meant to be at the top: Quality Content.

Not only do the search engines love content, but visitors do too. By providing visitors with useful information and relevant links to other sites, they come back again and again! And that’s not the only benefit.

Because website owners are now hungry for content, there is a huge market for informative articles that other website owners can use on their sites. By offering information to these sites in exchange for a hyperlink to your website, you get even more exposure, both to search engines AND customers.

So, how do you harness the power of content? How do you pull the most benefit and profits from your information?

You have learned what public domain means and places where you can find most of these works. From here, you were able to pick out the public domain work or group of works that you feel passionate about, so much so that you are certain you can generate the same kind of interest in your buyers. You have also made sure, based on what you know about the three rules on copyright that the work is in the public domain. You have, therefore, nothing to worry, particularly about copyright issues.

Taking the example of many greats ahead of your time, you have prepared your product or products, getting them ready for reproduction and sale. Your website serves as your base where you make your product available to the whole world, but you also make use of other powerful marketing sites like eBay to create a portal for more buyers to pour in. You have built a web presence and your ideas have been solidified as you make an effort and invest time on this new venture of yours.

In the words of Lord Acton, one of the most illustrious historians in 19^th century England:  “Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”

It has been done. You have done it – turned your ideas into dollars. 
And now you are ready to make some money in the public domain.