SEO Myths #10
Increasing traffic to a site will automatically increase its profitability
Unfortunately, you can't just channel people to your site and expect them to buy your products and services.
You need to attract people who are searching for something related to your site. Sell industrial steel milling equipment? There's no point attracting people who want yellow lollipops. They may arrive at your site, but they won't stay and buy, so all you've done is drive up your bandwidth bill.
But that's only half the story. Even if you have your targeting sorted, you need to do something with your visitors - engage them in your community, get them to buy something, sign up for a newsletter, get them to subscribe to your RSS feed, whatever the goals are for your site. And that's where you need to get the copy right. It's where you'll increase conversions and, all things being equal, your profitability.
Copy on the Net has to obey all the rules of good marketing and selling copy used in other media to appeal to and engage with your visitors, but also use key phrases to engage with the search engines. It's possibly twice as challenging to get absolutely right, but then you'll have higher traffic and increased profitability.