Web content is really any type of content you can see on your web browser. It can be a web page, an rss feed, a blog, a myspace portal, to an online ebook. The type of content you put out on the web is becoming more and more important. There are plenty of resources to help you with how to create and promote your content, if you know where to look.

This lense will hope to give an overview of the types of content you can use and also content driven websites. Below is an excerpt that puts web content into perspective.

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 enormous number of sites that boast
high keyword ratios, millions 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 but the 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 will return to your site again and again! What's more, they will regard your site as an authority site in your subject area. What's even better is that those aren't the only benefits.

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

Another benefit to writing quality content is branding for your product or
service. Articles are a great way to show your clients and customers that you
know your stuff and know what you are talking about. Let's face it, there is
still some status in having your articles published on directories and other
websites. There can't be any more powerful testimonial than having a client do a search on your name and finding it all over the place. Content and article publishing
is definitely one of the most positive activities that you can do for your business.

Once you've created content that you want to share, you can outsource this process and take advantage of the powerful article submission services that are out there, so you can begin to make money on your articles.

When submitting to article directories, select directories that get a lot of traffic (go to Alexa.com and determine their traffic). The important thing however, is that you also want the right kind of traffic. You don't want all of that traffic to be people submitting articles to that directory because that doesn't help you. You want most of that traffic to be composed of people who are going to that article directory to read and perhaps use articles for their own newsletters, etc.

One way to determine of there is a lot of that kind of traffic to that directory is to see who is pointing to that directory (if it's mostly article directory lists, then you can bet most of the traffic from those sources is made of people posting articles, not reading them.) Also look to see how many articles in that directory have been indexed in the search engines. The more pages, the better.