Search engines search for text, and if there isn’t any meaningful text on your site then the search engines (Google, Bing etc) wont index your site regularly, and as a result no one is going to find the site!
However, this is not to say that to solve this you should just publish any old thing without consideration to the reader. It’s best to consider the search engines and people you want to see/use your site as one and the same. If you write informative and relevant copy to publish on your site, then the search engines will drive the traffic (i.e. people) and when there, the people have good copy to read!
The battle is not just to get the people to your site but get them to stay and absorb your message and fulfill the task you are asking of them.
Problems with E-commerce
If your site is basically e-commerce and is just product information and a shopping cart, this can pose a problem. Instead try to provide all the information you can relating to your products. Rather than just offer a shopping cart try and anticipate what information people will want to read to assist them to purchase the product.
This is how the likes of Amazon developed. Whilst most visitors will buy the latest album of their favourite artist without hesitation, there are plenty of online retailers to choose from. Hence why Amazon and others followed suit by allowing user generated content, i.e. getting the public to comment on the product by writing a review.
This generated relevant copy to that product and through getting the product listed in the search engines, Amazon won more sales through increased traffic than lost through poor product reviews.
Free content is a really great way to keep your customers coming back as well as being a good search engine strategy.
Keyword Optimization:
The basic theory to keyword optimization is that each page should be as focused as possible on one or two keyword phrases, so the search engine will think it’s highly relevant to those terms. Ideally you would create one page for each of your keywords and devote that page just to that keyword but in reality compromises may have to be made.
Here’s another way to think about keyword optimization. When Google is going through your site it is looking to try to figure out what each page is about and it does this by reviewing:
a) the title tag,
b) the <h1> tag,
c) other on page elements like body text (i.e. content/copy), and
d) incoming text links.
So, in an ideal world you would want to choose one keyword or phrase for each page (ie new widget) and make all those elements have the text “new widget”. So the <title> would be “New Widget”, on the page you would write <h1>New Widgets</h1>, you would mention new widgets in the text several times, and you would link to the page on your other pages and/or from other sites with the link text of “new widgets”.
But you also have to keep your site readable and useful as previously outlined, so therefore create a balance. The point is that you want to convince Google that your page is more relevant about New Widgets than any other page or website out on the web.
Aim for 200-300 words on each page (longer for FAQ’s) with 10-15% keyword density. However, this is just a rough guide, as Google changes its algorithm often and there is much debate on what is ideal.
A final point. If there is a lot of competition for your desired search term and you want to feature up towards the top, you have to compete on a like for like basis. If your rival has 100 pages of relevant copy and 100 inbound links, then it stands to reason you need to better the site, to better the position.