We've been saying for a while now that the SEO game has changed. Keywords still allow you to rank, but they no longer determine where you rank. With over 1 billion websites on the Internet for Google to crawl and analyze for relevant keywords, it's no wonder they're starting to move away from a keyword-based ranking model. Today, evidence shows that Google is using more of a user-based approach to ranking websites. This means that a site or even a page that has low traffic and low user engagement will eventually stop being considered in the rankings and will move its way down into the Internet landfill. The SEO experts at Moz recently undertook a ranking correlation study to illustrate the effect that traffic and engagement metrics have on your Google ranking. The results show that instead of using static features like title tags, copy, and meta description to determine where a site ranks, Google instead analyzes the way users interact with individual websites. "Put simply, the more traffic a site received, the higher it tended to rank" (moz.com). Based on this correlation, it's clear that your best chance for success is to have an engaging, user-friendly website with a strong inbound marketing strategy designed to drive consistent, high-quality traffic. At first glance, it may seem like organic traffic is now costing you money, but that's not quite the case. In reality, every business should be marketing themselves online--it's cheaper than traditional advertising, completely trackable, and amplifies leads and sales. The fact that online advertising could now indirectly boost your search rankings by driving more traffic to your site is icing on the cake. Amplifying your online presence is now an essential part of succeeding online--the last thing you want is to invest in a quality website only to have it sink into the website landfill because competition is just too dense.