The World Wide Web is a fun place to explore because there are so many websites that are online anytime of the day, ranging from online services and social-networking sites like Facebook to simple blogs that can provide some useful information. You might be wondering exactly how these websites get famous. You can’t just launch a website in an Internet that is filled with thousands of other sites that may be similar to yours. Word of mouth and some online advertising can pump up your traffic for a bit, but you have to do it consistently if you expect hundreds of visitors to see your site every day. Think about how you discover sites on the web.

Yes, there are some people that may share some cool site links with you. As for other things, the most likely site that you will go to is the search engine. From there, you will type any keywords that you think will lead you to the site that you are looking for. The search engine will then return hundreds to millions of search results with some of the best sites often appearing on the first page. After you clicked on a link, you can enjoy the content.

If that site was your site, you can immediately see the potential in having your site listed in the search engine. If there are so many other people that are like you in using the search engine and search terms, your site would get so much traffic, and you don’t have to do a thing in spreading the word or advertising. Well, that is only partly true because advertising is still good, and you still need to do some footwork in order for your site to appear on the search engine. If search engines top your interests, you will have to enter the world of SEO or search engine optimization.

You may have heard of search engine optimization before, especially if you tried to get yourself into affiliate marketing or any online Internet opportunity that has something to do with referrals and the like. However, if you dive into those subjects, you may get confused with all of those business and marketing terms. SEO can sound complicated that way, but it doesn’t have to. Search engine optimization is best defined as a practice that involves making your website indexable for the search engines so people that actually type in related keywords can see your site.

You have to keep in mind that search engines do not have access to the four corners of the Internet. That would be like playing favoritism with certain pages and would simply be unfair to other sites. Search engines are not directories of sites but are actual websites themselves that send scripts called robots to scour the web for indexable content.

SEO is not by any means a necessity for having a thriving site with stable traffic. However, if you find yourself struggling to advertise your sites in different areas, SEO can serve as your fast-forward button because the results are faster. Still, you have to understand that trying out any of the SEO tricks won’t boost your traffic instantaneously. There are various other factors that can affect this, such as the type of site you are trying to promote. The idea is that when people start finding your site in the search engines, the traffic should increase exponentially. You can try some of the faster methods in bringing traffic, but there are fewer chances for progress to go any higher. There will never be that period where the traffic goes over the roof unless you plug in SEO.

As mentioned earlier, there are so many SEO guides on the net and possibly even more eBooks that span hundreds of pages. A good number of these guides is actually useful, but if you want to have the simplest approach, just continue to update your site with new content.

The thing with search engines, whether it is Google or Bing, is that they love new and fresh content. This is exactly why so many blogs exist today. Blogs are very easy to update and you do not have to constantly edit your site’s HTML just to show that new stuff has been added. Even if your site doesn’t need a blog, the most important thing is that you have a platform that is easy to update and easy for others to subscribe to. Popular blog platforms like WordPress are a good choice because you don’t have to worry about meta tags and the like which are also important for SEO.

The content plays a major role for successful search engine marketing. If you see various SEO guides that talk about content, you will often come across the importance of keywords. Yes, keywords are indeed important but getting too concerned about keywords too early can hamper your productivity due to all the confusion. It is also difficult to compete in a keyword perspective because there might be more popular sites that are nearly impossible to compete with.

However, not all hope is lost, all you need to do is write naturally because at the end of the day, you are targeting visitors and not search engines. You need search engines to attract people, but it will be the people that will judge your site and its content. So don’t worry about keywords for the time being and focus on quality content. Try doing regular updates in a single month period so you can move on to the next phase.

This is where word of mouth and direct advertising become more important. Search engines are not just after keywords when it comes to ranking. They also rank sites according to the number of inbound links. You can get an inbound link if a link to your site is posted elsewhere. Let’s say another blog gave you a shout out because your blog covers an interesting topic. That blog will paste a link to your website for others to click on. Having lots of these types of links are good, and you can work on those by resorting to forum and social media marketing because you can register and actively share links.

After that, you can start addressing the keyword’s situation by using a keyword tool such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Since you populated your site with tons of content, the keyword tool should give you some good keyword suggestions that are not highly competitive so your site stands a chance in getting a good ranking. Once you have those keywords, simply implement them in future updates, and you should have a good site that is optimized for search engines as long as you continue to get inbound links, advertise more, and keep updating.

Google’s universal search, also known as blended search, is a way of incorporating specialty search results into the main web search listings. Google has several specialty search engines for such things like blogs, images, video, news items and a few other things. Making sure to have at least a couple of items available for specialty search is important for your organic seo. It can give you ways to increase your traffic as well as your search engine rankings.

This increases your organic traffic in two different ways: it makes you more available to people who use the specialty engines, and it gives you more chances to blend into the main search results as well. Highly relevant “specialty items” have a chance to be included in the regular results and often stand out more. Here are a few key ways to get listed in the specialty results.

Make a video or two. This would not just help you stand out in the search engines, it will also give you a chance to be seen on some of the most visited sites on the net like YouTube. This can significantly increase your site’s traffic.

Your video does not have to be anything movie quality. All you will need is a digital camera or even just a webcam. Up to five minutes of video is great, and it should not be less than 2 – 3 minutes. And do not forget to tag your videos appropriately – these are the terms that your video will show up for. YouTube and Google Video are the two most frequented video search sites on the web. For your organic seo purpose you will definitely want to upload your videos to these sites.

Make sure your blog has an RSS feed. RSS feeds are what Google references for its blog search. This is also what blog specific sites like Technorati use for their results.

One great thing about blog posts is that they are already likely to show up in the regular web search, especially if you use Blogger or WordPress. Having a blog and submitting it to Google Blog and Technorati will not only give you an extra chance to get featured in the regular results, but it will also get you listed in some of the most often searched specialty engines.

Like with videos, it is also important to have the appropriate tags listed for each blog post as well. If you are using WordPress, consider the all-in-one-SEO-plugin, which makes this really easy.

Ensure that you have images on your site and name them properly. Image search is one of the most used specialty searches on Yahoo and Google. With Google’s blended results, images can also pop up, even if you do not use that specialty engine. What perhaps is better is that  in case the images pop up in the blended search, they will all show up at the top of the page.

To make your images searchable, however, they need to have keyword rich file names and alternate text.  Even if you are not that familiar with designing web pages, try using NVU or Kompozer, which make this task quite easy for most likely anyone. Once you have done that, put your pictures up on Flickr or another image sharing site, although Flickr would be the best choice. And do not forget to link back to your site as well. All these steps will clearly help your organic seo and increase traffic to your site.

When you actually think about it, keyword tools are something that can have a tremendous effect depending on the circumstance. That is why you need to think about all the present information. At no time, you truly know what can occur should you neglect certain factors, rules and other details. I think, most people do not always take the time to look deeper in the search results, and they often miss out on what they need. Still, let’s have a closer look at some tools available if you want to generate and sort out a keyword list.

I guess, before we in fact start looking at keyword tools, we shouldn’t overlook the benefits of the standard thesaurus and dictionary. These two, Thesaurus.com and Lexical FreeNet, should be part of your tool box. Thesaurus.com is the biggest and most trusted free online thesaurus. It helps you to find synonyms and antonyms quickly. Lexical FreeNet allows you to search for rhymes and relationships between words and concepts. Finally, let’s not disregard that people tend to misspell words in particular ways. To find them out, Online-utility.org/text/misspellizer.jsp will clearly be a great help for creating your keyword list.

When it comes to keyword suggestions, there are quite a few sources available these days. However, I reckon you can’t bypass the Google External Keyword Tool, Market Samurai or Wordstream.com/keywords, which will all give you a lot of keyword recommendations.

Has what you have read so far added to your prior knowledge? Keyword tools are a massive area with many more sub-topics you can read about. A lot of things can have an effect, and you should probably expand your scope of knowledge regarding this topic. Take a look at the GoRank Ontology Finder. This tool will check the top 1000 Google results for your keywords by running a related word query. It will assist you analysing every possible alternative keyword.

Google Insights for Search is a great tool to find out how popular your keywords are, where people are searching from and when they entered a particular search query, compare seasonal trends, geographic distributions and category specific searches. Google Sets is a cool tool to find a list of related terms. It generates lists from a small number of examples by using the web as a big pool of data. You enter some items and Google Sets finds other items that tend to co-occur frequently with your examples.

Anyway, what’s about the editing part concerning your keywords? The SEO Tools Bad Keyword & Number Stripper will take care of removing all bad and unnecessary ones from your keyword list. It is very handy, especially if you want to quickly edit long keyword lists generated from one or more sources. Furthermore, consider using AdWords Wrapper. Just insert your list of keyword phrases into it, and this tool will generate four separate lists: a combination of broad, phrase and exact match, a combination of phrase and exact match, phrase match only and exact match only. This is very useful for your Google AdWords campaigns as well as it saves you quite a lot of time. For more precise results check out the Jumbo Keyword Tool. Once you have your keyword list, this keyword clean up tool can help you create, handle and edit thousands of keywords fast and easily, so that you won’t end up with a chaotic keyword list.

Still, the important point as it concerns keyword tools is you have to make sure you get not only the facts you need, but they have to be the right ones for your particular situation. Bearing this all in mind, there shouldn’t be any obstacles left preventing you from creating any complete and successful Internet marketing campaigns.

Resources:

Thesaurus.com

LexicalFreeNet

Online-utility.org/text/misspellizer.jsp

Google External Keyword Tool

WordStream

Market Samurai

GoRank Ontology Finder

Google Insights for Search

Google Sets

SEO Tools Bad Keyword & Number Stripper

AdWords Wrapper

Jumbo Keyword Tool

When you really think of it, article marketing is something that can have a tremendous impact on your business depending on the situation. Of course you have to consider specific factors. Submitting articles to directories can be a great way to send highly targeted traffic to your website and your offers. Article submission helps you create your reputation as an expert in your preferred niche. Think about it: are you not more likely to trust someone who has a bunch of articles published on a topic that you wish to discover more about? Wouldn’t you be more likely to purchase from someone if a Google search ended in lots of quality results for his name? With the right article marketing, you can be doing this for yourself.

Before you start submitting articles in a rush, make sure that they are properly written. Anybody can slap together a few paragraphs and hit publish. If they couldn’t, there would not be so many blogs out there. Still, if you actually want to build your reputation as an expert, you need to make sure that your articles are excellent. Write a few drafts and ask someone to check them before you hit submit. The better your articles, the more respect people will have for you. If your article is not genuine and interesting, nobody is going to read the whole thing. If it is riddled with mistakes, people will click away immediately.

There is a lot more to article marketing than purely producing a collection of back links to your site. This is the reason why it is a bad thought to permit yourself publish just a single article to dozens and dozens of directories. Sure this may create back links, but it won’t help your popularity get stronger. People who do research and even just read for fun will uncover right away if your article ends up in front of them a lot. If it becomes obvious that you only have a few articles in publication they won’t be as likely to trust you. To clear your conscience, publish a couple of variants of your very best article rather than just submitting the article itself.

Submit articles to the best directories. E-zine Article Directory is very well respected and has very strict submission rules. Buzzle is also well-liked as is Article Dashboard. However, it is important to remember that sites like Squidoo and HubPages are not article directories. Those are revenue sharing sites. Do some research and find out which article directories turn up in Google repeatedly and then make them  part of your article marketing campaign. You want your name to come up as often as possible when people search for your topic or niche. That way you will drive traffic and finally increase your profit margin.

There are so many various ways that you can build your business by using the right article marketing strategies. This is particularly true if those articles are skillfully written and indexed favorably by the main search engines. There are lots of ways that you can make this happen. Sure you could submit a quickly written article to every directory on the Internet. Alternatively, if you sincerely want to get the attention and obviously the profits you desire, you can create one or two well written articles and submit them to some of the few most highly respected article directories on the Internet. If you choose wisely here, your Internet business will grow successfully.

As you probably know, social bookmarking as a marketing and backlinking strategy has been around for a few years. There seems to be no decline in their popularity, especially for off page SEO purposes. Still, you really should never neglect or overlook what could be done for the more long-term methods at high PR bookmarking sites. It basically is a matter of your particular business goals and perhaps what appeals to you. Social bookmarking sites generally give you a place to keep bookmarks, for those who are really new to IM. Plus you can tag your bookmarks with your particular keywords, which can help with some SEO, but it tends to be temporary.

Several years ago the more popular bookmark sites made all their links to nofollow which had a huge effect on bookmark rankings. Places like Technorati and Digg, plus a few others were able to dominate the first pages of SERPS in Google due to their high PR status. Who really knows if Google had any influence over those powerful bookmarking sites and the nofollow relational attribute. However it is interesting, and we all know how Google is or can be.

But you can gain exposure when you take a more responsible approach to using social bookmarking sites. Most people who use them for backlinking tend to create very thin profiles that offer no value to the specific community. However, I am aware of people who do take a few more minutes creating their profiles. They have found that the more ‘full bodied’ profiles do not get deleted and have a longer shelf life. Plus, when you do this you are contributing something to the site, and you can keep high quality bookmark profiles for years.

When you do design a useful profile with content, then of course you can create an RSS feed from that. That means you’ll be able to post those feeds to RSS directories, plus they are able to get indexed. You may include your various links plus precise content in your feeds as well. However, you do have to take care and exercise caution so you are not over promoting because that can cause a loss of subscribers to your feed. Consequently, always provide exceptional content in your feeds and stay clear of being spammy with the links in them.

What you have to do is maintain a balance between promoting your money sites/offers and offering good quality content that your subscribers will appreciate. The more you do that and actually do a little bit of networking, you will gain more exposure and trust-rank, so to speak, at these sites. It is best to maintain a respectful presence at social bookmarking sites, and if you do that then you will find it serves you well.

Ultimately, how you approach using social bookmarking sites in your own business is entirely up to you. Most people tend to just use them for backlinking, and it does seem that the approach outlined above is not used by so many individuals. However, there really is power in that strategy based on the feedback we hear from those who use it.

If you have spent very much time at all researching SEO, you have quite likely come across the terms “black hat” and “white hat”. However, what exactly does it mean?

Well, if you have imagined the good cowboy in the white hat and the bad one in the black, you can be forgiven – that is certainly the impression people try to give off about the whole deal. Still, what is black hat SEO anyway? Is it legal? Does it work?

And what is white hat SEO? Does it have too soft a touch? And again most importantly, does it work?

The line between black and white hat SEO is sometime a little blurry, in no small part because techniques once considered white hat may not be any longer. Some people will tell you that white hat SEO is ethical while black hat SEO is not. And while there certainly are unethical practices used by some who wear the darker hats, this is a bit of an over simplification.

A general rule of thumb is whether Google likes the practice or not. In its constant effort to return search results it says are relevant, the search company continually updates its search algorithms. Characteristically, anything that works, but that Google will penalize or ban you for, if found out, is considered black hat.

Why would anyone use black hat SEO techniques then? For one thing, these techniques can give a page an unduly high ranking, often in a short amount of time. Sure, Google will eventually come down on the page or site, but in the meantime, its owner is making quite some money. At least, that is the theory.

So if the big bucks are in black hat, why use white hat? “White hat” SEO techniques tend to last longer, for one thing. They may require more work on the front-end and usually require a little bit of upkeep, but in the long term they bring in traffic, and if you are selling/pre-selling right, this means money. Not only will you have more consistent sales with that one site, but you will also have time, once you are done setting it up, to build another site that could give you long-term, relatively passive income.

With black hat techniques, you are likely to be making new site after new site after new site.

Another reason to go white hat is for branding purposes. You really don’t want to build your site’s popularity and rankings high using black hat techniques, only to get your site banned for life by Google when it finds out what you are doing – which it will, eventually. Being known as a black-hatter is also likely to brand you as a pretty shady fellow, not something you really want in the Internet marketing world.

The line between black and white hat SEO is sometimes a little unclear and often moves around when search engines update their algorithms. If you are in Internet marketing for the long-haul though, it is definitely worth keeping up with what is considered white hat and sticking to it.

SEO, or search engine optimization is the art and science of getting your web page or website ranked as highly as possible in the search engines, especially Google. It is also an abbreviation for search engine optimizer, a professional who makes his or her living doing the same.

Search engines compile information about the World Wide Web and then bring out results relevant to the terms you type into the search box.  Basically, they surf the web so you don’t have to, and they do it in record time. Technically, a search engine is any program that retrieves information, but for our purposes. We are focusing on the ones that operate on the World Wide Web.

Backlinks are simply links that point back to your site. Backlinks figure heavily into how well your pages rank in the search engines.

Anchor text refers to the words that make up a text link. A link that says “click here”, has “click here” as its anchor text. Anchor text is important in determining what keywords your site will index for.

Keyword stuffing happens when a page is loaded with keywords to an unnatural degree, either in the content or the meta tags. At one time, this kind of thing could help a page’s position in the search engine rankings, but these days it is just a bad idea. If you or your web developer does this, you will likely receive a penalty from most major search engines.

Link farms are tightly-knit communities of pages that reference each other. For SEO purposes, these pages are also used to link to other pages to increase page rank and search engine rank once the link farm pages have high enough page rank. Running or getting many links from a link farm can be bad for your pages if the farm is discovered.

Long tail keywords and phrases are relevant, yet little searched-for keywords and phrases. Pages targeted for long tail keywords may not receive a large number of hits, but over time can provide significant sales or leads for your site, especially if you have a page for each long tail word or phrase. Long tail keywords in a page or article can also increase that page’s or article’s relevance in the eyes of a search engine.

LSI, or latent semantic indexing is the process of searching text to see how relevant the overall content is to the main keywords used. Using synonyms for keywords as well as including the lesser searched for long tail words and phrases, can help LSI. At the moment, it is unsure how much LSI plays a part in Google and other search engines’ rankings, but its relevance is likely to increase.

Meta tags are parts of a web page heading, viewable to search engines but not to casual viewers, that list information about the page. Keyword meta tags are not nearly as useful as they used to be, although it never hurts to include your keywords here.  Description tags are still useful, since they are what people will see when your page appears in the search engine listings. Language tags tell search engines and browsers what languages a page is available in, if it is available in more than one.  Robots tags tell search engine spiders what to do with that link, whether or not to crawl it, what do to or not to do with a page’s content, etc.

Nofollow (ref=nofollow) is a robots tag that tells search engine spiders not to crawl from your site along that link. Google penalizes pages that buy or sell links that do not have the nofollow attribute, on the basis that the link otherwise gives artificial page rank to the linked-to site. Many blogs use the nofollow attribute as a default.

Reciprocal links result when two pages or sites each link to the other. A certain amount of this is fine, but too much of it can make the sites look like part of a link farm.

There has been a lot of debate about Black Hat SEO, but it is pretty much any technique that works but that search engine bigwigs do not like to see happening. Some of what considered Black Hat today was considered acceptable at one point.

There are two important practical things to keep in mind about Black Hat techniques: they can rank your pages quickly and well in search engine results. However, they will sooner or later get your site banned from appearing in the search engine results.

Indexing is the act of arranging information in an organized manner. In books, this is done alphabetically, in search engines, this is done by considering a variety of factors. When you try to affect how relevant you show up in this index, you are attempting SEO.

Usually, you will want your site to be listed as far up on the index as possible. To say “I got indexed by [search engine]” means that your site was finally recognized by said search engine and included in its search results.

Page Rank (PR) helps determine how high up a web site ranks in Google’s search engines. It also determines a site’s linking power. A PR 8 link is generally considered much stronger than a PR 1 link.

Spiders/Web Crawlers are the eyes and ears for search engines. They gather information and then report back to engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. They search the World Wide Web by following every link they find, which is one thing that makes backlinks and site maps so important.

Site Maps are easily accessible pages on a site, that link to every other page on that site, or at least every page you want the search engines to see. Site maps make it easier for spiders/web crawlers to visit your entire site, which makes it easier for you to get indexed.

White Hat SEO involves ways of getting your site to rank higher in search results, that the engines consider more “natural” or “organic”. “White Hat” techniques are not as immediately impressive as Black Hat ones, but they are more consistent in the long run. Plus, they won’t get you banned from the engine results pages.

Perhaps the biggest myth in all of SEO techniques is the idea that any one aspect of it is “all-important.” It is all important. SEO is an organic process, so the idea that one part of it, to the exclusion of everything else, is the key to success, is definitely a myth. SEO itself, in all of its aspects, is the key to success.

By comparison, what do you think is the most important organ in the human body? Is it the heart? Is it the brain? The liver? The kidneys? The fact of the matter is that all of your organs are there for a reason. Without any one of them, there is a good chance that you would be dead.

The same is true for SEO. There is no one aspect of it that can stand alone and give you success. Anyone who says so is a flat out liar.

According to Google, “content is king.” However, without a high page ranking, your content will never be seen. Content by itself will not get you a high SERP rank.

Keyword placement is important to SEO. Still, it is not a stand alone technique for getting rank. In fact, if you have keywords and no content, you get shuffled over to the ignore pile, and may be banned altogether. Besides, no one will want to look at a webpage of just keywords.

How you use Flash is important, but it is meaningless without the other supporting elements. If you have videos without keywords, the spiders see nothing. If there are not any inbound links, you have no relevance to your niche. If you do not have good content, you have no authority.

Your linking strategy is a necessary step, but it does not make a website good on its own. You still have to have content, you still have to have something to sell, and you still have to have keywords for the spiders to find. It won’t matter squat if you have a buddy in the government who will just link to your page. If you do not have something to show, you are dead in the water.

These and all the other elements of on site and off site SEO techniques are all important, but will not get you high page rankings on their own. It is a group effect that no one thing can give you. Page rankings are based on multiple factors, and the strength of one will not win the day.

For that matter, high page rankings are, of course important, but by themselves are useless. Let’s say that somehow, without content, keywords, links and everything else, you manage to get a first page spot. So what? If you do not have anything to say or show, if you do not have anything for the spiders to crawl, and if you have nothing to sell, you are not going to get anything out of it.

Don’t ever be fooled by the words “all-important.” These words, whenever combined with any aspect of SEO techniques are a sure sign of a myth.

It is surprising to see that still to this day many people think that SEO is something that is a one shot venture. That is, all you have to do is work some good in-page SEO mojo, pack them with keywords, submit them to the search engines and maybe update the meta tags every so often. That was okay about quite a few years ago, when Google first started indexing, but it is hardly the case these days.

I almost miss the days when it was that easy. Now the search engines literally take into account hundreds of factors in how they rank websites. You don’t get to just slap up a page and expect it to rank. A huge chunk of what they look for implies a long haul.

Having a website to promote your business is probably like having a pet. If you do not feed it, train it, take it for walks and tend to it, it is not going to last very long. You certainly won’t be getting any enjoyment out of having it.

First of all, if your content is out of date, Google will notice that. If your information is not the type that has to be updated regularly, it is not a problem. However, it is good to have updates sometimes to let them know that you are still kicking around.

On the other hand, if you have to update your content, like if your website is a news site, then your rankings will fall if you do not update. It is of course all about keeping relevance.

Another important part of your search engine ranking is having inbound links. Also called off site SEO or external SEO, Google really loves this stuff. Again, this is hardly something that most people can make part of their site overnight. It can sometimes take a lot of time and energy to convince other website owners that it is a good idea to link to your site.

Besides that, if you are not constantly getting new links, your website will fall in the rankings. This is just part of the nature of online marketing. Your competition is not going to sit on their laurels in getting links. If you do, you will quickly get outranked.

There is also the matter of the changes in the search engines’ algorithms. These happen about once every month. Naturally, you will want to be on top of those changes and adjust the SEO on your website accordingly. You could not do this if you just posted your site and ignored it.

The reality of SEO these days is that you have to treat your website more or less like a pet. In fact, it might be treated like your first begotten son. You have to keep up with it, feed it, refine it and mold it into the image of what you want it to be. This is the way to get your rankings.

Long gone are the days when you could just put out your site and expect that it would get ranking. Nowadays, SEO is definitely not a one shot event any more. It is a lifetime commitment, and if you ignore it, your rankings will certainly suffer for it.

There is much controversy about “free traffic;” does it work; is there really such a thing as free traffic? Many people swear by free traffic and truly believe that it doesn’t cost them a thing.

The great thing about so-called free traffic is that it can be targeted traffic if you place your ads correctly in areas that are directly related to your niche. Two examples are free article submissions and free classifieds, i.e. Craig’s List, Backpage, U.S. Free Classifieds, etc. These types of marketing are not only free, but they open the door for a targeted group of people to contact you, hence increase traffic to your site. The people read your ads and respond because they are obviously interested in your product. Even if all of your free traffic doesn’t convert on your main product or services, you can offer other products that may be of interest.

Getting Your Traffic to Convert

One of the best ways to get your free traffic to convert is by offering the reader something – a free gift like an E-Book or a Special Report – this is even before you reveal your product. By using this method of marketing, you are building a relationship before you ask them to buy something.

Once you have built up trust, it is time to show them the crème de la crème, your hot item. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. You will notice a higher conversation rate if you use this method rather than throwing a product at them immediately like: “Hi, you don’t know me, however buy my product.”

Article marketing is another way to increase your free traffic. You create and submit articles to article directories with a link back to your website. People who read your article obviously have some interest in your content. Sometimes they link back and sometimes they don’t.

What is the Cost, Really?

As I said, there is a bit of controversy as to whether free traffic is really free. After all, you do have to take the time to place the ads, and you have to create the ads to place. The free gifts have to come from somewhere. Are these your own products or did you purchase them? Do you have the time to list on the free classifieds? If you outsource the tasks, you have to pay them.

If you are submitting articles to article directories, how much time does it take to write an article? How many articles do you have to submit to make this method effective?

Basically, what it comes down to is increasing free traffic costs you time and since your time is valuable, you determine if free traffic is really free. Personally, I think a better name would be low-cost traffic.