You may not believe this, but even though traffic from searches is still very good, there are other excellent options open to you. Having spent a great amount of time targeting search engine traffic, I became quite familiar with the subject of search engine optimization and although many marketing experts would suggest it is difficult, it really is not the case. Nonetheless I am pleased to say there is a way of finding a mix of traffic without having to completely rely on the work of the search engines to get results.

Blogging is a super way of getting traffic, but this has to be done in the right way and needs to be updated at regular intervals. When you blog, you must, of course, social bookmark your post to the top directories, and for your guidance, some of these are listed below.

1. Digg
2. Onlywire.com (with this method you will get into twenty two directories with one simple click)
3. Propeller
4. Stumbleupon

Carry out a Google search for The Authority Black Book. When you download this information, which is free of charge, make sure you read and understand it. This will tell you all you need to know about using blogging to drive excellent quality traffic in high numbers on a daily basis to your blog.

Another way of getting great traffic is to use Article Marketing. These days if you write for traffic and get your articles into a few of the best article directories, there is no worry about duplicate content penalties.

The top 5 article directories for your articles to appear in are as follows:-

1. Ezinearticles.com
2. AssociatedContent.com
3. Goarticles.com
4. IdeaMarketers.com
5. SearchWarp.com IdeaMarketers.com

No doubt by now you will have noticed the theme taking place here. It’s the theme of getting traffic from your social booking marking directories and from article directories too.

The job of search engines is to give their searchers new and relevant material. You can easily do this for your visitors without having to be concerned with the search engines now or at any time in the future.

It’s a great feeling when you know you are getting traffic every day and will continue to do so even if Google were to totally rearrange the top ranked sites in the blink of an eye, as this will not affect you and your traffic at all.

I have just read one of the best guides on social marketing ever. It is called the Authority Black Book by Jack Humphrey.

http://contentdesk.com/

Jack is the go-to guy who consults gurus and experts the world over on link building and social marketing strategies. I have watched my traffic and rankings improve drastically by applying what Jack has in the Black Book.

What is strange to me is that Jack is just giving it away. Its jam-packed with resources and tactics to immediately start driving more website traffic and I know he could charge for it and make a bundle. But its really a no strings attached download you can grab right now and start benefiting from immediately.

http://contentdesk.com/

I mean, like in the first 1/2 hour of reading and applying the first tactics! It was not rated the #1 ebook for bloggers by Mashable.com for nothing. People can be found praising the Black Book all over the web in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

You should grab it tonight and devour it. And do not forget who sent you all this free traffic!

Regards,
Kevin Sinclair

P.S. - The Authority Black Book is now in its second release. This is the newest 2.0 version released this spring. So if you got the Black Book from last year, you need to download the new version. It is even better with tons of new information!

http://contentdesk.com/

As the owner of an Internet based business, knowing how to drive traffic to your website is one of your most important responsibilities. If you do not have any traffic you will not get any sales. With this in mind, whatever kind of business you are in, traffic has to be your priority. This article will focus on Google AdWords pay per click advertising, known as PPC, which is an ideal way of targeting traffic to your website. However, in order to avoid the many pitfalls, which may be just around the corner, you need to have some knowledge about what you are doing.

First of all your ad campaign should be properly structured. When creating a new ad campaign its best to consider a number of smaller ad groups within, instead of making the mistakes of many by creating a single ad group and filling it with keywords by the thousands. It’s much better to come up with a few different categories as a way of describing your business and concentrate on developing clusters of closely related keywords within each group.

The next thing is to learn how to write an ad, specifically one which will draw the attention of the reader and entice them to click on it. As the number of characters allowed for the ad copy is limited, you can learn how to do this from the classified ads in magazines and newspapers. Take a look through the ads and make a note of any that really caught your attention, and then on closer inspection, ask yourself what attracted you to it. If you can write ads which get more clicks, you will increase your CTR (click through ratio) and this is likely to result in a lower minimum bid that you have to pay for each click.

The third tip is all about testing and tracking your ads. You can do this by creating multiple ads and then rotating them to see which ones get the best results as far as CTR is concerned. In order for your tests to be valid, run them so that each ad gets in the region of 50 clicks. When first setting up your campaign, make sure you take the option of evenly rotating your ads. If you do not do this the default option will let the system automatically optimize showing your best ad more regularly. It this happens you will not be able to run your tests accurately.

The learning curve at becoming proficient at Google AdWords is steep. However, if you stick at it and eventually master the system, you will be rewarded well by the targeted traffic to your website.

We have all seen adverts like this on the Internet so many times. Why is it that every business wants their website to be at the top of Google? The answer to that question is that due to the fierce competitiveness on the Internet, if your website does not appear on the first few pages, the only person who is likely to be looking at it is you.

Adverts such as these are not completely true. There is no guarantee that you will be in the number one spot on Google, or any other search engine for that matter, and if by chance you find yourself up there in first place it may well be down to keywords that none of your potential readers are actually looking for anyway.

How is this, you may ask? Well, Google’s programmers keep the precise basis on which websites are rated and located a well guarded secret. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts have in the past been able to discover many of the factors that Google weighs to decide which position to allocate to any particular website. Nonetheless, no-one is aware of exactly how much weight Google attaches to each single factor. This way, even the experts don’t always get it right and spending large amounts of money on SEO sometimes turns out to be fruitless.

So how does this affect your business when you are trying to increase the visibility of your website? Is it possible for your site to climb to the top of Google? The answer to this question is yes, possibly! With extremely hard work and taking into account many factors including the nature of what you are promoting, you can get into the top ten positions. Your sites domain name, its number of pages and how well you use your keywords all go into making up the equation.

Here are a few tips to boost your website position and the ensuing sales.

First or all your website needs to be the best one possible for the products and services you are offering. If your site does not look professional, is not user friendly, is not eye-catching and is not proving the products people want, it will make no difference even if you do get into the top search engine positions, you will still not sell anything.

Try adding regular features including special offers and articles to your site. Watch what your competitors are up to and most of all keep up with new trends. A little research goes a long way and this allows you to improve your site with updates on a regular basis. Use website forms to collate details of your visitors and use this method of communicating with them.

Then you need to identify the keywords best suited to your website. When folks surf the net they type in relevant words. The search engines then do their job of finding and listing the sites with matching content. If you include the items people are looking for in the text of your website, you will help your site to be found. Which words would people who are looking for your products type in the search box? Have a look at the words your competitors are emphasizing on their sites. That’s always worth doing.

Following on from above, you should apply standard website optimization techniques to your site. Good website developers understand the basic technical aspects of SEO (the density of the keywords, using keywords in the page titles, selecting keywords and tags etc) so you should really be focusing on the actions you can take and have influence over as the owner of the site.

You are providing the content so make sure you sprinkle the keywords throughout the site. Take a look at how often the words “website” and “products” can be found in this article. However, make sure you use the keywords in the right context. Combine your phrases but let them flow in a natural way. Let’s face it you do not want to get right up there with Google then lose customers because they do not like the way your website reads.

Another good move is to get websites to link to yours. These links count in your favor.

In conclusion, whilst SEO is necessary and worth the price you pay for it, there are quite a few things you can do yourself to optimize your site instead of SEO or in addition to it. Don’t forget that the results of doing this will take time to show but wherever you are on the Google rankings putting these things into practice will be of great benefit to your website and to your business.