by Rachael Towne

Created on: September 24, 2009   Last Updated: October 02, 2009

Many people are unfamiliar with how search engines work. They set up a quality website with good content and popular keywords. They assume that traffic will show up automatically. After all, their site is representative of a popular niche so the traffic is inevitable. Right? Not really. A well-optimized site is definitely a good starting point but is only part of the equation. The phrase build it and they will come doesn't really apply here.

One very popular method to drive traffic to a website is a PPC campaign. PPC stands for pay per click. Google Adwords is the most popular of these but other search engines and even websites offer them as well. YouTube has their own PPC service that is actually linked with Google. While these can be very effective they can also be very expensive. Almost all users of PPC choose the most searched keywords to trigger their ads. This makes sense at first glance. The problem is Google and other PPC services charge more for each click triggered by a popular keyword. Picking the keyword phrase cell phones will get you a lot of hits. It will also cost you a small fortune and will eat a substantial portion of your profits. Picking a long list of keywords that get few searches is actually far more cost effective and will drive a good amount of traffic to your site.

Article marketing is another popular and effective method for driving traffic to your website. It's also completely free. While it is time-consuming it does pay off over time. Sites such as EzineArticles and GoArticles are hugely popular with Google and tend to rank well. As about 80% of your traffic is going to come from Google, directing your efforts to rank there is smart. Again, using the most searched for keywords is not the most effective way to drive traffic to your site. There is entirely too much competition for these. Long tail keywords are typically 3-5 word phrases that on their own receive a low search volume. Writing 30 or more articles, each focused on a long tail keyword, will collectively bring good-targeted traffic to your site. Each article should be optimized for the chosen keyword in the title and throughout the body. A good rule of thumb is an article with the keyword appearing about 2% of the time or about every 100 words.

It's essential to start with a well optimized website with good quality content. Learning effective keyword strategies with PPC campaigns and article marketing can bring huge traffic to your website. Article marketing using long tail keywords offers the Internet based business an opportunity to come up on the first page in Google in a highly competitive niche. This strategy is more time consuming but ultimately more profitable.

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