by Jim Daniels
http://www.make-a-living-online.com

Of all the traffic my websites have generated over the years (literally millions of visitors) ONE traffic source stands head and shoulders above the rest...

Search Engine Traffic.

Specifically, traffic from google.com, yahoo.com and search.msn.com - the leaders web searching.

Since visitors from search engines find sites on their own, the traffic is top quality and the conversion rate is excellent. And since it is without cost, search engine traffic simply cannot be beat.

In this article you'll discover how YOU can maximize traffic from search engines. And no, I do not have a trick or overnight solution. If you are looking for that, you can stop reading now. But what I will share with you today WILL increase your search engine traffic. I can all but guarantee it. Sure, it will take some time but believe me, it is well worth a little patience.

So let's go...

The first thing to consider is how the best search sites determine where to send their clients -- the searchers. It does not happen by accident. In fact all search engines have complex algorithms that determine how they rank sites.

But after all the smoke clears, I can point directly to ONE essential component that leads to ever-growing traffic from the major search engines...

QUALITY.

Quality is what matters most to the top search engines. They want to give quality results to the people using their search engine.

Read that again. It is important to understand. As a webmaster, quality is something you need to be very concerned with. And there are two specific areas where quality really counts...

1. Quality of Content AT your Website
2. Quality of Links TO Your Website.

Let's talk about those two components in a bit of detail.

Quality Component #1: Informative content at your website A quality website with solid, reliable and substantial content will always do better than sites trying to "trick" their way to good ranking. Think about it for a moment. Why do the top search sites have such a huge market share? Simple. They provide quality search results. That's how they got more people use them to find what they were looking for.

Therefore, websites offering lots of quality information are usually the first sites presented in their search results.

There is no secret to this. And providing quality content takes work. I do it by writing articles like the one you are reading now. And you can do it by writing articles for YOUR niche market and posting them at your site.

If your site focuses on collectibles, don't just post up your items and hope to sell them. Instead, write an article about a specific collectible every week. Tell it's history and why it is worth so much. Write about how to tell an original from a counterfeit. You get the idea.

In a year you will have 52 keyword-rich web pages (or more) that will help grow traffic to your website. In two years you'll have 100+. And this content is the cornerstone of your website.

[Tech note: As you post each article at your website, make sure the new web page links back to your main page. Also make sure your main page has a link to either a site map or an articl listing. That will help search engines find all that great content when they spider your site.]

I've been writing about this aspect of web marketing for seven years now. And I can remember a few years back when many experts were writing, "Don't waste your time on content, just put up a single page sales letter." But what would the web be like if it were just a network of single page sales letters?

The web is all about information.

Let's face it, nearly ALL people online are here to get information. Not many people want to pay for it either. After all, you can find in-depth information on any subject imaginable.

Sure, you sometimes have to pay for the best quality information, but if you surf long enough you can get to the truth of any subject using the World Wide Web.

If you are a website owner, the paragraphs above translate into a simple strategy. Feed the search engines that facilitate locating this valuable content. Create content for your niche market. Grow a website that is information rich and the visitors will come. It may take time but they will come.

Of course, there are ways that you can move the process along a bit. The best way is to show search engines what your content is about and how important it is. This is done by building...Quality Component #2: Niche links INTO your website You may have heard of the importance of getting other sites to link to yours. And yes, getting lots of links coming to your site is important. But the QUALITY of those links is even more important.

I will not get into Google page rank or any other specific algorithms on any search engine. The fact is, NOBODY is privy to that specific information. But I can say for sure, based on experience, that the quality of links coming to your site is VERY important.

When it comes to the actual links, quality is measured primarily by these two factors...

[X] WHICH sites link to your site
[X] Exactly HOW sites link to your site

The first one is the toughest nut to crack. Getting quality sites to link to yours is not easy. Naturally, you need a quality site yourself. (More proof of my advice above.) Once you have a quality site in place, you can start getting links to it.

[X] Getting the right sites to link to your site...

Building a link strategy at your website is an important step that will help you more than you realize, especially as time goes on. So make it one of the first of your Internet marketing steps.

But getting links is not an easy task. In fact, getting quality sites to link to your site takes a bit of originality. You can't just slap up a "link to us" page and hope the job gets done.

Below are two strategies I use. I invite you to emulate these strategies at your site...

a. Pre-license all your best content.

Remember the content we talked about earlier? Well as you create your own tips and articles for your website or email newsletters, consider pre-licensing it to others. Pre-licensing it for others is as simple as including a short footer after your work. It looks something like this:

"You have permission to reprint what you just read. Use it in your ezine, at your website or in your newsletter. The only requirement is including the following footer..."

*Article by YOUR NAME, visit www.YourWebsiteUrl.com for more original content like this.

This takes no extra work on your part since you already wrote the article. A simple footer like that lets you pre-licensed it to the entire web. Your links will be growing continually with no extra effort. There are lots of websites in need of decent content. Supply it and you can benefit greatly - if you do it right!

And the beauty of this strategy, is that only sites in your niche will use your content. This means your links will be high quality links from sites in your niche. This goes a long way with the search engines.

Note: If you need to see this strategy in action, visit my articles archive at: http://www.bizweb2000.com/articles.htmb. Bribe webmasters into linking up.

The next strategy that can work very well is the "bribe". In a nutshell, you simply give something of value away to webmasters who links to your site.

When done correctly, this strategy can be extremely powerful. All you need to get started is a web page with a few text links that webmasters can use to link to your site. When they link up, give them a report or ebook about your niche. It does not have to be anything elaborate, just something that helps them learn what they came for in the first place.

Of course you want to let these webmasters know that they need a site in the same niche as yours. You really do not want unrelated sites linking in, just sites in your niche.

You can even automate all aspects of the "bribe" and save lots of time. See my "Internet Marketer's Resource Directory" at http://linksmanager.com/bizweb2000/ for how I've done that. My directory bribes my visitors into linking to one of my sites, by offering two distinct rewards... a directory listing for their best Internet Marketing Resource, and a free ebook on permission email marketing.

Note: The tool that automates my link building strategy is called LinksManager. While there are many automated solutions available, be careful when selecting yours. Many are not search engine friendly and using a link network or link farm designed to trick search engines, can be detrimental to your link campaign!

The one I use is simply a time saving tool. It sends emails to new submissions, checks their site for a live link to mine, and gives away my ebook when the link is verified. When visitors link to my site, their links are set up directly to my site, so it is search engine friendly. I've been using it for a few years now with great success. And no, I'm not an affiliate. ;-)

If you have an Internet Marketing resource to promote, submit your site to my directory so you can see how it works. After you submit your listing, pay special attention to the page that gives webmasters the exact link code to paste into their sites. You should use a page like that at your site as well. It makes linking very simple, even for new webmasters. In fact, feel free to copy the layout of that page and customize it with your own keywords and links for YOUR site.

Now let's get to that other aspect of quality links...

[X] Exactly How Sites Link to You.

For sure, text links are better than banner links. And text links filled with your best keywords are better than any old text link.

For instance...

If you were trying to build links to your, let's say... fishing equipment site, how other sites display links to yours is extremely important. To decide what you want those links to say, you need to research keywords a bit. The word "fishing", would seem obvious but it undoubtedly has a ton of competition.

So a better idea is to find more specific words. You can do that by entering your main keyword into the tool at WordTracker.com or at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and you'll get a list of related keywords. This particular test showed me that the keywords "fishing tackle" or "fishing lure" get quite a bit of searching as well. So those would be a better choice of keywords to use in your incoming links.

But how do you decide what those other webmasters will write when they link to your site? That's easy. You do it by giving those webmasters the exact code they can paste into their sites, as I do when someone submits a URL to my directory above. In the case above, the code they would be asked to put on their site would be a short sentence such as "Down-south fishing lures - clever tackle for clever fish." The term "fishing lures" would be hyperlinked to the fishing site. ;-)

In Closing...

OK, so is everything in this article all you have to do to move your site up the ranks of the major search engines like Google? Well, not really. There are lots of other considerations such as the title of your site. Your title needs to include your best keywords as well. And so does the text of your pages. But I'll save the details on these for another article. For now, get busy building quality content and quality links. They are two keys to the success of your website.

That wraps up today's tip! If you take one lesson from it remember, QUALITY CONTENT plus QUALITY LINKS will bring you lots of quality website traffic.

Article by Jim Daniels
http://www.make-a-living-online.com - How to Make A Living Online ??? Did you find this article useful? If so, get Jim's BizWeb eGazette at http://www.bizweb2000.com/gazette/ and you'll get info like this every two weeks.