One of the biggest reasons online businesses fail is from a lack of real, targeted traffic. We all know this is true because without people looking at your website or seeing what you have to offer it is impossible to make any money. The great news for you is that if you are willing to put in some decent and focused effort there is plenty of simple and effective ways to get the traffic you need to make sure your business is a success.

In this article I am going to detail the process to creating your own traffic machine which can really get people going to your site in nearly any niche market. This can apply for online retailers or local businesses. So anyone with a website that takes action on what I am covering can see some great results!

Step 1: Generate Keyword Ideas

You need to be focusing on keywords or keyword phrases that your target market is going to be looking for to find what you are offering. If you are selling pet products than you would search for keywords related to the products you carry. If you are a local, primarily offline business, think of the niche market you are in and how your customers would find you. As a chiropractor, for example, you could find keywords related to back pain relief, car accident injuries, etc.

You want to look for keyword phrases that have a fair amount of searches so you know you are targeting keywords that people are looking for. A good rule of thumb is to target keyword phrases that have more than 500 searches per month.

The free tool that I recommend for this research is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Using that tool create a list of 20 topics or keyword phrases related to your business.

Step 2: Write Articles

Next you want to write articles based on each one of those main keyword phrases that you have researched. So in total you are writing 20 articles. Alternatively you can outsource article writing for around $5 per article through www.elance.com or www.getafreelancer.com.

The articles should be between 400 and 500 words in length, and each article title should start with your main keyword phrase. This is very important.

So if your article is about back pain relief than one example of a good article title would be like, Back Pain Relief - 7 Steps to a Pain Free Back

Notice how I fit the keyword phrase into the article title, this is very, very important. Just focus on writing solid content within the body of your article and you will be all set.

Next, make sure you create a resource box or author bio box that will encourage people to visit your website. Each article should have one of these with a link back to your site.

Step 3: Submit Articles to Article Directories

Now it is time to submit the articles to several top online article directories. I recommend you submit them to the following five article directories:

1. www.ezinearticles.com
2. www.goarticles.com
3. www.articledashboard.com
4. www.articlesbase.com
5. www.ideamarketers.com

Make sure that your title for each article contains your keywords and then make sure you have a resource box going back to your main website.

Step 4: Create Network of Web 2.0 Properties

With the other set of 10 articles you want to create 5 pages at www.Squidoo.com and 5 pages at www.hubpages.com. You will want to link these pages together along with linking to your site. So on these pages within the content you can add a link to your website and also a link to another page you have setup on Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com. This will help those pages rank in the search engines.

Now you have a total of 50 article submissions being done and 10 web 2.0 properties that makes a total of at least 60 different places your content can be found for now.

Step 5 (Optional): Write 5 More Articles

This next step is optional, but you can write or create 5 additional keyword rich articles and add them to your website with each article being a new page on your site. Just make sure the title tag for that page is the main title of your article which should be keyword rich.

This will add more chances that Google will also find your site. Now, you can do this with 10 more articles or 50 more articles. Obviously the more you do, the more results you will get.

Now simply go out and repeat this process until you are seeing the desired results you are hoping for.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimization