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.

I am sure you have heard about Search Engine Optimization before, but for those that are new it is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or “organic” search results. It means making changes to a website that help it rank higher in the search engines for various keywords. The higher a website ranks in the search engines the more traffic it can achieve.

Although SEO is a basic method for promotion it is one of the most important methods for free promotion of your online business. Slight changes today regarding SEO can have a positive impact on your business years from now. The process of SEO includes on page changes to your website to help it rank higher and also building links into your website.

You want your title tags to include your main keywords that you are targeting. So for example if you were a chiropractor in Illinois the keyword you would go after may be a phrase like Chicago, Illinois Chiropractor. Your title tag would need to include that keyword. The title tag can be found at the very top of your Internet browser next to the logo of the browser you are using. The words you are read up there are your title tags. Most companies make the mistake of putting their business name up there instead of keywords there. This limits your traffic to people who already know you exist. So make sure you are including your keywords in your title tags. For best results try to make a new keyword for each page of your site as well.

To find relevant keywords that you should be targeting visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

When the tool opens up just type in some phrases related to your services and it will show you a list of keywords that you should be targeting. If we go back to the Chicago, Illinois Chiropractor example that is a keyword you would type in. It would do you no good to rank for chiropractor, so be smart with the keywords you go after.

You will want to also ensure that your main keyword is mentioned a few times within the content of the page on your website. So if your keyword is Kansas Auto Insurance than that keyword should be mentioned a few times within the article.

Another important SEO factor is making sure you have text based links and aren’t focusing on flash or JavaScript based links.

Further it can give you a boost if the keyword you are targeting shows up in the URL. So if you have a page targeting Wichita, Kansas Auto Insurance than the URL could look like this yoursite.com/wichita-kansas-auto-insurance.htm or something like that.

Your webmaster will know how to make these changes to all of your tags. Now, keep in mind that this is a very simple and basic view of SEO. This alone could warrant an entire book, but adhering to these simple principals will make a big difference for your business.

The other important aspect of SEO is link building, and that could be an entire course. The great thing is that these links you build into your website help your site rank high, but also the places that link to your site will also come up in the search engines. These places really help increase your traffic overall as well.