Copyright (c) 2010 Riley West

Getting a big flow of good, targeted traffic to your web pages is not only the most difficult thing to do but it's the most important thing to do in internet marketing.

That's because a site without traffic is "dead".

But achieving you traffic goals doesn't have to be a puzzle and it doesn't have to have the possible consequence of driving you broke from ad bills.

When you get it right SEO (search engine optimization) is the best way to get traffic to your offer. It's free, it comes with a good dose of credibility, and, depending on your keyword choice, it can be VERY targeted.

Here we'll cover a few SEO tactics that you can use to get more great traffic in a reasonable amount of time.

Most of the time, in discussions about SEO, the two main ingredients to the recipe for traffic are "keywords" and "backlinks".

Another dichotomy that exists is the "onpage" and "offpage" SEO tactics.

For example, if you want to, and can, rank for "red umbrellas" you want your keyword in your title, preferably toward the front and you want it in the first paragraph, also preferably toward the beginning.

These rules are not hard and fast in SEO but they may well be when submitting articles.

So there you have the "on-page" factors.

The "off-page" factor that most people would like to know how to do and how to get right, are backlinks. Preferably one-way backlinks, although the merit of two way links is commonly discussed.

So here's what you want to move up fast for a keyword you are targeting.

You want it in your title and your first paragraph. On-page.

And then there's the off-page SEO maneuvers.

You want it on another site as a hyperlink made of THOSE words. In this case it could be in an article resource box, as "the author will also show a good selection of red umbrellas and some..." where "red umbrellas" is a clickable link to the pages URL that you are SEO'ing for. I'm SURE that is not a word but I hear myself saying it now and then.

You see, Google sees a link from another site that has the link text as "red umbrellas" as a VOTE for YOUR site.

Theoretically, at least, Google will advance your ranking for red umbrellas if they see some "votes" in the form of red umbrella links pointing to your page from out there in the blogosphere or web page universe.

So there it is. Your on-page text content includes your keywords and your links back to that page come from in-context placement of "your keyword here" at another site.

This could be done with articles, in the resource box, or a post on a blog somewhere and there is one more consideration to where your backlinks originate from.

It's a simple as this. A keyword link from a low page rank site carries a lot less "link juice" than a link from a PR5 or PR6 does.

So a simple way to start pushing for better ranking for "your keyword here" is to get it in your on page content adequately and to secure some backlinks from "your keyword here" in context at another site, if possible from a higher PR ranking site or page.

Here's a great exercise.

Go to Ezinearticles and find some articles about your topic (your keyword here). Take a look at what keywords they are using to get links back to their site and compare it to what you are doing. Live and learn.

And remember this... Offer + Traffic = Sales