Sure there are a million and one ways to increase website traffic if you're willing to pay out the nose. Right now however, we're going to talk about attracting the best kind of traffic-- free traffic. 

Often, people want to know which one of the methods they read about on the internet is the method that will increase website traffic the most. The fact is that almost all of them do. The question really is -- to what extent?

I have only found two ways to consistantly increase website traffic. One of them is to have a strong affiliates/associates program. It must be a very enticing program with high value all the way around. If you have a great product, and if you are able to offer high commissions, then you may be able to develop a sales force of tremendous proportions. This is getting increasingly more difficult to do as we have more and more great companies shouting from the internet roof tops saying, "Pick me! Pick Me!"

For more information about creating an affiliate program click here .

The second and most reliable way to consistantly increase website traffic is to rank high in the most popular search engines. To find out how to begin to do that, you can go to my section called "Improve Search Engine Rankings" by clicking here. Once you've read this section you will realize the key to increasing your website traffic...

Keywords! Keywords! Keywords!

When I started my internet business, I kept hearing those three little words over and over and still managed to completely ignore them. This was a BIG mistake. After months of wondering why my website traffic numbers flailed in the great internet wind, I realized that maybe I should start paying attention. I spent hundreds of hours figuring out how this "keyword" system works and the following information is the result of those efforts.

How does the "keyword" system work?

It's really fairly simple, once you know the rules. You can dramatically increase website traffic by applying the following:

Rule #1 - Treat every page as if it was the main page of your site. Google, for example, really shows no preference for your index (entry) page. Every page on your site is an opportunity to create a warrior that will crush your competition and outrank everybody for your chosen keyword.

Rule #2 - Optimize your pages by strategically placing your key words or phrases on your page. To find out more on how to do this check out "Making a Website" by clicking here .

Rule #3 - This is the most important rule to increase website traffic using the search engines: Spend as much time as you need to determine the best "keywords" or "phrases" for your site. Preferably before you ever design the site. Yes! It's that important!

How to determine the best keywords or phrases for your site.

Step 1 - Make a list of every search term (keyword or phrase) anyone could ever use to try to find your webstie. If you have volunteers, ask them to make a list of the search term(s) they would use to find information about the subject of your site.

Step 2 - Find out what the demand is for each potential keyword. When I first started in this business I was so excited to go to Google and find that I was listed number one for certain keywords but I wondered why I still wasn't getting any traffic. The problem was that even though I was number one for those keywords, it turns out that no one (or hardly anyone) ever entered those keywords to begin with. To find out how many people per month enter any of your potential keywords go to

http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

This is a wonderful service from Wordtracker, still available free of charge, that provides you with a great estimate on the popularity of your potential keywords. It's also great for finding some other keywords or phrases you may not have thought of. Of course you can get into a bit deeper by subcribing to them and using their full service.

Step 3 - Find out how much competition you have. How do you do that? Simple! Go to http://www.google.com and enter your potential keyword or phrase in between quotation marks ("keyword") then hit "Search." At the top right hand side you will see something like "Results 1 - 10 of about 76,600". This means that you will be competing against 76,600 other pages for that keyword.

Don't get discouraged by results that come back in the tens of thousands or less because most people have no idea what they are doing. Using the information I am sharing with you on this site should make it fairly easy to find your way to the top two pages of results.

If you have a potential keyword that has a demand figure of 6,230 and your competition at Google is 1,234,789 then that probably won't be an effective keyword for you. Why? Because there's too much competition and unless you have hundreds of links coming in to your site, you probably won't stand a chance of ranking in the top 10.

Step 4 - Take all of your potential keywords and perform step 2 and 3 while writing down the results. You may want to use a spreadsheet like Excel to keep track of your results.

Step 5 - When your finished pulling the numbers for all your potential keywords or phrases then take your results from Google and divide them by your results from Overture. For example, using the number above we would get 1,234,789 divided by 6,230 which would be rounded off to 198. Do this for all your potential keywords. Using these numbers I call RPDs (Results per Demand) you will be able to easily determine which potential keywords or phrases have the greatest potential for you to be able to rank highly.

The smaller the RPD, the better potential. In the example above, the number 198 is not very good. We already talked about why. If you encouter numbers that are less than one, and if there is some demand (the higher number the better of course), those will be your optimal target keywords to increase website traffic. Many times, depending on the subject matter, it is not possible to find RPDs smaller than one. That's OK. The only rule is: smaller is better.

Step 6 - Pick your top potential keywords and use them according to the three "keyword system rules" I talked about earlier on this page. Or you can just forget about all this stuff and let me do it for you by clicking here .

How to Increase Website Traffic by Submitting to the
Top Search Engines and Directories

Once you've determined the optimal keywords and phrases by using the information above and you've made sure you are following the "8 Website Ranking Rules" and you have followed all the tips and suggestions from "Making a Website" then you are ready to submit your pages to the top search engines and directories. Here's how:

To learn how to increase website traffic by submitting to search engines click here

To learn how to increase website traffic by submitting to directories click here

To learn how to increase website traffice by using pay-per-click engines click here