Search engine optimization has become the largest, most effective and most durable means of lifting your online business to a higher ground. But, just as cars are popularly known by all but, many of us do not know how to drive it, the word traffic is popularly know by all internet marketers but unfortunately, very few are able drive traffic to their sites. The truth about online business is this, No matter how good and attractive your product might be, you will make little or no sale without traffic, but no matter how bad and ugly your product is, you will surely make sales provided you have targeted visitors driven to your site. This simply means that traffic is the soul of online business. Your business begins when you make the first sale.

About 70% visitors come from search engines, which is the major reason why search engine optimization is very important to every website owner. The first thing you must consider doing is having your site listed in Google. You can make a manual submission using the Google Webmaster tools. You can then proceed with various methods for improving the ranking. There are sites that would charge you some money to advertise your site for you. Going for these paid adverts is very helpful and it will help to rank your site higher. But, as far as I am concerned, The free method for search engine optimization is the best. Some methods for boosting the ranking of your site are discussed below beginning with the paid methods.

Pay per click:

Google Adwords is the most popularly known pay per click site. It performs a vital role in search engine optimization. Millions of sites display google advertisement on them. Thousands of those sites could be in line with your niche. If a link to your site appears on them, you are automatically having thousands of backlinks from those site. This will increase the ranking of your site. Google adwords also has its disadvantages. Those links would remain as long as you continue paying for the advert. If you are unable to meet up with the payment, the links would disappear, and after a short period, your page ranking returns to zero. This applies to every other pay per click sites. No pay, no link.

Article marketing:

Article marketing is a popularly known method of getting visitors and increasing link popularity of a site. Just like pay per click, it plays a very important role in search engine optimization. Unlike pay per click, article marketing is free and your link remains permanent.