If there is one topic that preoccupies webmasters more than any other it is how to increase website traffic.

But then I first started to build and market websites how to increase website revenue I simply couldn’t afford to pay for marketing and so instead I put my heart into learning methods of generating free website traffic. After all, not only is your upfront investment nothing, but even better if you’re not paying for your traffic it’s very hard not to make a profit.

In that time I have tried just about every traffic-generating technique going but the one which has consistently generated the most traffic year after year is SEO or search engine optimization.

Simply put, SEO is the art of getting your websites to rank highly in the search engines for keywords closely related to the subject of your site, thus driving consistent, free and highly targeted visitors to your website day in, day out.

It is SEO that is the major driving force in the half a million or so visitors I manage to generate each year and that subsequently lead to considerable revenues.

As there is still so much misinformation circulating when it comes to increasing website traffic with SEO I’d like to explain to you the techniques I use personally that have proven to work well.

Whenever SEO is discussed, it is important to bear in mind two distinct factors. Firstly, the so-called “on page” factors and secondly the “off page” factors.

Let’s start off by looking at the on-page factors – that is the things you need to include in your own website to maximize your chances of success. There are five main elements to consider after you have chosen suitable keywords to target…

1) Page URL

Try wherever possible to include the keyword phrase you are targeting in the website address of the respective page. So if you are focusing an article on the keyword phrase “increase website traffic” you name the file [http://www.yourdomain.com/]increase-website-traffic.html for example. The hyphens won’t increase your search engine rankings but they do make it easier for human visitors to assess what your page is about when they see it in the search engines.

2) Page Title

Ensure your keyword phrase is again included in the title tag of your page. It will therefore not only appear in the bar at the top of your user’s browser, but will also decide what the link to your site in the search engines says.

3) Page Headline

Ensure the healdine of your page or article also includes those keywords – though try making them into an attention-grabbing title that will grab people by the eyeballs and compel them to read further.

4) Text

Don’t force your keyword phrase into every line of your article but sprinkle it a few times throughout your page when it naturally fits. Also consider synonyms too which the search engines are getting better at using. So don’t just use “increase website traffic” everywhere but also consider using “increase visitors”, “more traffic” and similar phrases that will all help to increase the relevancy of your page.

5) Images

You don’t have to include images in your pages if you don’t want to, but if you do use them consider adding your keyword to the tag to further increase the keyword density of your article.

Once you have these major factors in place, don’t worry about actually submitting your website to the search engines like the old days but instead focus on generating links from other websites that point to your new site.

By doing this the search engines will naturally find your site when they follow one of these links and many webmasters have reported superior results when a search engine finds them rather than when they submit their site manually.

Links pointing to your site are one of the major deciding factors in where your site will rank in the search engines and so the more links you can build to your site, the greater the increase in website traffic is likely to be.