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10 years ago you could get away with building a web site, building a few backlink's to it and getting a good ranking in the search engines.  Traffic would flow to your site and all you needed to do was figure out a way to monetize that traffic.

Nowadays, the internet has evolved, and competition in the SERP's is far more competitive.   It's so competitive that search engine listings are far from guaranteed and webmasters have to fight for their traffic. 

Despite this, people are still so hung up over listings in the search engines. Whilst I agree that free, organic traffic is a beautiful thing, we should never become reliant on such traffic to power our business or blog.  Why?  Because Google reportedly updates its algorithm 200 times a year and at any point in time your number one listing in the results could be dropped like a bad habit. How would you react if your traffic source instantly dried up?
You'd probably only realize it when your monthly check didn't arrive! It's hardly a good business model.


That's why I always recommend finding an alternative source of traffic and get damn good at it.  There's really no use in trying to drive traffic from 20 separate avenues – be 90% good at one thing rather than 10% good at everything.  Learn to specialize.   That's not to say that SEO isn't important – we should always strive to achieve listings, but we should never become financially dependent on them. 

So, to cap:-

1. 1. Find a source of traffic that you can depend on other than Google
2. 2. Apply SEO methods as good practice (keyword research, backlink building and so forth).

My strategy for achieving both the aforementioned objectives is article marketing.  Article writing is my specialty: I have studied it; I know what works and what doesn't.



My goal is this: to get my content all over the web so that people read what I have to say, benefit from the value I provide and are encouraged to visit my site as a result.  It's a simple strategy that over time produces huge amounts of targeted traffic that you can turn into dollars.  Here's what I do:-

1. Find high profile web sites that is looking for content (such as this blog!)
   
2. Socially bookmark at Social Marker and submit RSS feeds to RSS directories using Incannsoft's RSSBot. 
3. Submit my articles to ezine directories (check out http://www.directoryofezines.co.uk to find ezines in your niche)
4. Convert the article to video and mass submit to video sharing platforms automatically using TubeMogul
5. Strip the audio and submit to podcast directories
6. Syndicate articles across submission sites such as ISnare
7. Combine articles together to create e-books and add to e-book directories and document sharing sites such as DocStoc
8. Create snippets on satellite blogs hosted on web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages and Blogspot 
9. Combine articles to create a giveaway and drive traffic to the opt-in page using Twitter and Facebook 
10. Finally, I submit articles to the directories. 

You'll notice that most people simply submit their articles to directories.  This is just wasteful – it's all about content syndication, repurposing and distribution.  Take your valuable content and put it in front of your audience in as many places as possible and you'll see great results!

When marketing online, here's a great rule to follow:

Find what everybody else is doing, and do something different. You'll never become an online success story as a sheep – you need to test new methods and find out what works, what doesn't, and have the balls to break the mold. What unique traffic methods work for you?

About The Author: Paul McCarthy writes tips on internet marketing on his blog. If you liked these methods of driving traffic then be sure to check out his full list of 16 traffic sources for some hidden untapped gems: http://paulmccarthy.co.uk/content/16-powerful-ways-double-traffic-your-web-site 

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