Image by Jim of JimOnLight via Flickr

So if you are following along and you have done your keyword research, found some keywords to target, and setup your first website using one of the free platforms you are probably wanting to get some free website traffic. By now the thought may have dawned on you, “How is anyone going to find me?” Well, if you want people to visit your site, you are going to have to promote your site in one form or another.

Of course, if you are using Blogger, Hubpages, or Squidoo you are going to get some Google love automatically. These free website platforms have high page rank, which will spill over onto your site and help it rank. Google’s spiders crawl these sites often, so you have an excellent chance of getting on the big G’s radar quickly. But if you do not have anything of value there, don’t expect to hit page 1. But even if you do, chances are without some continued work you will not remain there for long.

Google and the other search engines use a variety of factors when deciding where to place your site. They look at the on page content, linking (on site and back linking), page rank, age, and a variety of other components. Of course, the one you have greatest control over is the content. That is why it is very important to put up worthwhile articles and information. But what else can you do and how can you get free website traffic so you can make some money?

To get yourself some quick traffic, article marketing is a great option. Ezinearticles, Article Base, and Go Articles are great article directory sites to write articles for so you can get free website traffic. And you will want to follow the same steps of locating keywords to put in your articles, just as you did when you built your first hub/lens. A good rule of thumb is to put your keyword(s) in the title (at the beginning), in the beginning of the article (first paragraph), and then every 100 words throughout your article. And in your author/resource box, you will want to use your keyword as anchor text (a clickable link). This will help the search engines decipher what your site/article is about. To do this, you just use the code [a href="http://yoursite.com"]your keyword [/a] BUT where I have the [] you will want <> in order to get it to show up correctly.

Okay, sounds great…doesn’t it? Well, maybe not if you are like some people and have great difficulty when writing articles. Let’s face it, it is hard to come up with unique content over and over about the same subject.

Once thing you can do to try to get the creative juices flowing is pick up a magazine that is close as possible to your niche. Take a look at the headlines of the articles. Is there any that cause you to want to thumb through the pages to read more about it? If so, chances are that your readers would feel the same way about your articles with that headline. And even if the title does not fit your niche specifically, think about how you could change it to fit.

Another great idea is to gear your article specifically to the newcomer. Not everyone knows as much about your niche as you do. For instance, I want to build an above-ground garden box in my backyard. I live in a sandy climate, so a regular northern garden will not work for me. Plus I really know just about nothing about gardening. So I need to learn everything about gardening, including keeping pests away, how to care for my garden, and what to expect.

Sometimes when we know a lot about a subject, we forget just how much we had to learn to get where we are today…and that there are other people that are just starting out in their education of the subject. Think about what questions you had in the beginning. Chances are others are asking themselves those very questions. So give them what they are looking for and you could have a customer for life.

Using templates for your articles is another great idea.

• Ten Great Reasons Why…
• How to Conquer…
• Three Secret Tricks….

Lists are great ways to write articles and a lot of times people will click to read further, if they believe they are getting a bunch of free information.

You could also write would be a step-by-step article. Don’t forget about us noobs. We need to know everything.

Going back to me needing to learn about gardening, I need to have a plan. I need to know how big of an area I need, what supplies I need, how to get the seeds to start to grow…everything. You may want to start off your article stating a problem and ending with the results. Sell your prospects the dream and connect with their desires and paint a picture in their mind of what great things can happen if they follow your steps.

Those ideas should be enough to get you mind working on composing those articles. I will add a few more ideas of coming up with articles to get free website traffic in the coming days.

So, what are you waiting for? Get writing