• Section: Increase Traffic - Category: SEO/SEM
• Written by Rebecca Prescott

The first step to getting any traffic on the internet is getting your site indexed by the search engines – specifically, the 'Big 3'. – Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. And there are two things you should forget about straight away.

Number One – Yes, you can submit your URL to the search engines using their online form. But be prepared to wait around for a long, long time if you're relying on this to actually include your site in their databases. The search engines like to find your site through links on other sites, especially well ranking, established sites. With so many sites on the internet, this is their way of deciding if they should even think about adding your site to their index – never mind the question of ranking well in their index.

Number Two – If you see an ad or service offering to submit your site to 10,000 search engines and directories – run the other way. If you have money to burn, donate it to a charity or shelter ins

tead. At least then it would have been spent on something worthwhile. Most of your traffic will come from google, yahoo, and Microsoft. Other search engines don't represent any significant amount of traffic. You will actually get more traffic from link partners or people republishing your articles than these guys. It certainly won't get your site indexed by those that count.

So how can you get your site indexed?

1. The Slow Way

• Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking used to be more prominent amongst webmasters than it is now. It was once considered by the search engines as a good vote in favor of your site. The it got abused to the point that irrelevant results started to clog up the arteries of the search results. So these hypertensive algorithms were changed, and sites that relied too heavily on reciprocal linking lost a lot of their ranking and traffic. It can of course still provide a pathway for the search bots to find your new site. But exchanging links is time consuming and tedious. The links usually end up on a side page that exists solely for the purposes of link exchange. It doesn't provide a very relevant and topical link, and is a really poor use of time.

Reciprocal linking hasn't been consigned to history however. Some webmasters have so many links exchanged that together this constitutes a good flow of traffic. I do get traffic from my links. But I get more traffic from sites that have published my articles. Reciprocal linking is a big topic – ebooks have been written with chapters devoted to it. But suffice to say, in terms of getting your new site indexed, this takes a long time, and it doesn't leverage your time.

2. The Quick Way

• Writing Articles

Writing articles for other webmasters and ezine publishers to reprint has many advantages, not least the traffic you receive from it. But it is very effective at getting sites indexed quickly, and getting new web pages indexed quickly. This is an excellent way to leverage your time, unlike reciprocal linking. One article can get you links for months and years to come. By including a link in the resource box at the end of the article, you not only get a very topical link to your site (assuming you wrote an article that was relevant to the page and site you are linking to), but you get interested visitors to your site. These visitors come from both the major article directories, and the sites that choose to publish your article.

How many people will republish your article depends very much on how topical your article is, how big the niche is, and of course, how good the article is. Writing fluff or rubbish will generally not serve you well. Few if anyone will republish it – assuming it is accepted by the article directories in the first place. And any visitors reading it will not be persuaded to click through to your site if you don't provide good, relevant content. Article marketing is not just about getting a site indexed, or getting links from authority article directories. These benefits are

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