Targeted traffic is the life blood of any website. Everyone accepts that. Yet, many people struggle to find the key to unlock floods of traffic to their website and eventually give up trying. The failure rate in any new business is high, but in internet marketing it is catastrophic. The main cause of this failure is the lack of targeted website traffic.

You can easily overcome this by taking a few simple steps that will guarantee to increase the number of visitors to your website. You can do this without pay-per-click or other forms of direct advertising and the tools you need to do this are free and readily available.

If you are not using these techniques now, start today!

1. Take advantage of free keyword research.

Search engines need to know what your site is about in order to send targeted traffic. And you need to know what people are actively searching for so you can build pages using keywords people search for. Free tools to help in your research are available from Google, Wordtracker, SEO Tools and others. Just do a Google search and you'll find lots of help.

2. Make sure your power keywords are in your meta tags.

There is some debate about whether meta tags are as valuable as they once were. But why take the chance. Give yourself the edge and make sure your meta tags are keyword rich but don't include a hundred keywords - this will end up harming rather than helping you.

3. Exchange links.

Make sure you only exchange links with sites that complement and add value to your own product/service. You can easily find thousands of potential partners by googling. If your website is about dogs, Google for: dogs "link exchange". If you engage in indiscriminate link exchanges it probably wont bring you any extra traffic and the search engines may actually penalize you.

4. Join and use forums.

Find forums that are related to your product or service and introduce yourself. Make appropriate comments but do not use blatant advertising. Most forums don't permit it except in specified sections. By making helping suggestions, answering questions and including your website in your signature you will begin to build a presence and attract targeted traffic to your site

5. Submit your site to directories.

This is an obvious method that is often overlooked. Submit other pages in addition to your main landing page. The more pages you submit, the more links and the more potential targeted traffic. Do not submit the same page to the same directory more often than once each month.

6. Ask your visitors what they want.

Post a survey on your site to find out what your current visitors are looking for. This can even be done with a pop-up. When you find out what they want, try to give it to them. Chance are other people will be searching for the same things.

7. Write and submit articles.

This is a time proven method of getting free targeted visitors. Share your knowledge with others and they will often visit your site. Include links to your website in the article's resource area and submit your article to as many directories as possible. You can do the submission yourself, use software to ease the load or go first class and use an article submission service. Whatever method you choose, do it. It is the best way to flood your site with visitors!