When it comes to Internet Marketing, the holy grail of just about everyone jumping on this band wagon has to be Search Engine Traffic …and especially FREE Search Engine Traffic.  To get something for nothing is what even I am looking for.

After all S.E. traffic is targeted traffic.  You control the keywords used to make it targeted.  Search engine traffic can convert quite well, depending on how well you write your sales copy.  And…best of all…it’s FREE!  …OR rather it’s free if you don’t pay for it using Pay Per Click Advertising .

But with all these benefits, there certainly is a downside to getting all this free traffic.  That downside is the terrific amount of effort that must be exerted to get that traffic.  In order to rank effectively enough so that people actually find your site on the Search Engines can require a massive amount of effort.  On top of all this effort, another major requirement is an inordinate amount of patience.

Three little ingredients are there necessary to win in the Search Engine game of life – Time, Money and Work (or Effort) .  How much of each you are willing to expend will certainly determine how successful, or unsuccessful you will become in getting that search engine traffic you so long for.

If you do not want to do the work necessary and wait to rank well for the likes of Google’s search engine, than you can use some of your “Money” to get more instant results instead.  By using Pay Per Click advertising through Google Adwords , you can buy your way to your success instead.

Besides using PPC (pay per click) advertising there are a number of other ways that you can drive traffic towards your direction.  These ways are independent of organic search engine rankings.  One of my favorite methods is by using various social media tools and other “Web 2.0″ methods which will bypass most of your search engine ranking concerns.

Try submitting a video to YouTube and see what kind of traffic you get.  If your video is done well and is targeted to a specific audience, you can do quite well with it.  Myself, I love using Squidoo.  Because I love writing, I will put up a good Squidoo lens, choose a bunch of great related keywords and then start bookmarking the lens to the top social bookmarking sites like Digg, and Stumbleupon.

But again, this still takes a certain amount of work.  So, unless you are willing to pay, it could be a little tough to play.  If paying is still your preferred style, the only way to truly generate a significant amount of traffic and a consistent flow of visitors with the potential of becoming paying customers will inevitably involve some form of advertising – and advertising is going to cost you cash, sometimes a lot of cash.

This is one of the biggest reasons that most people will eventually return to hunting for organic search engine traffic, that elusive holy grail.  But with practice and patience, the amount of effort and time involved to find the traffic you want is not that hard and can be very rewarding.

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Related posts:

1. An Introduction To Search Engine Marketing