Long and short is that competitive space for search engine optimization is becoming further and further from a free venue. As more and more people compete for key terms, affordable SEO becomes a pay-to-play space. Sure there are things you can do to help improve search engine ranking, but the reality is that those who pay for online advertising, or those who hire full-time writers for their website will usually come out on top.
Traffic is one of the key components of your web site marketing strategy and is available in these three forms.

1. Borrow It. One method of borrowing traffic is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. The key thing to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return.

2. Develop It. Articles are a great way of generating traffic. Once you have created your articles you can put them on your website or blog as content, a white paper, or eBook.

3. Pay For It. You can buy traffic typically using what is known as Pay-Per-Click advertising. You can define your target markets, your daily budget, and where you want your online ads to appear. Paid search marketing offers one of the best ways to control traffic to your website .

There are many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants that will charge you an arm and a leg for their services, sometimes as much as $2,000 per month or more. They often make dubious claims that they can get you ranked on the first page of the search engines within a few months, and if not, they will kindly refund your money.

However, there is a catch. Once you pay the initial deposit and the SEO company begins working on your site, they will often optimize your website in such a manner so that you will be able to quickly rise to the top of the rankings for a keyword that is either not significant or will not attract any real traffic.

If you want to improve your ranking and attract qualified traffic to your website, you need to use a different approach:

1. Optimize your website for the keywords or phrases that people actually use when searching for products or services related to what you offer.
2. Modify higher volume keywords and search terms with phrases that are more specific to your services and industry.
3. Localize your keywords to your target market and client’s location.
4. Try to have a decent amount of free content on your website that relates to the keywords or phrases for which you want to be ranked higher.