Once your website has been launched it should be viewed. And it is the number of viewers that justify the popularity of your pages. SEO is big business today and the sums involved are astronomical. Here I am detailing out a do-it-yourself method to herd traffic your site.

The process begins from getting your site listed with the major search engines including MSN, Yahoo and Google. Since the time required for the site to appear in their list is considerable, I normally use this period to increase the popularity of any site through an array of proven methods. This starts with link exchange. I normally search using similar keywords to find sites which are willing to add my link to their site in exchange for my readiness to put their links on my site. This enhances the accessibility of your site to more people.

Posting relevant articles that contain your link can blogs or directories in a sure method to attract visitors. But your postings should be rich and interesting enough to rouse the vendors’ interest to click on your link.

Then there is the hunters’ technique of luring traffic in to your pages. What I do is to start a new survey or a competition that include an attractive freebie or a prize to the winner/s. However it is not a must to announce any such awards. You may simply request people in a polite way to find the time to participate in the survey.

Adding a finishing touch by using signatures or customized stationary that contain your URL for all your correspondences including email should also be tried. A good marketer does not stop here. What about letting others know about your site during personal interactions? Since I am telling about methods that do not cost a penny, such announcements only add the number of visitors to your site.

SEOs place a lot of importance in building a good link popularity which reflects on the site’s ranking with the search engines. So before you set out on an optimization spree it is of utmost necessity to come to grips with all factors that relate to link popularity.

What is link popularity? It is the number of links that appear on other websites that direct traffic to your own site. The more popular you are with regard to the number of external links; your rankings with the search engines get boosted. Please bear it in mind that a good link popularity is only one among many factors that add to your ranking.

Then what is the need for concentrating on link popularity if other means are available to enter into the good books of search engines? In the web world, teeming with billions of websites that are facing cutthroat competition to be ranked in a high position with the search engines, you can not afford to turn a blind eye to even a tiny bit of help that will add to the overall outcome. And link popularity is not a method that can be taken for granted as one among many. If you look through the eyes of a search engine, things become clearer. Search engines are programmed to identify sites that have more back links and give them special treatment while considering the rankings for a particular set of keywords.

I never advise a link building orgy of submitting your URL on any link farm to increase the inbound links to your site. In fact, this method has all the likelihood of search engines keeping an eye on you as a prospective spammer. There are certain elements to be adhered to while building good link popularity.

a. Even if it may take some time, manual submission is better than an automated link exchange program.

b. Select only those sites that have content relevant to your own.

c. The above rule applies even to forum or review postings.

d. Selecting sites that are high ranked even if their relevance is less, is alright. This is because search engines are impressed by the quality of the sites from where your links originate.

Anil Vij is an expert author and an online marketing specialist. Get the secrets super affiliates don’t want you to know. Find out how to build links and get instant traffic to your site at http://www.onewaylinkexchange.net.