Real pros know taking the legit way is the only way for permanent lasting traffic. So, those ?black hat? SEO techniques are out. Sooner or later, Google will figure out sites that try to take shortcuts. So, we will discuss legitimate ways to get and build quality traffic.

When you start up a new website, you have 2 immediate goals.

1. Get the search engines to notice you and index your pages.

2. Get as much quality traffic as possible.

Whether you are selling products, giving away information, or just want visitors, the 2 goals still apply. Without visitors, a website is nothing.

Consider these web traffic facts:

1. At least 80% of the traffic to most websites comes directly from search engines.

2. According to the Nielsen NetRatings, Google handles 46.3% of all search engine searches.

3. AOL search has 6.9%, which is powered by Google, bringing the total searches that Google handles at 53.2%.

4. This means that it is likely that 42.56% of your traffic comes directly from Google.

Google is smart and will in time (usually within weeks) weed out non-legitimate sites. If you want lasting traffic, you need to play the game by the right rules. When you know the right game plan, it is quite easy.

With that in mind, let's discuss your first goal with a new website. You want the search engines to notice you, and get you into the search results pages so you can get a chunk of that rich search traffic. Search engines walk a part of your site every time they visit. So, the best way to get crawled faster logically is to get them to visit more often. Search engines visit sites by following links to your site from other sites they are walking.

So, the next goal is to get your links onto other sites. Many webmasters are more than willing to exchange good content, like an article, on their website for links. Both parties make out well in this instance. Now, you could manually go around, email webmasters, but that takes too long.

An article directory, on the other hand, is the perfect vehicle. Google LOVES article directories. They visit many times a day. By getting your article into an article directory, Google will find your website fast and index it. When other authors grab a free copy of your article, with your attached resource box at the end containing links back to your site, you get even more coverage. These new backlinks help even more with the search engines and indexing.

So, how does this all tie in with the second main goal of getting increased traffic you might ask. If you recall above, 80% of website traffic comes from search engines. When the search engines love your site, they put it in front of people searching for topics. You are now the authority on the subject, afterall. Other traffic you'll get from websites. Normally, from websites that have put up your article, recommending your site. You are now getting traffic from very relevant sources, often your peers.

So you get all of this for the meager price of a few articles. Providing information to potential visitors/clients is the key. Writing 3 articles a week yields lots of traffic, and because the content stays out there working for you, it builds upon itself.

Now that you know how the pros get all of this attention for free, you can apply it yourself to your own websites. Most articles are between 400 and 500 words, with a couple of links at the end to your website, to get the best results. Try it for yourself and see the traffic come rolling in.