If you are new to Internet marketing, perhaps you are just beginning to learn more about traffic. What exactly is traffic? And what does it do for your site? You may have seen many online business owners scurrying to learn more about generating traffic. Why is that so? This article attempts to address these questions.

Traffic refers to the visitors who are visiting your website. The concept is similar to that of a brick and mortar store. With a traditional store, you have people walking past or visiting the store. These people either buy something, or they have the intention of buying something.

Likewise, the visitors to your website have a similar website. Chances are, they have arrived at your website because something interesting caught their eye. If they like your products and services, they may choose to buy something before leaving.

So the amount of money you make from your website is directly dependent on the traffic of your website. Theoretically speaking, the more traffic you have, the more sales you make. However, note that not all traffic is created equal.

In other words, not all traffic will convert, or even if they do convert, they do not convert at the same rate. This is because there are many ways to drive traffic to a site, and not everyone arrives at the site with the same mindset.

For example, let''s say you are into search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing internal page factors and building back links in an attempt to rank well in the search engines. The three major search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN, with Google usually sending the lion''s share of traffic.

That means if you manage to get your sites to rank well in the search engines, you will be able to get targeted traffic month after month. Traffic from search engines convert well because visitors are actively searching for something. And if they see that you have exactly what they are looking for, they may buy from you.

From your conversion rates, perhaps you see that 1 in every 10 visitors coming from the search engines buy from your site. So that is a 10 percent conversion rate.

Now if you try to generate traffic from another traffic source, perhaps from ezine marketing, you may not see the same results. There are many reasons why this happens but the primary reason is that traffic from ezines has a different mindset. They may not be actively searching for something. Therefore, your sales copy may need to first grab their attention before pitching to them.

But this is just a simple comparison between two distinctly different traffic sources. When generating traffic to your website, the key factor to remember is that you must drive targeted traffic to your site. That means whoever is visiting your website should have some interest in what you have to say or offer. If these visitors are already showing some interest, it''s going to be easier to convert them to paying customers.

So you see, traffic is the most important component in your Internet business. Take the time to learn all about traffic generation, and success is just round the corner.