An all too common mistake newbies make when the first get into affiliate marketing is that they think that all they have to do is slap their links up on a website and hope that traffic will come their way. Guess what? It won’t happen.

The first mistake is that they think that their website doesn’t have to be interesting beyond their links. After all, they’re in affiliate marketing, not search engine optimization, right? What they’re essentially telling the search engines is that they don’t want to be seen.

Then they wonder why they’re not getting any traffic on their links. With a plain-Jane website, what else could they expect? They’re lucky if they get pocket change for their effort. More accurately, for their lack of effort!

What’s really horrible is when these newbies in affiliate marketing will have a page of nothing but links, and a lot of them at that. Honestly, there’s really no hope in attracting any traffic this way.

The first rule in building a website is that it has to have good search engine optimization to rank. This holds true for affiliate marketing sites. You have to at least have good keyword placement. You will also have to post content like everyone else. You will never get anywhere if it’s just a grid of shiny, flashing link buttons. Even worse, it won’t go anywhere if you have a mixture of buttons and text!

Now, about that grid of buttons. The average user isn’t going to be able to easily sort through these to find what they want. Simply put, they’ll see it and go away. The best thing to do is break your links up some over different pages. Put them in categories and have links to these pages. For that matter, there’s nothing saying that you couldn’t have several different websites for your links.

Back to the subject of content, don’t limit yourself to content about affiliate marketing. The fact of the matter is that no one is actually looking for affiliate links. You have to draw users to these links by having otherwise interesting content. In short, you have to have a business other than affiliate marketing to really pull it off.

That’s not to say that you otherwise have to profit off of your website. You could have a completely free of charge website discussing the pros and cons of hitchhiking while having your business links lining the sidelines of your page. That’s your choice, though it’s in your best interest to have content relevant to your niche. However, money’s going to have to come from somewhere else, at least at first.

Another helpful thing to do with your affiliate marketing links is to provide commentary on them. Most people, when they see an affiliate link, probably have no idea what it is or why they would possibly want it. Guess what? You’re a marketer, so you can’t just promote the product halfway and expect anything but a halfway result.

If you have decided to take the Internet marketing plunge you know that you have a lot of work in front of you. One frequently asked question of beginners is why is it so hard getting traffic to my website? The answer is, it’s not. Driving traffic can be accomplished in a number of ways; it’s driving the right traffic that poses a problem for most.

One common mistake that people make is expecting traffic to come automatically. When that doesn’t work they backtrack to try and figure out what they’re doing wrong. If you do it right the first time, you can save yourself a tremendous amount of time and money and SEO or search engine optimization is where you want to start.

Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your website so that it is search engine friendly will do two things:

Content and Keywords

There are a few key points to consider when driving traffic to your website – things like content and keywords play a big part in this. They say content is king and this is certainly true. The more content you have that people want to read, the more people will visit your website.
Keywords are pretty much the key to success. These are the words that people use to search for things on the Internet. If your keywords aren’t relevant to what you are selling, they will never find your website.

Search Engine Directories

A marketing strategy often overlooked is submitting your website to the search engines and directories. This is an easy way to get your site listed with the major search engines, and don’t forget that Google isn’t the only search engine in town. There are also Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, AOL, and literally hundreds of other search engines that you can submit your website to.

Trading Links

Link trading is a great way to help build traffic to your website, especially if you are just starting out. This is where having compelling content will work in your favor. When approaching other sites to exchange links with you, of course you won’t have a lot to offer if you’re just starting out, so having great content will definitely help you here.

These are just a few marketing strategies that will help drive traffic to your website. It’s not difficult, but it does takes time, patience, and perseverance. Everyone hits a bump or two in the road, and some things may be harder to accomplish than others, but when it all comes together, the payoff is well worth the effort.

There are several companies out there that provide traffic generation services of various types, usually for pretty large fees. Or there are free services that promise to bring you traffic if you visit a certain number of websites yourself. You may be wondering if these services are actually worth the money or time you’ll spend to get the traffic.

In my opinion, the answer to that is usually no. Now, I’m sure there are some good methods of paying for traffic (Pay Per Click is another topic in itself and is different than the services I am talking about here) out there, but in reality most of these traffic generation programs don’t get you the kind of traffic you really want.

The people who are clicking on links in exchange for getting paid or for getting traffic to their own sites aren’t really interested in the information you have to offer. They’re only interested in getting credit for visiting your site and getting on to the next site as quickly as possible.

The traffic you really want is people who are truly interested in the information, products and services you provide, people who will come to your site and stay for a while, reading the articles and blog posts and maybe even signing up for your newsletter.

While traffic generation programs may bring more traffic to your site, it’s not the kind of traffic that will help you in the long run. 1,000 hits to your site resulting in “0″ sales is not a good way to make money.

You need to focus your efforts on getting visitors who will actually pay attention to your content, who will come back to your site often and who will ultimately buy what you’re selling. That’s what is meant by “Targeted Traffic.” People who are actually interested in purchasing the product or service you are selling.

That’s the kind of traffic that will ultimately make your business a success and you can’t get it through a get-traffic-quick scheme.