There are a number of ways to get targeted traffic to your web site. The most preferred is free traffic. To get targeted traffic free, as you should know by now, you need to narrow the niche or theme of your web site so that links to it in the search engines are clicked on mainly by those people that want information on your narrow topic. This is also accompanied by centering your web site and pages around weighted keywords.

This type of traffic means that you must search engine optimize your site and pages too. You must also grow your site slowly with relevant content so that the search engines love you. Even so, it is a slow rise to the higher rankings where you get noticed. If you do. But this is how is where you start when making your web site and trying to get the maximum traffic to your web site.

The old cliche is that "you get what you pay for". This is true with targeted internet traffic too. One of the fastest ways to get targeted traffic to your site is to pay for it. And, there are a lot of ways to pay for traffic.

They also say that "the money is in the list". So, some people buy lists of names to email to and get them to go to their web sites. This is an old direct mailing technique. But unlike direct mailing, buying lists on the internet does not guarantee you that the list is full of targeted traffic candidates. Chances are, the list is just a list. That is, unless you create your own list through opt-in forms on your web sites, and then they're free.

Others place links to their web sites on "link farms" and banners on "banner farms". You've probably seen the ads for these. "Place your banner on our page and we guarantee you 10,000 visitors". These may have worked years ago, but not in modern internet times. Don't waste your money here either.

PAY-PER-CLICK ADS:

Money is best spent where it produces results. I've found that the Google Adwords program and Yahoo's Overture are the best bet for the money. These are the pay-per-click (PPC), ads that you see on the search engine result's pages, (on the right in Google and at the top in grey-blue in Yahoo, MSN, and others). If your pages aren't on top of the free searches, why not have them near the top in Google and the other search engines?

These ads are paid advertisement to get traffic and visitors to your web site. Hopefully, they will make you sales or what ever you are paying for. I recommend that you use Adwords and Overture for driving visitors to your sales pages. Although, many people use them for driving traffic to sites that do Adsense and affiliate marketing.

Regardless ...

Adwords is one of the best ways to get your site noticed right away. Within minutes of putting up your Adwords ad, you are seen by surfers of the internet. Whether people click through is all dependent upon the tiny ad you write. Those that do click through to your site are choosing to because they are interested. This is highly targeted traffic. That's one of the miracles of an Adword campaign. It's dependant upon the ad.

There's a lot of politics when buying Adwords, Which keywords to target. How much to pay. What to write for the ad. All of these are factors. There are books written on this subject. It can get complex but...

It all comes down to a headline and a tiny, two line ad in the end. It's the ad that makes people click. They don't give you much room to write your ad so you must be brief, sweet, and to the point. You also need to make at least two ads for each ad campaign you make. Then watch these two ads to determine which brings more clicks to your sales page or site. Once you have determined the better of the two ads, delete the one that's the worse and make another ad. Test this ad against the one that did the best originally. Keep tweaking your ad by testing and you will soon be bringing in more visitors.

Adwords ads are placed on the search pages based upon the keywords you choose to have them associated with. Be sure to choose your keywords carefully. This can mean the difference between people clicking through to your sales page or not. It also dictates the price you will pay for getting your ad noticed by the most people. You want your ad placement to be in the top five ads. Keywords that are high in demand will cost you more. I've seen some costing more than $10 per click.

When starting out, you might want to look for keywords that are less costly. But realize that these keywords will have less traffic too. Remember, you pay-per-click with these ads and they will cost you. Start small and learn the system. You can judge how well you're doing on your click-throughs and sales conversions to decide if it's working for you. When you start making money with your pay-per-click Adwords, then you can decide if it's worth it to you to target higher traffic keywords.

I should warn you that I spent a lot of money on Adwords with little profit when I first started using this method. It's something you want to approach conservatively until you've experimented with the system and have found out what works.

Pay-per-click traffic is one of the best ways of getting highly targeted traffic to your site that are interested in your information and ready to buy your product. You should consider paying for clicks through Google Adwords or Overture and see if it works for you.

Jim Bruce has been making his own web sites and marketing online since 2000. He brings the expertise of experience to his web site design and online business writings. You can find out more about starting your own web site and online business at http://www.ristvinmarketing.com