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Traffic is what a makes a website and a business. As a result creating traffic for your website increases the amount of potential business that is driven to your site. There are a number of different ways that you can drive traffic to your website. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages but they all usually work well together and provide a good stable foundation for generating traffic. These five programs are PPC, Viral Marketing, Affiliate traffic, Optimization, and press releases. Each one of these covers something a little different and working together form the core of good traffic generation. These options are a variety of free and pay services.

1. PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising: PPC is an advertising model adopted mainly by clicked upon. See the search results that fall in the "sponsored links" column in Google or Yahoo? Those are the PPC advertisements. PPC advertisements come very cheap - in fact, you can make a start with as little as $5! However, you have to carefully research keywords and strategically integrate them in your PPC ads to hook the reader. Also, you need to continuously monitor the performance of your PPC campaign and adjust it accordingly, if required.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): SEO refers to a technique used to increase traffic on a website using organic methods. Website owners research keywords using tools provided by search engines and figure out the most searched-for keywords relevant to their websites. Then they weave in these keywords into their content and programming code (tags), so that when the relevant keywords are searched for, the website immediately appears on the search engine results page.

3. Affiliate Traffic: There are a few important affiliate networks on the Internet, with CJ.com and Linkshare.com being the most prominent. Affiliate networks serve as a meeting place for affiliate merchants and affiliate publishers, and if you are an affiliate merchant you can dramatically increase your traffic by appointing affiliate publishers. What happens is this: An affiliate publisher browses through the merchants registered with the affiliate network and chooses a product that he thinks he can market well - the affiliate network gives him a tracking code that he has to plant on his website - the affiliate publisher publishes his website and gets a commission for every product sold - all the tracking, pay-ins and payouts are handled by the affiliate network.

4. Affiliate traffic is mainly for those that are engaged in affiliate based marketing businesses. They can however provide a good solid base for generating traffic. They are in essence a link directory which provides a sorted listing of websites that deal with particular products or product types and allow people to search through and find what they are looking for.

5. Viral Marketing: The viral marketing technique uses social networking websites (Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, etc.) to increase sales and brand awareness. Viral marketers pass on a subtle sales message by posting niche content - video, audio, games, e-books, pictures, etc. - on social networking sites and then the word spreads out on its own, increasing exposure for the viral marketer's website.

These are the top 5 Internet marketing techniques in vogue today. One word of advice: don't rush into them without understanding the concept first. Good luck!

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