If you have a website you live in the hope that one day you might ride to the top within the search engine results and receive an uncontrollable flow of keen viewers to your site.

Those readers will come with their pockets bulging, ready to splurge their hard earned cash on your products and turn you into a millionaire. That is the fantasy. That is what you privately dream of even though you know it is unlikely to become a reality.

However, you see this fantasy being touted so regularly that you recognize someone has to be doing it. You want to join the club.

So, the question is, how do you go about reaching the first page of the search rankings when millions of people and organizations are attempting to do the same.

The answer lies in having a long term plan. Try to be thinking first about 6 months, then a year, then 24 months and eventually 5 years. If you begin with a long term plan then you are a step ahead of game.

The competition, the other websites, those after a quick buck... they will be attempting to find a quick fix. They will disappear if they don't get instant results. You on the other hand are in for the long game and know that you will gradually and steadily through a well thought out plan climb to # 1 and set up your empire.

Knowing what works and then recognizing the best way to achieve it is the key to reaching page 1 in the rankings. The thing is, the initial part is the most difficult. Once you are there then you naturally get more links, more comments, more interaction, more reputation, more authority.

You need to push yourself up there in the first place and then you can kick back.

Getting your site in motion is the challenging part. How should you do that? Because if you know that then you can achieve your goals and your desires.

We all know that most likely 80-90% of the ranking of a web page is to do with off site aspects. How can you effect off site factors?

One way is through lots of commenting on other websites and getting some back links and traffic this way. It truly is pretty time consuming though. However, don't be fooled into thinking there is an easy way to long term success. That dream will likely be your undoing.

Another common way to build rank is through forum posting and building a name and getting links and readers through the forums. If you offer sincere advice then this is another great way to slowly build up your website and people who are interested in what you have to say.

I would include those two ideas in your overall plan. However, I believe the best way to get the ball rolling is through article marketing. There are hundreds of article directories that will host your content with a link back to your site.

Gradually you can build up a linking profile with the anchor text you require. Over a few months this will start to affect your ranking position and then suddenly you will end up seeing a few more visitors.

At this stage assuming you have a good website with interesting posts, those visitors will start to comment and link to you and you will continue to climb with no need to write any more articles. It will become a snowball rolling down the mountain. But first you just need to gather a bit of snow into a snowball and give it a push.

Submitting articles is the handful of snow that can begin the avalanche. Give it a go. Sign up to about 10 or 20 article directory sites and see what happens. Just remember that consistency is the secret. Good luck.