Every webmaster dreams of getting so much traffic from the search engines that it overloads the circuits of their web hosting provider's network. Getting your site listed on page one for several relevant keyword phrases on the major search engines is the key to approaching this level of traffic. Getting there requires creative writing skills, diligent effort and a little knowledge about search engine optimization. Read on for some search optimization instructions including five indispensable elements to help your search engine rankings and resulting traffic.

Content is King: - If you have done any research on search engine optimization, you are aware of the need to optimize the content of your web pages. Your content must be optimized for the search engines and have optimal usage of your most important relevant keywords and keyword phrases. As you write user friendly content keep in mind you should be optimizing your pages with phrases that best match your overall theme. This is preferred by the search engine algorithms. You can then focus on link popularity and link quality to help drive traffic. More on those two strategies in a moment.

Keyword Optimization - By optimizing your pages with the phrases that best match the overall theme of your site, it will improve the likelihood that users will find your site when searching for content like yours. You should seek out short multi-word phrases unless your keywords are unique. First, find your optimum keywords and determine their popularity. Also, use your top keyword phrases within your meta tags including your title, description, keyword and h1 through h6 meta tags.

Link Popularity - To increase your traffic, you must increase your link popularity. Link popularity is the number of links on the internet that reference to your website. If you are on a budget, link popularity can generally be increased primarily in two ways. The first method is by exchanging links with other web sites with similar content. The second method is publishing articles online that relate to your site, including a link to your site in the article and then publishing the article on as many article directory sites as possible. Employing both methods is the most effective; however, the latter is extremely effective because it creates multiple one-way links back to your site.

Article Publishing - Most webmasters frequently seek out good site content - remember content is king. They either lack the writing skills or lack the innovation or initiative to develop the content themselves. Webmasters with a budget often hire ghost writers. Those without money look to article directories to obtain some of their content. This demand for content by other webmasters creates an opportunity for you to socialize your site. Writing articles that relate to your content and publishing those articles within article directories ultimately disseminates your link onto other webmaster's sites. Think of the potential here. You are getting a one-way link from every site that posts your article. Top search engine optimization gurus exploit this little known strategy to drive their client web sites to top rankings

Link Quality - Remember, link popularity is important, but link quality may be even more crucial. There are two facets to link quality. First, sites that are pointing to your website ideally must have related content. Search engines will give links from sites with related content more credibility. The second component to link quality is the actual words the other webmaster uses in your link. The goal is to ensure the links pointing back to your website include your most relevant keywords in the link title.

Search engine optimization requires a combination of these five elements. Highly optimizing your website content and obtaining high link popularity from quality links will absolutely strengthen your search engine rankings over time. Of course, as with many things, your level of effort at implementing these elements is directly proportional with the results you can expect to get out.