One of the biggest keys to success for your online business, products or affiliate sites is finding your traffic.  The reason I say finding your traffic is because often times people think that doing nothing will bring great results.

While there are many ways to gain traffic I want to share some easy to use tips today for using articles to find traffic sources.  While this technique isn’t new or some earth shattering revelation…. many people are not using this technique.

For this example we are going to assume you’re in the dog drooming niche.

OK, the idea we are going to use here is to get your article viewed by more people.  First, if you’re unsure what to write about in your niche you’ll want to do some research.

FIRST:  Go to www.ezinearticles.com

#1.  Type your keywords in the search bar.

#2.  Browse the articles in the database.

Simply click on one of the articles that comes up (or all of them if you’d like) to see how many searches they are getting.  If you can find several articles getting a decent amount of article views chances you’ll want to look at what keyword phrases they are using.  For instance if your main keywords are Dog Grooming but you see an article for Dog Grooming Kits Online you might want to figure out if they are getting traffic for Dog Grooming Kits instead.

So how do you do that?

Simple.  Open up your browser to www.google.com and check.  Most of the traffic to articles comes from natural search engine rankings (usually).

Inside Google simply type in "dog grooming".  If that doesn’t return any results for an Ezine Article then type in Dog Grooming Kits.  If that brings up the keyword results then you know that they are ranking for those keywords.

Next, simply write a similar article (do not copy them or write anything too similar but use similar keywords).  I like to write most of my articles at 500 words or more but I’ve found hundreds of barely over 300 words ranking well (like top 5) on Google.

Make sure your resource box has links going back to your site where you want people to either click you affiliate links or adsense banners.

That’s it!  Pretty simple and easy.

Let’s look at a couple other things though.  I like to give my articles a boost by writing an additional article and pointing it from other article directories to article I want to rank high in Google.  I simply write another similar article that and add it to a few other top directories (www.goarticles.com , www.articlealley.com, www.buzzle.com – will do).  Inside the resource box from that article I put a link with slightly varied anchor text pointing back to that original ezine article I wrote.  This will give you some extra juice in Google.

What I like tyo do is fire up my copy of Niche Research Commando and check that original article I want to compete with (the article we originally found in the search engine "dog grooming kits")

Inside Niche research Commando I just type in the keywords  (dog grooming kits) and then start and within as few seconds I’ll be able to see all the backlinks going into that article.  This will allow me to decide if I need to promote more links pointing into my article or just a few.  If they have no backlinks I’ll usually just put only one article into 3-4 other article directories with a link going back to my article I want to rank for.

It typically doesn’t take long for Google to pick up my article and for it to start climbing the ranks in the search engine.

I’ll probably do a follow up to this post later this week as this is just the surface.  in fact, there is so much more you can do here.  But, for most people reading this, this is a great start to getting more results from your articles.

Let’s recap what to do.

#1.  Search ezinearticles.com for you niche keywords.

#2.  Look to see if the articles are getting views.

#3.  Find a few getting the most views.

#4.  Determine if that article is ranking for the main keywords or some other keywords.

#5.  Search Google to determine.

#6.  Write a similar article.  (includes links to your site in the resource box).

#7.  If you own Niche Research Commando fire it up and check for backlinks. (optional)

#8.  If article has low backlinks you’ll only need 1-2 articles written.

#9.  Write the additional articles and upload them to some high PR article sites (shown above.)

#10. Make sure the article points back to your article that you want to rank.  (Vary the anchor text – don’t just use one phrase).

#11. Repeat if you want to do more.  (  You should want more    )

This works great for users of www.nicheblitzkrieg.com and www.megaclassifiedmillions.com as well.

You can do this in any niche and it’s an easy way to generate some more traffic to your site or affiliate sites.  Leave you comments, questions or any further ideas below.  Already using this technique?  Tell us your results.