Web site traffic is something almost everyone who maintains a web site wants to get more of. This is especially true when you want to make money from your web site. What many people don't understand about the internet though is that web site traffic happens only when you have a good plan and you follow the plan.

One way to get more traffic to your web site is through increasing the number of links that point back to your web site. These links are commonly referred to as backlinks. Increasing backlinks to your web site may seem like a black art to you. If you have spent any time trying to get people to link back to your web site, you'll understand what a pain in the neck it is to get people to be willing to link to your web site. It is time consuming, back breaking (from sitting in your chair in front of the computer) work. The question you may have asked yourself was whether there is a better way. I'm here to tell you that there is.

Why are backlinks so important? All major search engines today put some or all of their importance on how many links are pointing to your web site. Some of the factors they consider include the link text of the link pointing back to your site. This is the text between the HTML anchor tag. Usually blue and underlined. Another factor includes where on the page that the link is found. Experts recognize that the best place to have a link back to your site is from the middle of a page of relevant content that matches your web site.

It didn't always matter where the link was on the other person's web site page but due to the practice of people buying links to influence their web site rankings, there has been effort by search engines like Google to discount links that are near advertisements or partner sections of pages.

So bottom line is that you need a text link that has your site's keywords (search phrase) in it, it found in the content or close to it and is preferably one way (doesn't require you having to link back to the other site.) Where could you find this kind of linking opportunity? Two words. Article Marketing.

Sites to get you started include Ezinearticles.com, Articlecity.com, Goarticles.com, Ideamarketers.com and Isnare.com. These sites will walk you through the process of marketing via articles.

Joe Duchesne is webmaster for Screamertraffic.com which is a directory of information on internet traffic. Reprint freely as long as you keep the live keyword rich link in this resource box with the article.