Keyword marketing is going to be one of the most important skills you will learn if you want to be successful online. As an online business owner, no matter what type of business you have online, your primary job will be to make sure that your website receives enough targeted traffic so you can make money.

Since not everyone who comes to your site is going to make a purchase (though you can increase this number by making sure your website is set up in such as way as to get a lot of conversions) so you need to get a lot of visitors.

Now “a lot” is kind of vague, I know. A lot for one online business may be 1,000 a month but a lot for another might be 20,000 a month. How many visitors you will need in order to make as much money as you want really depends on many factors such as how competitive your niche is, how well your website is laid out, how compelling your sales letter is, the price point of your product, etc.

After a short amount of time you will be able to pinpoint your conversion rates (the number of visitors who actually make a purchase from your site) and from that point on you can determine how much traffic you need to get every month.

In order to get the most out of all your keyword marketing efforts you should rely on several traffic methods. Most online marketing experts agree that you should have anywhere from 3 to 5 successful online traffic methods going at all times.

Now, one word of caution, don’t try to set up 3 – 5 methods of getting traffic all at the same time. If you do you will get overwhelmed. Instead focus on one method first, perfect it and then move on to find another method. Keep doing this until you have all the traffic you need to make all the sales you want to make.

Here are some of the most common methods you can use for keyword marketing and the pros and cons of each:

1. Article marketing. This is a process where you write (or hire someone to write) articles that are optimized with the keywords you’ve gotten for your niche. This method is free and easy to do, but on the downside, you will need a lot of articles in circulation to give you any real traffic.
2. Search Engine Optimization. This method is all about getting the search engines to “see” your website. By placing relevant, targeted keywords on your website in certain areas you will stand out to the search engines. This method is free and fairly easy in it’s simplest form, but it can get quite complicated if you want to go in depth.
3. Pay Per Click. This is the method where you place ads that will appear on the search results page. You’ve no doubt done a search and have seen the ads that appear at the top and down the side of the results page. These ads were paid for by other online marketers. As the name implies you will only pay if someone clicks on your ad.
   The downside to this method is that it involves a fairly complicated method of bidding on keywords.

The amount you may have to pay for a particular keyword can vary due to many factors such as the quality score your ad has been given by the search engines. Yes, if it sounds confusing it is, and since you will be paying while you are learning this method of keyword marketing is better used by those that are already making some money online.