Getting free traffic from search engines doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, by targeting a lot of low-hanging fruit (keywords that aren’t that hard to rank for), you can drive a nice steady stream of free traffic to your affiliate website. Here’s how to do it in three easy-to-follow steps.

Choose your keyword

Start with a long tail keyword that is easy to rank for. I use Wordtracker for keyword research, but you can use any tool you want. Find a phrase that has 4 or more words with little competition.

To check the competition, use the paid Wordtracker tool or install a plugin called “SEO Quake” in your Firefox browser (both are free). Perform a search for your keyword with the SEO quake plugin enabled. You will see the page rank of each page that is currently ranking along with the age of the domain, the number of inbound links, etc. As long as most of the results on that page have a page rank of 3 or less, you should be able to rank for the term without too much work.

On-Page SEO

Next, it’s time to create some content on your site based on the keyword. Use your term in the title of your new page. If you are building your website using the free WordPress software, your blog post title will also become your title tag. If you’re building a manual HTML site, just make sure you enter a keyword-rich title in the meta section of your page code.

Incorporate your keyword early on in your content. If possible, use them in the first 100 words or so. Depending on the length of your content, you may want to reuse the same keyword or related terms later in the text. The most important thing to remember when doing this is that you are writing for your readers. Top search engine rankings won’t do you much good if you don’t impress your potential customers.

Last but not least, be sure to link to your new content from other pages on your site. Use the keyword as part of the anchor text when possible. If you’re using WordPress, most of this will be done automatically by the software, but feel free to find related old blog posts and link to them for a little extra oomph.

Create some buzz and links

Once your content is ready, there’s just one more thing you need to do… and that’s get the word out about it. Tweet about it, post a link on Facebook, mention your new post to your list, or write and submit an article that links to your site. In other words, start marketing your content.

With the low competition keywords we choose at the outset, it usually doesn’t take much to get them to rank well on search engines. Once you get to page one of Google, you’ll start to see a steady stream of traffic to your affiliate niche website. Rinse and repeat as needed to get more free search engine traffic.