To have traffic, leads and sales into your website you need very basic things:

-Content

-Links to your site

-To capture emails, names and phone numbers

-Patience

Yes, you probably heard of having good content, links and capture emails but not patience.

Let's talk about every point listed to see what the differences are?

+++ Content +++

Good content will make you a star with the search engines and with visitors. Content is what people and search engines are looking for. Always have a lot of content. More is always better, and the more content, articles, blogs, or other types of information the more traffic you will get and the more the search engines will like you.

Now, don't just do it for the search engines! Visitors and prospective customers also like content. Chances are that's what they are looking for when surfing the internet.

+++ Links +++

Content on its own will not do it. You also need other people with good websites linking to your website. Now, changes are that if you have good quality content many people will appreciate it and link to your website.

Now, just having this great content is not enough, you have to let everyone know you have it. You have to communicate to the online world what you have. How to do it? Well, now it's easier than ever. You can do press releases, have a blog, or two or three (I have 4 blogs) and write articles just like this one.

Having links pointing to your website is called "link popularity" and along with content is what search engines like Google and Yahoo look for when listing your website high in their search engine.

+++ Capture Emails +++

This is an easy one. Now that you get some traffic you need to capture the leads. Don't just let traffic come in and out. Capture it.

The best and most popular way to capturing traffic is with a newsletter sign up. You offer visitors a way to get "more content" in your email newsletter in exchange for their name and email.

Once you have their name and email you send your newsletter. Now, you don't have to be a columnist, poet or best selling author to write up a few newsletters once in a while. You can send your newsletter once per month and it does not have to be long. It can be your thoughts, news, a trade show you attended, a problem you have, anything.

I personally have about 20 websites that are just one page websites offering a free newsletter packed with information on Marketing or Distribution or Exporting or something like that. They are successful because I back it with very good, free, content like articles, white papers and case studies.

+++ Patience +++

OK, the last one, Patience. What do I mean? Well, you will not be #1 in Google under 10 key words or categories over night. Maybe not in 3 months. It can take some time.

Now, your strategy has to be short, medium and long term. Your search engine strategy will be medium and long term. Google, Yahoo, and all the other main Search Engines want your articles, blogs and other content to stay in your site for a ong time. Search engines don't want people to take a quick way out. They want you to keep you content and update it.