If you have ever given any thought to how to maximize the free traffic coming to your website by using search engine optimization techniques, I have a question for you. Have you ever paused to question just why it is that certain websites can position themselves so that they achieve the outstanding search engine results that they do?

That is, imagine that you are searching for a product related to diabetes. So, you punch in 'diabetes' to the Google search box, and see that there are nearly 76 million results shown at the top of the page.

However, the simple fact is that there are only 10 results, out of all those millions shown on the page in front of you. Now, if you imagine that your travel site was to be one of the top 10 results, then it is very easy to see how many thousands of new visitors this could send to your own site.

Even having your website appear on the second page of Google's results would still generate lots of visitors for you, as evidence shows that people who are genuinely searching for quality information will often look at least as far as the second page.

Unfortunately, even these relatively dedicated searchers will probably stop there, and so, if your or site or blog is rated somewhere lower down the top hundred, then you are likely to see very, very few free visitors coming from the search engine results.

Now, take this analogy one stage further and imagine that your site appeared on the first page of every major search engine results for online dating. In this situation, it will be almost impossible not to earn substantial revenues through your site simply because of the number of visitors who were dropping by your site every day.

Indeed, in such a situation, it will be almost impossible not to see a spike in your site earnings and you could view those increases as representing almost pure profit, as the upturn in visitor numbers has been created almost entirely without cost.

No matter what your business, this situation is the dream of anybody trying to sell products or services online.

It is not, however, a vision that is impossible to turn into reality. It does not need any special skills or talents to achieve these kinds of results, nor does it cost money either.

You should, however, avoid wasting money on 'instant success' products that promise to skyrocket your site to top-10 search engine results almost overnight. Do not be tempted to spend your hard earned money unnecessarily in this way.

Unfortunately, in their eagerness to see their website ranked this highly, many marketers will buy these books, and resort to using tricks and underhand tactics to try to achieve this as quickly as possible. Do not do it. It is absolutely not necessary, and doing so could get your website blacklisted or even banned entirely.

If, however, you know the correct techniques to apply then driving free traffic to your web site by using what are known as search engine optimization techniques is not that difficult. Also, because these techniques are completely 'white hat' for the search engines, such methods of web site promotion achieve longer-term results as well.

Put another way, using the correct methods will provide your site with a naturally increasing stream of visitors, but, of course, there can be no guarantee that you always maintain your top-10 position without further efforts.

Until quite recently, search engine optimization was the number one method for driving new visitors to your website without paying for them.

It is fair to say that this is no longer the case, as other traffic generation methods are now equally as effective as search engine optimization tactics. Nevertheless, this is not an excuse to skimp on the efforts necessary to make sure that your site is fully optimized, especially as it should take no more than an hour or two to do so.

And, please, forget any secret formulas all magic systems for search engine optimization. No such thing exists, unfortunately, and, even if they did it is unlikely that it would be worth paying to find out about them. Search engine optimization is a relatively straightforward and simple operation, but it is something that needs to be done properly from the beginning if you seriously hope to achieve sustainable top-10 results with Google, Yahoo or MSN.