There I was, my website on the first page of Google, number 8, out of over a million sites listed under my main key phrase. Fantastic.

What was even more amazing was I hadnt yet done all the little tricks I had been told you need to do in order to get a high ranking. So, gullible fool that I am, I prodded and poked, I twisted and turned and put in meta tags and yada yada and .my site dropped off the edge into the abyss.
So I unpoked and I unprodded and I untwisted and unturned and I got it back to number thirty, which is not bad, but still not what the SEO gurus would call terrific.

What was I to do? Then back in the dark recesses of my memory it came to me. Article Marketing. Now I am the sort of person who doesnt like to spend money if I dont have to, so I did some research. I found that most of my web traffic was not coming from search engines, but from my articles that had been posted around various places on the internet.

So, what have I learned? (I believe very strongly that if you dont learn from reflecting on your experiences why would you bother having the jolly thing in the first place?) Two points:

(1) Search Engines are fickle. If you spend your time and energy trying to get a high ranking on the any of the search engines you will be very disappointed. If youre up for a challenge, go for it. Just dont expect consistent traffic to your website. And if you have a commercial site, you rely on traffic coming to your site and buying from you, or your affiliate program.

(2) Article marketing is definitely the way to go. Its cheap, provided youre prepared to put the effort in. I like cheap. I coined the phrase aglet marketing. An aglet is the little metal top on the end of shoestring, so aglet marketing is about achieving your desired results with nothing more than the tip of shoe string. If you want to sit back and have people come to you, then I hope you have an enormous budget. But if you are prepared to put in some effort, it can be very effective.

Graham Hunt, Thinker-in-Residence for The Ultimate Success Center has a new website particularly dedicated to issues related to self esteem. Go to http://www.self-esteem-articles.com