People reach your website in one of 3 ways:

1. Directly - by typing the URL of your site into the browser bar, which is why having a short and relevant domain name that people can easily remember is so important

2. Through search engine result pages(SERP's), or

3. By following a link from another website.

In most cases people come through search engine results, and when it comes to getting that traffic, you have people who are forever searching for loopholes and new ways to trick search engines into sending them visitors. If they succeed they get traffic for a short while and when the loophole is inevitably closed, they lose all the traffic. Than it's back to square one and searching for another fad. This method is exhausting, ultimately self-defeating and at best gives you only temporary results.

Here's an alternative: build permanent, qualified and free traffic to your website build on solid foundations in a quick, easy and totally straightforward way by creating mini-nets.

A mini-net (sometimes called a link wheel or a SEO wheel) is a collection of several web properties (sites, pages, comments) linked together with the purpose of supporting your main site by providing valuable content in the places where your target audience is likely to spend time.

The added benefit of creating mini-nets is obtaining external links leading back to your main site, which results in a tremendous boost in the search engine rankings. Why are external one-way links to your site important? Because in deciding how to rank your site, search engines see these external links as votes of confidence. The more you have the higher your ranking is.

To boost the popularity of their sites, most people engage in exchanging links, posting comments in forums or paying others to link to them, which is rather time-consuming and costly.

With mini-nets you eliminate this time-wasting and expensive process and quickly build yourself the pages linking back to your site. This is a simple, but highly effective way to rank highly in search engines and get loads of free traffic.

The key here is not to spam the search engine, but provide valuable content by looking at the same problem, or the same solution to a problem, from a variety of different angles. For example, if you message is "quit smoking", you can talk about it purely from the cost perspective, or go into health risks, or talk about smoking becoming increasingly socially unacceptable.

Here are some important pointers for creating mini-nets:

1. Where links are coming from matters

There are many places that allow you to create content, but where the link is coming from is very important. Not all of the websites are created equal.

2. Give value, don't self-promote

If all you do is link back to your website, visitors and search engines will see this as very self-promoting. The trick is to provide valuable content whereby you link to other people's sites too. So, only some of the links are back to your main site; some links are to sites linking to your main site; and some of the links are to other people's pages. Remember, give value, don't self-promote.

3. Start small, then expand

The more competitive your keyword is, the bigger the mini-net you need, but it's best to start with just few properties and grow your mini-net over time.

4. Vary your anchor keywords

When linking back to your site it is important not to use the same keyword or a key-phrase all the time. You need different anchor text with all of the variants of your keywords. Search engines look at that anchor text to decide on the relevance of your website. Don't use "click here" as your anchor text because you don't want to rank high for the phrase "click here" - instead, use the relevant keywords that people type in the search engine box to find your business.

For example, if your site helps people to quit smoking, use keywords like "how to quit smoking", "stop smoking", "kick the smoking habit", "quit smoking".