Free targeted traffic.  If that’s not your idea of a goldmine, you shouldn’t be in the Internet marketing business.  And getting free targeted traffic has recently become even more powerful thanks to the help of Web 2.0. Before we get to that, let’s first take a quick look at what Web 2.0 is.

Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 as web sites that “let people collaborate and share information online in a new way.”

Essentially, Web 2.0 sites are online communities where people congregate and are encouraged to share information with one another. The information that is shared and passed around by users of these social networks includes pretty much any topic you can think of.

And because there are so many specific niche topics (and markets) that people take interest in, Web 2.0 social networking sites are a marketer’s gold mine.

In other words, these sites present an unprecedented opportunity to have others willingly market your products and services for free.

As a marketer, your objective should be to find fast moving Web 2.0 community-based web sites that allow you to insert your URL. That way, when people review your information and share it with others, your link will get seen (and hopefully clicked on), thus driving highly targeted traffic back to your web site.

To find Web 2.0 web sites that are quickly growing and generating a lot of traffic see Seth Godin’s watch list at http://www.statsaholic.com/sethgodin.

On this page Seth, an exceptional marketer and author, lists top social networking sites ranked in order of popularity and traffic.

What you want to do is review the top sites listed here and find the ones that will allow you to share your URL. Once you have found those you can set up an account and start building your own community with links all pointing back to your main web site.

A great way to increase your page rank and positioning on many social networks is to create multiple user accounts on related topics and then link them all together. Also, be sure to ask your visitor to rank your page. This too will boost you up in the rankings.

To get you started, here are just a few of the fastest moving social networking web sites today…

• Youtube
• Friendster
• Squidoo
• Tagword
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Facebox

Take some time to visit each of these sites and get a feel for how they work. About twenty minutes on each site is all you really need in order to understand how they operate and how they can work for you.

Set up your accounts and begin creating some communities!