We've all seen the signs and many of us have slithered down the slippery slope to full addiction.

So here's how to spot the signs and how to cure it.

The dangerous habit of search engine addiction manifests itself by inputting your keywords into the search engines on a regular basis, in the vain hope your web sites have moved a little bit closer to the coveted top ten results. Often the frequency of this time wasting exercise increases sharply in inverse proportion to your disappointment, until it becomes a daily pavlovian reflex action seamlessly integrated with booting up the computer.

Ever heard that expression, "A watched kettle never boils"? Like all proverbs, there's a great deal of distilled wisdom in that and it certainly applies in this scenario, because I can guarantee the only thing that will go up will be your blood pressure as another day dawns and you are disappointed again because the results have not budged. They may even have gone down!

Just think how much time you waste on this fruitless exercise. After all, you probably check every page of your site to see how each separate keyword phrase has fared. So, let's say you spend an average of seven minutes on this, each time. So if you are "mainlining" on a daily check, you are wasting a half hour or more a week -- a couple of hours a month. And that's not counting the negative ambiance you are creating for yourself, at the start of each day.

So here's how to break that addiction -- right now -- cold turkey.

First you need to understand exactly what your habit is costing you. What's your time worth? If you are aiming for the usual target of a million bucks in a year -- and assuming you are spending 40 hours a week for 50 weeks of the year -- that makes your time worth ($1,000,000 divided by 2000)= $500 an hour. So can you really justify spending $1,000 a month just to see if your web site has gone up a notch?

Now we've established the high cost of your habit, let's divine your real purpose in wanting to be in the top serps. Almost certainly, your prime motive is the hope that getting into the coveted top ten listings for your chosen keyword will suddenly unleash a torrent of free traffic. But, if you are paying $1,000 a month -- with nothing to show -- it's hardly free, is it?

There has to be a better way. There is.

How would you like to shrug off the disappointing burden of checking the search engines and, instead, use that wasted time productively and generate some real solid, free, quality and pretty much immediate traffic to your web site? And here's an unexpected bonus: over time, this will actually help get you on that much dreamed of first search engines results page -- automatically. And you won't have a nervous breakdown waiting for it to happen. Instead, you'll be too busy enjoying the riches that come with plenty of qualified, eager and free traffic.

Here's how to do it. You simply write and post articles -- just like this one. On web sites -- just like this one. If it seems too simple to be effective -- don't be fooled. Just like the wheel, the simplest ideas are invariably the most effective. And if you need more convincing: let me point out virtually every Mr Big internet expert creates and posts articles in this way.