13 Proven Free Traffic Generating Methods to Promote Your Website or Blog

Do you want to make money with your web site? Do you want to show the world your knowledge or artistic talents? Then you need a steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, no one will read your articles, click on your ads or buy your products. Sales is a game of numbers. The more people go to your site, the greater chance you have of generating income.

With the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways to jumpstart the flow of traffic leading to your web site. Although popular web sites usually have a monumental budget for marketing and advertising, some of us who start a new web site as a hobby or as a way to bring in a bit of extra income might not have access to such elaborate resources.

Well, here's a little secret: you don't have to spend a single penny to access 13 of the best free marketing methods for promoting your web site! All you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You must have the drive and perseverance to invest some of your time doing the work and research necessary to generate more traffic for your site. Some of the following ideas are "set and forget", meaning once you have put them in place, they will keep driving visitors to your website again and again, and some of them you will need to actively promote, every week or every day in order to get the most out of them.

Honestly, I'm not saying that you will get 1,000 unique visitors overnight; getting traffic to your web site for free takes time and effort. By using the methods outlined in this article, you most likely will get a good amount of traffic to you site. Be patient and see your traffic gradually increasing over time.

Here are 13 proven methods to increase the flow of traffic to your website:

1. Submit Your Website To Search Engines
This might seem obvious to many, but it is often overlooked as one of the major ways to bring traffic to your website. No need to submit your site to 100 search engines or directories--like some of the site submission services would like you to believe--as long as you submit your site to the main players. (At the time of writing this article, submitting your site to Google, yahoo and the Open Directory Project should allow you to cover 60-80% of all web searches done on the internet since many search engines take their sources from these providers).

2. Content is King
This is THE most important of all the methods listed here for getting long-term high-volume traffic to your website. Combined with all other methods listed in this article, the traffic to your website will soar to unprecedented new heights if on your site you provide useful, interesting or intriguing content; articles, images, photos, tips, tricks, guides, how-to's, ebooks, products, reviews. People will actually do some of the work for you and link to it from their own sites or blogs. They will tell their friends about it and they'll even put links to specific content on your site on forums or social bookmarking sites (which have a HUGE potential of becoming a high frequency traffic source).

3. SEO - The Art of Search Engine Optimization
To maximize your traffic potential and get targeted traffic, you will want to use at least the most basic of search engine optimization methods: make the page title, filename, H1 tag and body text contain your most important keywords or key phrases. Make it easier for people to find your site. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs of pay-per-click or other types of paid advertising.

4. Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing also known as Viral Advertising is a technique used to build the public awareness of a product or company. The idea is to use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product. You make it so outrageous, funny or weird that people almost feel obliged to pass it on to their friends and co-workers, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because of its relatively low cost. Its main and foremost advantage is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic of potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

5. Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites like Digg.com, del.icio.us, Slash Dot (/.), can get you a MASSIVE flow of traffic to your site if your story makes it to the front page of these sites. Warning: If you are planning on submitting one of your stories or videos to one of these sites, it would be wise to make sure that your site can handle thousands of request in a short amount of time otherwise it might go down. The effect has often been compared to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, as many many requests made on a short amount of time floods the server which crashes, or it uses up all your bandwidth for the month. For more info on how you can plan ahead, do a web search on "how to survive slashdotting" or "how to survive a digg digg.com".

6. Article Marketing
Write articles that could pique the attention of people and provide good advice and knowledge and then submit them to free article directories.

This can get you traffic from 3 sources: 1) the article directory itself; as people search for articles, they might read yours and there is a good chance that they will follow the link to your site to know more about the author, 2) someone that really liked your article might use it on their own site (if you allow it) and some of their users might click through to your site from there, 3) by posting articles on your site, you are providing valuable relevant content which people look for on the search engines.

There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias on the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. You will also find dozens of article directories which provide free content for website and ezine owners that will accept that you submit your articles for free. Use these resources for content and traffic.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site, something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guides to the subject or niche your site has.
Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

By having all those directories pointing back to your own site, most likely this will increase your site ranking.

7. Ezines, Newsletters and Autoresponders
Newsletters are really useful to provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting articles. If you do a good job of providing valuable content, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people sign up for your newsletter, the more people are likely to go to your site, increasing your traffic.

This may sound like hard work because of the quantity of articles you may need to build a newsletter, but it doesn't have to be so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in your newsletter. This will provide free advertising for them as well. Find out if they have a newsletter themselves; they might agree to publish some of your articles in it.
Find a good ezine service or an autoresponder and you will be on your way to growing your list of faithful followers.

8. Reciprocal Links
Another great idea is trading links with other sites. This is a sure and proven method. Rarely do you see a site where there are no links to other sites. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with other site owners to produce more public awareness about their sites. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster, and then all the traffic that goes to that site could potentially visit your site as well.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or similar content that complements the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic. See this as providing your visitors with additional content.

The efforts put forth by you and your link partner are doubly beneficial because both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with other sites, the more traffic could be expected.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic to your website very cheaply.

9. Forums, Blogs, and Social Networking Sites
Join discussions on online forums and blogs by sharing your two cents on a theme related to your site and let them see how knowledgeable you are on the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable source of information and products.
If the forum allows it, you can put a link to your website in your signature. From then on, every post you make becomes a free advertisement! Social Networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or PeopleString can offer some creative new ways to get traffic, but I won't go into details for now.

10. Traffic Exchanges
A traffic exchange is simply a type of website that allows you to get traffic sent to your website in exchange for viewing other people's. Most traffic exchange sites give you a ratio of 1:1 (where for every page you view you get 1 view to your site) or 2:1. The people using traffic exchanges will view your site for only 20-30 seconds so you need a very focused landing page (or splash page) for it to be effective.

There is a lot of information out there in internetland on how to create an effective landing page, but basically you need a simple well designed attention grabbing page, with no distracting links, with only one main goal or specific objective (sale, newsletter sign up, website sign up, etc.).

11. Write a Press Release
Release your writing prowess and start up a press release that advertises your site! This is a free website promotion tactic that you can do anytime. Type a brief paragraph or two and email it to your friends, colleagues, internet e-zines, newspapers and other media and massive traffic will come to you pronto! Many of the article directories also accept press releases, so be sure to check them out.

12. Turn your email signature into an advertisement
Most email programs or online services offer you a way to create and display your own signature every time you write a new message (or reply to one). Simply add your URL (the internet address of your site or blog) and a little descriptive or enticing phrase. If you have a business, be sure to add your URL to your letterheads and business cards as well.

13. Word of Mouth
Word of mouth is probably the oldest marketing method. Just let the whole world know about your site! Insert your website, its URL and features in daily conversations and let the good news spread from one person to another!

All of these methods will drive more traffic to your site for free. It only takes a bit of effort and time. Work on increasing your website traffic every day or once a week. Learn all you can about these methods and before you know it, you will have a site with a traffic flow that you can be proud of and that you can profit from.