While there are many traffic specialists clutching along their tools and tactics, they come with a hefty price. If your start-up budget is tight and you would rather not spend a dime in driving traffic to your site, then roll up your sleeves and start working.
The following ways would not be easy if you are a newcomer in internet business. But after a while you'll get to master these things and start applying these in you subsequent sites:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Don't be terrified by this word. SEO is simply a technique that you implement on your site to rank higher in the search engines. As you will know, the search engine is the number one place where people would start if they want some information in the internet. Some of the SEO techniques you can implement right away to get amazing results are the following:
a) The title tag of each page of you site should contain your chosen keyword. You will notice the title tag appearing on the uppermost part of your browser. You'll need a little HTML knowledge to do this.
b) Your chosen keyword should be on the first paragraph of your page.
c) The image alt tags should contain your keyword.
d) The file names of each page of your site should also have your chosen keyword.
2. Submit articles to article directories. This is one of the most effective ways in getting traffic to your site. By writing then submitting articles with a link that points back to your website, you are guaranteed long term traffic. There are hundreds of article directories out there waiting for your submission. While your article stays in the directories, they get picked up by other sites hungry for the article you have written. Provided that your article stays in the directories that you submit to and in the sites that picked them up, people can find it and the likelihood of getting traffic to your website is markedly increased. A few of the article sites where you can submit to are ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, ideamarketers.com, articlecity.com and articlesfactory.com.
3. Make a blog and link it to your site. Postings made at Blogger are easily picked up by Google. Once you update your blog, the search engines are alerted. Every time fresh content is in your blog, the search engines will notice it and come indexing. Putting your main keywords as part of your fresh content will help you rank higher in the search engines. Blogging is very easy to do and it adds pages to your site which search engines love. Also, blogs are free at blogger.com and wordpress.com. There are other free blogging sites but these two are the most popular.
The first 3 ways above can be implemented free but this fourth way would cost you some dollars. But remember this last one is extremely important.
4) Register your own domain name with your keyword in it. For example, if you site is about car parts, the best domain name would be carparts.com. If your site is about baby care, then babycare.com is an excellent choice. Registration of domain names is a lot cheaper today than a couple of years ago. At godaddy.com the annual fee is only $9.20. Studies have shown that search engines are more likely to put your site at the top if your domain name matches the search phrase. Also remember that non hyphenated domain names rank higher than those separated by hyphens. For example, mydomain.com is better than my-domain.com.
These four cheap but extremely effective ways of getting thousands of visitors to your website are guaranteed to work not only for the short term but also for the long haul. Start doing these things and see your site in the first page of the search engines in a matter of weeks.