When people first start building websites, the hardest part is usually getting traffic to their site. My first suggestion is to make sure your site is the best it can be. Make sure you have some good content or something unique. When you make a website, make sure you give a users to go there. For example, I have this blog to help web masters like yourself.

1. Search Engine Traffic

Search engine traffic usually the best and most relevant traffic. However, getting it is difficult and often takes alot of time. Some companies spends thousands to improve their rankings, however, I will give you some basic guidlines to help increase your search engine rankings. First of all, make sure your site's URLs are search engine friendly. This means that they contain keywords related to your website or page. If you have a forum, blog or are using some script for your website, there are usually mods to improve this. Another key factor in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is making sure that your site has good link popularity. This means that your site has links to it from other sites. A good way to build up link popularity for free is to submit to dirrectories, this may generate a little traffic as well. Making sure your page have good keyword density is critical. I would suggest going for one or a few keywords and making sure they appear alot in your website and you use h1 and b tags for your keywords will help with your rankings.

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2. Offline Promotion

This is one of the best ways to promote your site. Most likely you know people who are interested in the topic of your website. Telling friends, colleagues and family about your site is a great way to promote it. If you get a small group of people you know to tell others, your site can really take off. This is a good way to promote your site if it is a niche topic. You can also promote your site by going to events related to your topic and telling people about your site in person.

3. Link Exchange

Link exchanges are a great way to get traffic to your site. The best link exchanges are with sites that are in a similar topic, but not exactly the same. Basically, you put a link to someones site on your page, in exchange for the same on their site. It is hard to exchange links if your site has little traffic, but you can always offer the other person things such as more time or better placement. The best place to find link exchange requests and to post for requests are on webmaster forums, such as http://www.digitalpoint.com.

4. Social Bookmarking Sites

With certain web sites, you can generate alot of traffic by using social bookmarking site is StumbleUpon. If you have a good site, you can submit it to stumbleupon by writting a review of it. People who use the StumbleUpon toolbar can give it a thumbs up and your site will start getting traffic from Stumbleupon. Also, I suggest that you submit your articles to Digg. To get people to give your site a thumbs up on Stumbleupon or to Digg your site, I suggest visiting webmaster forums where people exchange such services.

5. Posting on forums

If your site is just starting out, a good way to get new visitors is by making quality posts on forums related to your topic. Put your website along with a little description of it in your signature. Then, make some quality posts, for example, make posts that really help people out or spark alot of discussion. The traffic wont be enormous, but is a good way to get some new visitors into your site. If you really help someone, they will often check out your signature.