Lots of hard work.

Probably not the answer you were hoping for. But the reality is that there is no easy way to drive visitors to your website. Even with an unlimited budget to spend on advertising, you would have to do the work required to set up PPC campaigns, create banners, buy links... and the list goes on! And even after you do all this work and spend all your money, there's no guarantee that the visitors will convert to customers.

The key to success when it comes to generating traffic is to test every way possible and track the results. Continue to use whichever methods work, and stop using whichever ones don't.

Get started today with these often overlooked techniques:

1. Submit to online directories.

Web directories generate traffic in several ways. Firstly, potential customers use them to find sites offering what they're looking for. Secondly, they're a great way to improve your website's ranking in the search engines. Google in particular highly values links from other sites.

There are both general and topic specific web directories you can submit to. Search around for the best ones for your business and start submitting!

2. Get links on related websites.

Getting other sites to link to yours is a great way to improve your search engine rankings and drive targeted traffic to your site. The best case scenario is that you'll get one-way links because the content on your site or blog is so good that other webmasters want to tell their visitors about it.

Articles are a great way to get one-way links. The good thing about articles is that you can post them to as many sites as you can, as long as their theme is related to yours. This way, you can have your backlinks spread all over the Internet through the resource box placed at the end of each article. With your articles, you get to reach more consumers that you cannot normally do if your article is only posted on your site.

Another important way to get links is to exchange them with other webmasters. Although this can be time consuming, if you do it properly you'll be rewarded with good quality traffic.

3. Post in forums.

Like web directories, you can find a forum on just about any topic imaginable. Join ones where your target audience hang out and use your signature line to tell them about your site.

Remember though, it's never a good idea to use forums for a hard sell. Instead spend time interacting with other forum members and build your reputation and someone who is knowledgeable in your field. Then when they're looking for what you sell, you'll be the natural choice.