1. Obtain a free tool that provides traffic analyses

Open a free account with Statcounter, which provides comprehensive analyses really easy to interpret. Copy and paste the traffic tracking code onto each of your webpages that are desired to be included in the analyses. This is easy to do with the instructions in the Statcounter account.

2. Use multiple traffic methods

There are different marketing methods out there. Newbies may want to try the free methods as opposed to paid ones. The free methods may take a little time but are usually better methods than paid as they force the marketer to create content The common free marketing methods include, but not limited to, the following:

Blogging

Social bookmarking

Blog commenting

Article marketing

Web directory submissions

Traffic exchanges

Public forum posting

All these methods will generate some traffic to your sites. Factors that may affect the volume of traffic generated include the rankings of the websites providing you the traffic as well as the popularity of your selected topic and how optimized it is with keywords. You want to try enough of these methods to create a meaningful basis for comparison later.

3. Analyze your traffic data

To compare your traffic statistics and pinpoint which source provides you the most traffic, go to your Statcoutner account and pull up its various reports. The most relevant report in this respect is the “Came From” one, which lists all the urls that have referred visitors to your site in a descending order.

If your own blog url generates the most referrals, then you definitely should continue to blog consistently. Also, pay attention to the blog page that initiated the referral. The topic on that particular blog entry may be a clue for high demand of the information.

If you see article directories' urls with high referral numbers, then do more article marketing. Perhaps you will also identify which article directory sends more traffic to your site than others and therefore develop priority in your article marketing effort.

If you see public forum urls referring plenty of traffic, then do more forum posting. Again certain forums may bring more traffic than others, and it is good to know which ones are better sources of traffic in order to focus your effort.

Eventually, when you build up your backlinks, your top referring urls will be the search engines. This is a desirable result, as this means that you have done good work on web SEO and that you have established a decent level of web presence.

In short, the above three steps will help you determine your better sources of traffic gradually. However, as a general rule, a combination of methods to generate traffic is always better than any one particular method.