This is a brainstorm, not necessarily an ordered list of how to bring traffic to your website. It's designed to get you thinking. I'm sure you can come up with a better list!
- Build backlinks by setting up accounts at different websites that allow you to put up links to your website
- Comment on other people's blogs
- Submit your website to Directories
- Write articles pointing back to your website and submit them to article directories (called article marketing)
- Join a link exchange
- Set up a PPC campaign and pay for your traffic
- Submit useful posts and replies on forums
- Put your signature with a link back to your website on all your email correspondence
- Run classified ads
- Sell physical products on Amazon and eBay for a nominal fee. On that physical product, put your links back to your site
- Submit your posts to “social media” sites like digg, stumble, reddit, twitter (or better yet, get your friends and business partners to do it)
- Blog about your site. Make sure an RSS feed is available and prominently displayed on your blog.
- Squidoo
- Guest blog
- Hold a contest
- Give something away. Within the freebie, place links back to your site
- Advertise in physical media like newspapers, magazines, flyers, business cards
- Put video and images on your blogs and website. Search engines like Google love this!
- Do interviews on radio and television
- Attend fund raisers and hand out business materials
- Advertise in ezines
- Create “viral” reports
- Write and distribute press releases
- Make sure your website is optimized for search engines (SEO)
- Add “tell a friend” scripts to your blogs
- Answer questions at Yahoo Answers
- Write a useful post at Google Knol
That's it for now. Let's just say that you have to focus on a few of these and let the others rest for a bit. In order of importance, I'd say the SEO is near the top of the list. Then build backlinks by following the first 5 bullets. Set up a free blog or two and refer visitors of that blog to your website.