What are some of the best ways to drive more traffic to a web site?

Recently this question was posted to the Dreamsites.com web forums. I replyed to this persons post with the following information I thought would be helpful for everyone.

His Posted Question: What are some of the best ways to drive more traffic to a web site? Everyone talks about search engine optimization but to do it right it it could be cost prohibitive. Are there other ways?

My Answer: SEO while still needed for you site is a very small piece of the website marketing puzzle. The hottest thing today to promote yourself and your site is by having an internet blog, and then posting articles on it. Using the blog, you can generate link traffic back to your website with every post you make. I am doing a full seminar on blogs locally, but I will be post a audio/video version on the web soon.

Besides blogs it is suggested that join and take part in online communities on sites such as yahoo, google, or livejounal.com. Your participation along with a link back to your site (part of your signature) will increase traffic to your site. I suggest targeting those communities that are related closely to whatever you are selling. For example if you were selling corvettes, you might want to be a part of discussions on digitalcorvettes.com a forum for corvette fans.

Website marketing is a never ending process, but can be done by anyone who is willing to spend a little time on the computer.

I will post more tips and tricks soon as this is the first post to my new marketing blog.

Jeff Davis
Internet Guru
Dreamsites.com - Helping you make your website better