All your marketing efforts on the Internet will count for nothing if your site fails to generate website traffic in enough quantity. A hot product, great sales copy and snazzy website mean little without traffic, and you will not see any return if there is not a constant stream of targeted traffic to your website.

While an attractive looking website design is very nice and can be appealing to some, the most important thing is to increase website traffic. Spending large sums of cash on a fancy design or a stack of time if you do it yourself is wasted if when it comes to the traffic generation their budget is gone.

If you have budget for advertising, good sales copy which converts well, then Pay Per Click traffic is the best way to go. It is a fast, strategy for immediately attracting targeted traffic which leads to sales.

When it comes to free traffic methods I have to tell you there is no such thing. You either pay to have the work done for you or you trade your time and do it yourself. If you are short on advertising budget, or you prefer the challenge of developing free website traffic online, here are three proven strategies that will increase website traffic without spending a dime.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization or SEO for short can seem confusing to many people, but basic SEO is really pretty easy to implement. I use a check list whenever I put up a new website and go through that list one by one, and tick off each item as it is completed. Almost every time I adjust the list in some way to improve it for the next time. But to get free traffic from the search engines I know a check list is the best way to make sure everything gets done.

Simple search engine optimization strategy can pay off in the long-term. It requires some time and effort on your part and of course some knowledge of what you are doing. If you base your websites on WordPress platform there are many plugins that help you perform this in a just few minutes.

The top search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing. The first thing is to make sure that your on-page SEO is in place, there is loads of information available about this, just do a search in your favorite search engine for advice.

The first thing I do is submit my sitemap to these top three search engines. Then bookmark your website at sites like Digg, Delicious or StumbleUpon, this helps get your site indexed by the search engines. The first time I did this I had a 3,500% increase in traffic in a 24 hour period, so it works. As you keep applying your SEO strategies your site will begin to rank higher. As I said already that you have to be persistent to get real free traffic from search engines. You have to be consistent with your SEO strategies to get free traffic from search engines.

Comment on forums and blogs

Online forums and blogs that have relevance to your website are great places to attract targeted visitors. It is one of the best methods of attracting highly targeted traffic to your website and showcase your product to visitors that you know have some interest in your niche.

To find related forums type in your niche topic inside inverted comma’s and add + forum into Google’s search engine, just like this “classic motorcycles” + forums. You might have to register to use the forum, once inside you will be able to take an active part in the forum discussions. Usually there is an area to introduce yourself. Then read some of the threads that interest you and leave a few comments.

After you have made a few comments set up your signature line within your profile where permitted. Forums often require a different syntax for this, check inside the members area for instructions. Forums are a good source to increase website traffic if you stay active within the forum.

You can also find relevant blogs and leave comments, don’t spam but leave comments on the content contained in the post that adds value to the readers. Again you will be able to leave a link to your website and while these may be ‘no follow’ links on most blogs and don’t pass on any link juice. My tests show that they are recognised by some search engines when checking my link building.

Write articles and submit to the article directories

This is a proven strategy for long-term free traffic. You write an informative article about a subject related to your website. In most article directories you are permitted to put a link back to your website in the resource box at the end of your article. Take full advantage of this and where possible make this a hyperlink using your keyword for the page the link points to.

When someone clicks on your link they will be taken to your webpage and you get direct traffic from the article directories. It is also possible that others will re-publish your article in their newsletter or on their blog, when this happens your author’s box must remain intact. So you will also gain further links from other sites publishing your content, and that can give your site a further boost up the search engine rankings.

These three free traffic methods are medium to long-term traffic strategies, article marketing and forum and blog commenting will help improve your Search Engine Optimization which was where we started our quest. Set yourself a plan to incorporate these traffic strategies into your marketing for the next 30 days and see your site climb up the search engine rankings.