One of the toughest and most asked questions I get very often is how to get traffic to your site. Their are a lot of different methods and some of the can cost a small fortune, but there are also some very good free methods to drive traffic to your site IF you go about it the right way.

Traffic is the lifeblood of your web site, just like it is with every business, and if you don’t get enough traffic to the site it will die a slow painful death. We don’t want that to happen now do we?

Let’s go over some traffic generating ideas so you can have a better grasp of what you need to do.

One of the more popular ways are through traffic exchange programs. These programs are widely used by people with various success. Many times it depends on a lot of different factors that you have no control over. The best part about traffic exchanges is you will get some free traffic to your site which can only help.

Another free traffic method is using articles to drive it their. Writing articles and submitting to article directories will drive traffic to your site and it’s a great free way that people are using more today than ever before. The biggest advantage of this method is it keeps working as most of the articles are picked up by search engines and can stay on for years thus giving you traffic month after month. There was only one drawback to articles and that is the fact that if the same article is published on many site, some will eventually be delisted as duplicates. This is how my X Factor Article Submission service beats the problem because I have developed a method to submits hundreds of articles on the same subject, but in many unique formats. I will be opening this service early in 2008

Social network sites are the newest craze and a great way to drive traffic to your sites. Social networking is where you meet people like yourself and you can exchange ideas about growing your business. The best part about social networking is the relationships that are built through these organizations. These are great traffic builders for your business.

Using splash pages and a free gift to drive traffic to your sites. A splash page can be a fancy design, or even a generic page, that let’s you give away a free gift in exchange for their email address and name. These pages can also redirect these customers to your web site once they sign up. Sure they may only sign up for the free gift, but you now have an email address to market to and they’re also taken to your web site. You win twice in this method.

Blogs, like this one, are probably the hottest thing right now in Internet marketing and it gives you a way to get tons of free traffic to your site in various ways. Blogs are basic mini web sites which are usually based on a subject or just a way for people to express their opinions.

Some free traffic methods that still work well, but have been overlooked are free classified ads. Free classified ads are still used on the Internet and, contrary to popular belief, they do work. People visit them and actually see what people have to offer. Classified ads don’t pull like they once did, but don’t kid yourself, they are still a valuable resource.

I’ve saved the last two till last because they are my favorite.

Signature files are usually what is attached below your signature, be it in an email or a post on the Internet. These signature files will get clicked on and as a result you get free traffic from them.

The last, and in my opinion one of the best ways is to visit lots of forums. Forums let you create a signature file and most will let you post free ads to drive even more traffic to your web site. Each day new forums are put up and it doesn’t look like that will stop anytime soon. Forums are still one of the best free traffic methods that exist today.

All the above methods generate different results in different situations, so it’s best to test them all and see what works best for your situation.