The News Hook
If you happen to be fortunate enough to be on the scene of a major news event, you can use that information to draw a lot of people to your site. If your niece was the first baby born in the New Year, you have a great opportunity to jump on that news story and make the most of it. You can also use the news hook by putting together information about current news that shows it from a new angle, or exposes flaws in the reporting. Anything fresh and new is material for this type of link baiting.

The Contrary Hook
Using link baiting this way can backfire, so be careful to walk the fine line between gaining attention and making enemies. By taking a contrary stance about a popular subject, you can stir up a hornets nest that makes people notice you and link to your site. Whether you are disagreeing with a popular politician, or disliking a great movie, you can touch a nerve with people and draw them to you.

The Resource Hook
Depending on your market, the resource hook can cover a lot of areas. Like useful articles, it can provide tips and information that pertain to your websites areas of expertise. This is a safe and useful way to attract links and get more web traffic. You may be providing some information on your site already. Just be sure that you keep it new and lively, so that it will stay attractive for link baiting.

The Humor Hook
I am always amazed at the way a goofy little web clip can blow up into an international sensation and becomes a part of our collective consciousness because it was kind of funny. We are all looking for something funny. We pay money for people to make us laugh on television, at the movies, in books, and in comedy clubs. What a great way to get people to your site! If you have it in you, put together something witty enough to spread around the internet, gathering links to your website as it goes and giving you more website traffic.

On-line Forums

Take advantage of on-line forums and on-line communities. The great thing about forums and on-line communities is that you can target a specific group that fits the demographic that you want. You can discuss a lot of things about the niche that you are seeking to impress. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and therefore you can be well prepared.
With on-line communities and forums you can build a great reputation for your company. Show them that you know what you are talking about. Wow them with your range of expertise on the subject. Build a reputation and trust with the people in these forums and communities and they will gladly visit your site and make purchases.

Newsletters

You can also make use of newsletters. By writing a newsletter, you keep your name in front of potential customers. Make sure that your newsletter is informative, interesting and personal. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who sign up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic. Provide people with a catalog of your products interspersed with interesting and entertaining articles.

Link Exchanges

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every bit of traffic that goes to the other site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites are in the same or related niches.

Articles

Write articles that could pique the attention of people that may be interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that demonstrate your knowledge and of value or interest to other people is another way to attract the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs. Be sure to circulate your articles widely.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. You can submit your articles by hand – after all, you are trying to do this without spending any money! Or, you can do what I do, and that is use article submission software like Article Submitter to help speed the process.
When people find your articles interesting or useful, there is a good chance that they will be interested in seeing more of what you have written. Be sure to include a link and a brief description of your company with every article to make it easy for readers to go to your site.

Content

Ensure that your site contains a great deal of good content, especially original material that you have written. Search engines search for the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and rank your site based on how they are used.
Hiring a professional content writer is the easiest way to get great content, but it is not a requirement. To save money, you can write your content, as long as you make sure that your content is entertaining as well as containing accurate information.

Search Engine Optimization

Generally, Internet users find what they are looking for by using search engines. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. By optimizing your site with the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs associated with ads.

Blog

Start a Blog. You can set up a blog on one of the free services such as blogspot.com. Be sure to update it frequently and use tag and ping to make the world aware of your blogging.

You can use all of these free methods and many more to drive more traffic to your site. All it takes is a time and effort rather than money. Learn all you can about the methods I’ve mentioned, and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without spending one red cent.

1. Create your own web ring. You will gain highly targeted traffic to your web site and others will link to your site because they’ll want to join the ring. For example, if you were selling products to net marketers, you would want to start an online marketing web ring. You would then draw your target audience.

2. Remind your visitors to promote your web site. Use phrases like: “Refer Our Web Site To A Friend” or “Link To Our Web Site”. Scripts are available online to add code to your site so all they have to do is click a link or button. Offer them incentives for referrals, such as free e-books, reports, software and other informational products. You could also offer them discounts on other products you sell.

3. Blogging can no longer be overlooked as just a fad, either.

A relevent blog entry with a link back to your main site is a surefire way to get indexed by the search engines much quicker than manually submitting your site to Google or MSN.

If your topic is good enough, it can also be picked up by the “blogosphere” and copied to countless blogs around the net (hint: use Pingomatic.com to increase the likelihood of this happening).

4. Along with blogging is “the next great thing”, podcasting.

With the popularity of portable MP3 players, getting your message out there as a free MP3 download, without it obviously being an ad, is another great way to get free targeted traffic to your site. In fact, you can simply record already-existing content that you have and not have to spend any money creating the MP3! It’s yet another channel of distribution, and it’s portable, so people can listen to it even when they’re away from their computers.

5. Get an XML sitemap for your website, then submit it to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. This is a super-easy way to get them to spider your website and get listed faster, and you can even specify which pages to list. Search for xml sitemap and you’ll find free tools to do this.

OK, so I’m putting in one last step, which perhaps should be the first (think of it as a bonus step). Think of a domain name for your web site that’s easy to remember. It should be related to what your business does, sells or provides, such as onlineincomegenerators.com. Ideally you should try to work in some of your main keywords into the name (see below for a site about marketing). If there aren’t any business names available, use your actual birth name (or a variant thereof, perhaps with an initial, since the trend in recent years has been for companies to register last names as domains then resell the first names as subdomains).

Also consider different domains – don’t limit yourself to just .com when there are at least eight other domain extensions to choose from. You could at least brand yourself. Your own name will give you credibility. And don’t necessarily limit yourself to one domain name, either.

Start with these six steps and you’ll be on your way to boosting your website traffic for virtually no cost.