If you've purchased any "how to increase website traffic" ebooks lately, you may have been more than disappointed. Often, the techniques are either not feasible, or they fall under the "black hat" category. A number of marketers have also taken to hyping up their informational products to the point of combining unrealistic expectations with such a lack of detail that your money is probably better spent on the slot machines.

Some of these tricks will work, but I'd like to discuss several "white hat" methods that result in lasting traffic. They're not exciting, and they're not kept under lock and key by any guru, but they're being used successfully by many webmasters. In fact, it's a way to future-proof your Web business. These methods will work to produce free traffic for any site you choose for many months and years to come.

Article distribution -- As I'm sure you know, article directory sites provide an excellent backlink to your site. Article marketing is one of the primary website promotion techniques that I use to increase website traffic across all my sites. The benefits to writing articles are many. Your keyword rich articles will often rank high in the search results. These high ranking pages linking back to your site boost your site's listings, often giving you several entries in the top 20 on Google.

In addition to the above, the article directories may also send direct traffic to your site. Since those clicking through to your site have already read your article, they're highly targeted visitors. There's a viral effect that occurs when other websites republish your article with a link back to your site. You can continue to get new backlinks without any further effort and this effect can last for months or years.

Follow these article marketing rules:

1. Write for your visitors (content is king).

2. The number one goal of article marketing is to gain search engine traffic (despite what others may tell you), so also write for the search engines as well.

3. How do you write for the search engines? Create a page on your site using SEO techniques with proper keyword density, headings, and so on. Then, break that page up into a number of articles to submit to the article directories. Focus on the proper keyword density within each article, and create some pages with a focus on related keywords.

4. Always submit unique content whenever possible, rewriting your articles for each directory to which you intend to submit.

5. Create a unique resource box for each article directory.

6. Use the proper anchor text in your links.

7. Create two links back to your site in your resource box. When you first begin your article marketing campaigns, create a link to your home page and a deep link with the anchor text of the keyword for which you want your page to rank. After you have sufficient links to your home page from the article directories, you can deep link twice in every article.

Social media sites -- Placing your content on other sites (including article marketing) is what I call a web-centric approach to success. Many people know about using Digg and Reddit to drive large amounts of traffic, but this is very hit or miss. Others are using Facebook but that is tricky as well. I'm not saying not to use those sites, but a better way to spend the majority of your time might be to use the user generated content sites. Looking at some of the most popular ones, Squidoo, Buzzle, and Hubpages come to mind. There are also a number of up and coming niche related community sites published on the Ning platform and others. All of these let you create valuable backlinks to your site in some way.

Creating content -- The more pages you have on your site, the more PageRank your site can accumulate. See this page for an excellent explanation of PageRank and internal linking and why this is so. A higher PageRank value for your site will get your site spidered more often, keeping more of your pages in Google's index. It also adds to your site's overall authority. More pages also equates to more value for your visitor, more keywords for the search engines to chew on, and additional internal linking opportunities. All of this results in an increase in website traffic. Building a large content site is not only a proven Web business model with staying power, but also adds real value.

Bookmarking the social way -- By placing icons on your site with links to popular social bookmarking sites, you can encourage your visitors to social bookmark your pages. Try adding the code for addthis.com or sharethis.com to your site. With minimal effort, you can significantly increase your backlinks using Getbookmark.com. Don't overlook the value of bookmarking your link partners. If you bookmark sites that link to yours, you can increase their exposure, and improve your search engine ranking at the same time.

These methods each work well on their own. Yes, if you understand simple SEO principles you can simply build content and eventually you'll have a successful site. You can write articles and drive traffic, and you can bookmark and republish your content on various social networks. If you combine these techniques, however, you'll see results much more quickly. While these are not the only methods to increase website traffic, they are safe, effective, and produce lasting results.