How to get or increase traffic to your website, blog, or article is a question most often asked of the successful internet entrepreneurs. The answers are as varied as the question. Not every technique is going to work in the same capacity for every online venture. The trick is in experimentation.

In this guide, I'm going to give several techniques that are working well for me as an article publisher. They also work very well for bloggers and webmasters. The best part is that each of these techniques is absolutely free. You can do each of these techniques on your own, which is very good if you are on a budget and experimenting. The bad thing is it takes a lot of effort on your part to implement these techniques.

Once you find a technique, or techniques that is working for you, then be repetitive and continue on until you achieve the online presence you are seeking. If it's within your budget, and or time is important, then you might want to out-source your promoting efforts to a commercial site. I can direct you to some very helpful services that are relatively inexpensive.

In this hub, I wrote on how to use online press releases to promote your self.  I have several links on there to take you to sites where you can write up a small press release and have them submitted all over the web.

I use mainly Prolog.com because it's easy and allows an active hyperlink inside the body of the release.  This helps in 2 ways, first it gets your headline in front of thousands who may be looking for what you have, second it gets you at least 1 backlink for your website.  The more people that pick up and bookmark your press release, the more backlinks you get.

Backlinks, if you don't know, tell the search engines that your site has more importance than those with less backlinks and ranks your site higher. If you're not concerned with backlinks then the more press releases you send out the more potential traffic you can get to your site.

There are literally hundreds of online services that allow you to send out press releases, but many do not allow an active hyperlink within the body of the release. Now there is still some usefulness to using press releases without the hyperlink especially if you are promoting a blog or website. It's very important to find a PR service that allows active hyperlinks if your sole purpose is to promote individual articles.

This technique makes use of RSS feeds. If you don't know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a web feed that is used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video. An RSS feed is usually is a summary which points to the URL with the full content and contains metadata such as dates, and keywords.

Now for the good stuff. Go to:

copy and paste your sites URL in the search box and it will tell you if your site has an RSS feed. If it does, it will give you the link for it, if it does not, it will give you the code to place on your site to give it a feed.

After you get the feed you go to:

register for an account and submit your RSS feed. It will go out to all the feed syndication sites including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. This puts a headline in the feed readers all over the internet and can potentially drive traffic to your site and get you more bookmarks. I'm in the process of writing another article that will have dozens of RSS feed distributors listed so bookmark this hub or go to my profile and Subscribe to my RSS feed.

The next thing you should do is write up a short article about your niche, some sort of benefit to get someone to click on the hyperlink to your site that you will place in the resource box, then submit the article to an article directory like http://www.articledashboard.com/ and http://www.articledirectory.com/ or my own directory at 411article.com

There are tons of article directories online and the more you submit to the more backlinks you get and the higher you go in the search engine results. You can find tons of directories and submit them yourself or there are sites that will charge you a few cents for each submission and do it for you. It all depends on how much time you have to devote to marketing.

When writing articles for submission to directories, concentrate on you niche. Make use of affiliate marketing and make multiple versions of the same content. Keep them original and short, between 300 and 450 words. Use the resource box to hold your link pointing to your website, blog or article. Give your audience a taste and a call for action, a reason to click on your link to get more information.

Okay, just a few more short ideas. Go to google and do a blog search for topics related to your site, go to the blogs, at least 20, read a post and then submit a comment with a link pointing to your site. Just make sure the comment is relevant to the topic.  Also, you want to make sure that you're not commenting too much on the free blog URL's.  Seek out blogs with unique URL's.  If you have too many backlinks coming from xyz.blogspot.com its not going to be as good as backlinks coming from 123.com.

Most blogs are moderated by the owner and they may not post the comment until it's approved..most approve, That's 20 more backlinks. An additional benefit is after reading all the postes relevant to your niche, you may gain some more insight that will help you develop your brand.

Now, go to Craigslist.org and Backpage.com and post a free ad. Craigslist is one of the top 20 websites in the United States so getting an ad on that site makes a lot of sense. Of course you cannot be spammy. Those sites are moderated by the users and if you are spammy you may get your account flagged and banned. Make sure you read each sites Terms of Service (TOS) to find out what you can and cannot do.

You may want to do the ad using a little HTML then make it a clickable image. To do that, make up a small ad with pictures and descriptions then save the screenshot as an image then when you upload the ad just upload the image with an html tag that points to your site. You can also do a Google search for Craigslist Templates which can be very handy and be used on Backpage also.

Nobody can claim they have a sure fire method of generating unlimited targeted traffic. If they do they're trying to sell you snake oil. The truth is, generating targeted traffic takes time and patience.

I use these methods and I get the results comparable to my efforts. For every hub I write:

• I submit a press release on prolog.com and create a Google Base page (for more info on Google Base check out this hub). EDIT: Google Base is no longer an option, they have changed their format and can no longer be used to promote articles.
• I find the RSS feed for my hub and submit it to feedmountain.com.
• I write 5 - 10 unique articles relevant to my hub and submit them to article directories.
• I search for at least 20 relevant blogs, read the posts and make relevant comments, leaving a link back to my hub.
• I write an ad and post it on craigslist and backpage, in my geographical area.

Easy peasy! though it does take several hours to do this which is why I usually wait until the weekend when I have the time to commit to it.

If you need more backlinks then check out my hubs on The Easiest Ways to get Backlinks and my Guide to Backlinks.  And if that is not enough, and it never is, then you might want to consider the offer I am making on my new blog where you can purchase 100 High PR 5 - 9 Backlinks for $15.  Check it out right here.