Search Engine Optimization or what’s popularly known as SEO is still a powerful tool for driving more visitors to your site, but it’s also very competitive, frustrating at times, and can often be unpredictable. Getting the search engines, especially Google to place or rank your pages can take a lot of work and be time consuming. On top of that, nothing will guarantee that your pages won’t drop in rank or placement at any point in time. Obviously, I do not intend for you to give up your efforts with ranking in the search engines, but I do suggest using every medium at your disposal.

Of course, there are other suitable ways that can help get the attention of people so they can visit your website. Here are just a few options that can help get your creative mind thinking in the right direction

Utilizing social networks

This is something that I don’t need to express, but you should already be promoting your sites on Facebook and Twitter, but in doing so, don’t forget to look at some of the second-tier networks such as Pinterest and Instagram (a decent image with the right tag can perform miracles) and Tumblr. At the same time, you might also be able to benefit from some small networks which might be specific to your niche, something like Bodyspace for instance would be perfect, especially if you have or are promoting bodybuilding/fitness material. These sites provide you with more targeted traffic and at the same time are not quite as competitive. Also good are question and answer sites such as Yahoo Answers, Vark, Quora etc.

Paid advertising

A good majority of bloggers and webmasters will avoid paying for their marketing at any cost which rules out most paid advertising. This could be somewhat of a downside however, particularly if the site has been well monetized, in which case this can actually be a very profitable strategy that allows you to easily scale your business and your profits. And don’t forget, paid advertising or PPC can happen with other sites like Facebook so don’t think that AdWords is the only source and depending on your niche other networks may suit you better.

Marketing with email

Email marketing is something a lot of bloggers also tend to put off. That’s because it can take a lot of time before you see results from it. But keep in mind that many of the biggest internet marketers in the world say that email marketing is the most important tool for them. Why? Because it gives you a direct line of communication with your audience, and one that no one can take away from you. Even if Google de-indexes you and Facebook deletes your account, you still have email marketing!

Promoting offline

Finally, don’t forget that you can still generate a lot of traffic offline. That might mean hanging posters or handing out fliers (especially effective if you have a locally based business site), or it might just mean chatting to people and exchanging business cards. Sometimes the old methods are the still the best!

And, as a final note, there are countless ways of generating traffic to your website… you just need to be creative in your efforts. SEO is probably the most effective and the best option for generating organic traffic. The point is, don’t rely on one source of traffic for all your sites traffic!