Getting organic traffic - part 1

A question I often see posted in forums is 'how can I drive traffic to my site'. This is a very valid question, but the answer will vary depending on exactly what you are trying to achieve.
If visitor 'stats' is what you need regardless of 'quality' or a targeted 'audience' then you can do traffic exchanges or even 'buy' traffic via a 'pay to click' service. However, if you are looking for visitors who will read your content or interact with your site on a longer-term basis, then 'organic' is the only way to go, there is no quick fix, but there are short-cuts. I should also add that if you are hosting Google contextual adverts (Adsense) on your site, then any non-organic form of gaining traffic is likely to result in your Adsense account being disabled.

I 'innocently' tried traffic exchanging once until Google warned me that my account was in danger of termination - I quickly stopped the traffic exchange, and although Google wouldn't tell me exactly what I had done to contravene the TOS, stopping the traffic exchange seemed to do the trick. Fortunately I had only done it for a few days so no further action was taken. If you are wondering why this would be the case, some ads on adsense are actually paid per 100 or 1000 displays etc... therefore in theory, using a traffic exchange program or 'buying' traffic would result in payments being triggered for these ads even though the traffic was not completely legitimate (organic) traffic.

That's the introduction done, you will have to follow the series to get all my thoughts on getting traffic to your site. I have to admit right at the start that I have never devoted myself to driving huge amounts of traffic to my sites, but nonetheless, over the years I have built up some ideas on things that can bring traffic, and have even occasionally had the odd success here and there...

Others in this series:
Part Two - Having the right content
Part Three - You Must get your head around RSS
Part Four - You must engage with social networks
Part Five - Seeking out traffic
Part Six - Using bookmarking sites