Traffic is the lifeblood of any successful online enterprise. A site that experiences a steady flow of traffic is one that is well designed, provides meaningful content, products, or services, and offers something that is unique and attractive to the vast majority of online visitors. Once these basic factors have been taken care of, more strategic forms of traffic building can be employed to the benefit of the company in question. Traffic building can be accomplished through a variety of different methods, and some are more effective than others.

Conventional traffic building methods include article marketing, directory submission, link building, and search engine optimization.

Article marketing consists of submitting short articles (300-600 words in length) to a variety of different article directories. The articles that are submitted should contain relevant keywords or keyword phrases that are associated with the content of the site the articles are meant to refer to. The content of each article does not necessarily have to focus on the site in question, but should at least indirectly refer to its marketable content. Article marketing ties in with link building in that an appropriate link to the host web site can be placed strategically at the end of each submitted article, in an attempt to lure in new visitors and increase traffic. Link building is performed in a variety of ways, from forum posting to blogroll link exchanges to email marketing. The more links back to a specific site, the more traffic it will receive as time progresses.

Directory submission involves submitting the address of a particular web site to online site directories. These directories typically store thousands of web site addresses on their servers, complete with descriptions and reviews of their content. They can help to generate third party traffic in a direct and effective way.

Large quantities of traffic and various back links will increase the chance that popular search engines will rank sites higher, which will result in more traffic as well as increased popularity.