Why would you pay for advertising if you could just get it for free? Well, the truth be told, most free advertising methods are mostly alot of hype. You often get what you pay for: nothing! Even the good free methods are often misunderstood & not used to their maximum benefit.

The purpose of this article is to show you a few proven methods of getting quality traffic to your site for free. I also want to show you how to maimize these methods.

Method #1: Link Exchanges

Link exchanges, or swapping links with other sites, has two advantages. First is the traffic that those links will drive to you. Secondly, & even bigger is the improvement in your search engine rankings that inbound links give you. Here, though, I just want to deal with the first, because there us not enough space here to cover the second.

Things you can do to improve traffic from link exchanges

1: Only swap links with high-quality sites
2: Only swap links with relevant sites
3: Swap home page links with a few really good, relevant sites
4: Make your link titles enticing

If you're looking for sites to swap links with, here are some tools that help you locate potential link partners:

http://www.linkalizer.com
http://value-exchange.sitesell.com
http://www.linkmarket.net

Method #2: Exit Traffic Exchange

Here's how an exit exchange works: when a visitor leaves your site, the site of another member of the exchange pops up. Each time that happens you get a credit. Depending on the exchange, you may need from 1-2 credits for your site to pop up on another members site.

The obvious drawback to this method is that the visitor did not choose to go to your website, so it's not a very high-quality visitor. The best way to use these visitors is to direct them to something free on your site.

Method #3: Articles

How does one market with articles? Easy. There are hundreds of website owners & ezine publishers out there looking for quality articles to include on their site or newsletter. You allow them to use your article, as long as they put a link to your site at the end. The easiest way to do this is to submit your article to free article directories, which you can find by searching the web.

Use these three methods, & I guarantee that your site traffic will increase. What's more, it won't have cost you a cent!