True Story : My first site www.lifestyledecision.com didn't get any traffic from Search engines for 2 whole month. I changed the layout, added articles but nothing seems to be working for my site. I started on Link exchanges. Still No bright results.

There were times when I decided to close this site and create another one from scratch. But I was determined to find out the Reason and Methods with which I can get traffic.

Well I am going to give you all that I learnt over 1 yr time.

First tip
Design: Take care of Site design. It doesn't matter what other says. Simple is the best. Just learnt from google.com . complexity in the Simplicity. Make sure You have Simple design, not too much flashy graphics, Don't put too many Affiliate logos or links. Use proper site map. Do not use Heavy Images.

Second Tip
Content: Content is another option for bringing out the Free traffic for your site. Though in these days If I don't have at least 75-100 pages of content I don't launch my sites. But in niche sites, you should have at least 40-50 pages of content.

If you feel like starting with 20 content pages then do it so, But keep adding 1-2 articles daily till your site has at least 300 pages. My site has currently 428 articles in almost 1 yr.

Third Tip:
Search Engine Optimization : I don't care what people says about basic SEO. But I learnt my lesson from school of hard knocks. I use basic SEO tips to optmize my webpages at least. Just remember You have Yahoo and MSN to bring Free Traffic too. These are the Engines that will gladly take basic SEO. You should put keywords in Title, Description and In outgoing/incoming links too. Learn more from other article on Basic SEO

Fourth Tip:
Site Map : These days google have allowed you to submit your whole site map. In fact you can create XML site maps for your site which'll get updated itself whenever you change or update your sites and Submit to Google. There are many Free tools which does far better job than paid ones. I suggest you to take a look into www.google.com/sitemap

Fifth Tip:
Links Exchange : You can use good Keywords for Link exchange partners. Find out partners for link exchange. I say opt for 2-3 partner per week for next 6 months. This will help you a lot

Sixth Tip:
Article Submission: Write and submit your articles to Free webdirectories like
www.goarticles.com
www.ezinearitcles.com
If you need full list of article directories then check out my page Article Directories

Seventh Tip:
Submit to free directories.
Submit your Site to Free Direcotries. There are many sites where you can submit your websites. Just make sure all of your links are working.