There is nothing worse than a pretty web site with no traffic. Okay, that is not entirely true. A flashy, expensive website with no traffic is probably worse - especially if you are the one who paid for it.

Of course, if you have the resources to support an expensive pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you can start driving traffic to your site in no time. (In fact, it is not a bad idea to take this approach in the short term, because it does take time to rank well organically).

That said, here are three simple ways you can start using content to drive highly-targeted traffic to your site:

1.) Add fresh, relevant keyword-rich content to your site. Often. Long gone are the days when a static website of 5 or so pages would do the trick. Set a specific goal of how many pages or blog posts you wish to create per week and block out time on your weekly calendar to do it. I promise it won't get done if you don't make a commitment to do it.

Also, don't write a word until you've done your keyword research. No sense ranking #1 for a term or phrase no one wants!

2.) Write informative,unique and keyword-rich articles related to your industry. Then, submit them to the top article directories. I used to do this manually - but found the process way too tedious and time-consuming. (I now use a service to do it for me - and find the results are well worth the money I spend). Just be sure you write a killer resource box to accompany each article you submit, however. No point in doing all this work if no one is able (or willing) to click through back to your site.

3.) Send out an eNewsletter on a regular basis. Even better, set up an autoresponder series so you don't have to stress out about coming up with new content every week.

Email marketing can be highly effective, so you should start building your list as soon as you can. A couple things to keep in mind before you get started: 1.) make sure you get permission from recipients before you send it (otherwise you're sending spam) and 2.) make sure the content is valuable and relevant to the reader. As always, you want to think about what they are interested in vs. what you have to sell.

There are a lot of other ways to leverage fresh content to drive targeted traffic to you site, including online press releases and guess blogging. However, the three listed here form the foundation of a solid Content Marketing campaign - and offer a great place to start!