Only about a decade ago, it did not take much effort to drive traffic to a website. In the good old days, all you had to do to drive traffic to your site was put metatags on your home page and send your address to free search engines and popular directories. Today, however, it has become so demanding to drive traffic that a whole new industry of Search Engine Optimization experts has been created to meet this need.

Here, then, are 10 ways to drive traffic to your website:

1. Start your online business out in the right way. It is not enough to simply throw together a site based on your interests. You have to do more than hope to sell products to people who like the same things you do. You must research various niches, build a marketing plan, and design either a mini site or a content site. In addition, you have to have to design a site that has professional graphics, well-written copy, and clean navigation. If your site is built around well-researched keywords, placed in the right places, search engines spiders will begin to index your page.

2. Work constantly on branding your business through social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. Your marketing message, as well as any colours, slogans, images, logos, or graphics used to represent your company, should be consistent.

3. Create a blog around your theme, where you can update your readers on your latest tips and strategies. Search engines love blogs because they are dynamic with constantly updated content. Once you get a lot of organic traffic to your blog, redirect your readers, via a link, to your website.

4. Post original content on your website and offer free products to build trust and create a positive relationship. This content should be fresh, unique, and personalized to meet your reader's needs. Help readers achieve goals, solve problems, and get better results.

5. Create a newsletter. Send it out at regular intervals to stay in touch with readers and reminding them about your products and services.

6. Try article marketing. Either write your own articles or outsource the writing. Then post these to article directories that have a high readership. You'll drive traffic back to your website through your author's resource box, which will have a link.

7. Learn how to do Google Pay Per Click ads to drive traffic based on targeted keywords.

8. Master video marketing. Create your own videos and post them to video-sharing websites like YouTube, which is visited by hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.

9. Exchange links with other website owners to drive traffic to each other's websites.

10. Join forums and use a signature file to link back to your website. Don't spam the forums with sales pitches, but try to ask relevant questions and offer useful answers.