The very best way to drive traffic to your site is by adding your web address to all your stationary. This includes your business card, letterhead, invoices, packing slips, envelopes, product labels, catalogs... everything that your customers will see, should have your address on it.

Everyone knows that search engines are a good way to drive traffic to your site. Not everyone knows that this is actually one of the hardest forms of online advertising. Here are some of the basics to getting your site listed:

Before you Submit
(Things your designer should be aware of)

Not too long ago, search engines like Yahoo would look for "meta tags" on a website to get information about the site. This is actually not very important anymore. But they don't hurt. Here are some other things to keep in mind when creating a page to be found by search engines.
Lots of text content
Search engine friendly links
A good link structure
No cheating. (Google will punish your ranking if you read those online articles of how to cheat Google.)

Get on Google first

Google has a simple form to submit your new web address. Google is by far the most popular search engine and once you get in their database, other search engines will actually find your site through Google.
Google - Click Here

If you want to submit to other search engines, the only other two that really even matter are:
Yahoo - Click Here
MSN - Click Here

Google's "PageRank" technology (responsible for your placement in the search results) relies heavily on how many links from other sites link to yours. This determines the relevance and importance of your website. If you have other websites, they should all link to one another. You can also join link exchanges or ask business partners and affiliates to link to your site.

Just as if you were coming out with a new product or starting a new service, you should advertise your website the same way. Send out postcards to your customers or include a paragraph in your newsletter. Just because your website is on the internet, doesn't mean you have to advertise it on the internet.

Online advertising used to be a hit and miss kind of thing. You would find a website that was similar to your product or company and buy an ad on their site, hoping you get enough traffic to justify the cost of the ad. Although you can still do that today, there are much better options available.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords allows you to write a small text ad that is displayed on similar webpages or in targeted search results. (You can also display Image ads on certain sites.)

With AdWords, you set a daily budget and how much you are willing to pay for each click the ad receives. For example, I can create an ad that will be displayed for searches that contain the keyword: "Web Design." I can specify that I want every click for that keyword to cost me $0.20. I can also specify that my budget is $50/day. This means that my ad has the potential to reach 250 people/day. (Keep in mind--this is 250 people that are actively searching for "Web Design.") But if only 2 people click on my link in a given day, I'll only have to pay Google $0.40.

Yahoo/Overture

Overture is Yahoo's version of AdWords. It works very similar to AdWords and is more or less just as good. It's not a bad idea to split your budget between the two, until you find which one works best for you.

Clickz.com - Search Engine Marketing
Search-Marketing.info - AdWords vs. Overture
Search-Marketing.info - Pay Per Click Search Engines