registering website

Hi,
Was wondering what the best procedures were for increasing the flow of traffic to your website once it is complete. Does it happen naturally over time or are there decent services to help boost site awareness?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Submit your site to search engines and directories. Spread the word about your site. One of the best ways to advertise is by "word of mouth." Over time hopefully traffic should increase. Either that or it will stagnate and die. Make sure to keep current content on the site, and the site should have something that will make people want to come back.

these are my suggestions from the many many things i have read all over the internet in various articles, forums, etc. i am too lazy to practice most of these things, so i cannot say that i am a good example.

the most important thing is to have content that people want to see, and content that is constantly being updated.. so they want to see it again and again. your content is the one thing that will bring people back, and encourage people to tell others about your site. give the visitor something to draw them back in. like making the visitor a part of your site.. let them contribute somehow.. forums are a great way of doing this.

have an attractive design that doesn't annoy people. bad layout and design (especially ugly, or annoying) will make visitors not even look at your content when they arrive. they might tell other people about your site, but not for the right reasons . most likely they won't even remember your site, because they hit the back button before anything could be burned into their minds. i also would like to suggest that you find a good layout and stick with it. you can tweak things and modify things here and there.. but don't make big changes.. especially frequent ones.

get listed in the search engines. despite what anybody says, i suggest just using one of those addme style automatic submission things the first time. and don't submit your website to any search engines again for several months. spamming search engines with submissions really upsets them, and they will remove your listing. don't bother with any advice or suggestions you read anywhere about optimising your meta tags.. these days, most search engines ignore meta tags. do use keywords as part of your content, where it seems natural to do so. don't try to be sneaky or use keywords in some crafty manner (search engines don't like that either) after 6 months or so of being in the search engines, and you've some good content up.. apply for a listing in the Yahoo directories.

make a name for yourself on the web as a nice friendly person who knows what they are talking about.

register with forums related to your website topic, and be an active member. be friendly, and obey forum rules. in your posts, do not suggest that people visit your site, do not ask people to visit your site. this is annoying and makes it look like your a self-absorbed freak who only registered with the forums to increase your traffic. whether or not that is true, you don't have to make it obvious. instead, put a link to your site in your sig. that's it. never mention your site again.. unless it's in good form. it also increases your rating on the search engines, because now this forum has a link to your site.

i can suggest the same thing regarding guestbooks. especially guestbooks that give posters the option to include a link to their website. guestbooks are funny things. in most cases the only people who read them are the person who has the guestbook, and (your reason for posting in them) search engines. once again.. do not talk about your site in your post to the guestbook.. and only post in guestbooks for sites that you actually looked at. leave a sincere and friendly post in their guestbook. why do this? because it increases your rating on the search engines (because they now see that this site links to yours) which is beautiful.

so, to summarise:

have good content that is always being updated
have a good design and layout that is consistent.
make improvements, not major reconstruction
if a part of the site is not yet done, don't let the visitor go there
get listed in the search engines, without weird tricks
make a name for yourself as a friendly knowledgable person
make sure you include a link to your site where ever you can, without being rude about it