Generating traffic to your website is imperative if you intend to make money online. This is usually the main challenge for a new web business. In this article I will cover 7 simple steps to get started in generating targeted traffic to your website:

1. Ensure that you have high quality content:
The first thing that you need to do is to have good quality content. In the World Wide Web, content is king!!!
The only way to have a flow of targeted traffic visiting you website daily is by having relevant content. Search engines love good strong content.
Commit the time and effort to create strong engaging content. Make this a high priority; this is important to your successful website.

2. Social Network Marketing:
This is by far the best way in my opinion to generate targeted traffic to your website, if done right of course. Social Networks are growing like wild fire and have a thriving market for every niche. There are many social networks and more still to come, get involved immediately.

3. Go for affiliates:
Affiliate programs mean that you will hire individuals to promote your website or products. In exchange, you will have to pay them a certain percentage of your profits, their commissions. There are many ways to pay your affiliates and you can choose any way that suits you. This is great way to delegate and leverage the marketing of your website.

4. Submitting to directories:
In order to make your website more visible, submit it to popular directories like Open Directory Project, Zeal and others. You can also submit to directories which have themes so that their topics are relevant to your website. You can also go for small directories which can get hold of a lot of in bound links for you.

5. Go for a bit of video marketing:
Make a video promoting your website and then post it on any of the popular video websites. Post it on YouTube, Break.com or even on various social networking sites. Try to make an interesting video which will be appreciated by your target audience. If they like your video, they will circulate it and that would be a great kind of publicity for your website. Make it a point to include the URL of your website in that video.

6. Create free reports, articles and blog post:
Create enticing reports, blog posts and articles with relevant content to your business. A great way to promote your website is to add a link of your website frequently to these. Once you write the report, give it away for free to different website owners, article directories, blog sites, etc. Once these go viral you can ensure that you will get a great deal of traffic.

7. Posting free ads:
Post advertisements in places where you are sure to get traffic. Craigslist is a great place to post a free ad; forums are also great for this. Be creative let your ads stand out, use images, colors, etc.