Before I begin, I just want you all (newbies especially) to know that building targeted web traffic is by far the most important aspect in internet marketing. To those who are familiar with affiliate blogging or internet marketing, this comes to no surprise. More often we find ourselves desperately trying to build web traffic, siphoning off various sources of people online to just come by our humble website. This article however, is more focused on a 'brief' summary on how any one, including blogger, website owners, webmasters or marketers can build targeted traffic for their website, web page or blog. Let the truth be known, there are two categories of building targeted web traffic. This includes free (unpaid i.e. no money involved) and paid. In this article I'll just focus on the free traffic generation methods. I like it more because it's free. Read on.

Building web traffic for free is often the most sought-after solution. This is due to it's simple nature of providing the most opportunities of success with no investment of money whatsoever. Furthermore, traffic building tactics that are free is extremely cost effective. The only weakness is however, is the fact that building targeted web traffic through free methods are often time consuming. Then again, given the proper leverage applied coupled with a snowball effect, a website can easily gain popularity, regardless of the audience's location , origin and background.

• Article Marketing. By far the oldest (and best) trick in the book, and the hardest to stick to as we have to write articles almost every other day. Even more time consuming if you have to write article contents for both on- and off- your website or blog. However, the effects are long term. And this is what most smart affiliate marketers are looking for. A consistent syndication of articles to the right directories would give way to the first page of Google. This is due to the nature of article submission to directories where a back-link to our website is already in place (in the author's profile). I will write an article on this just to discuss how effective and powerful it is.
• Social Media Marketing. By the far the best method of building targeted web traffic. Social media marketing pages like HubPages, LinkedIn, Squidoo, Gather, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Facebook and even Tumblr are not only gaining popularity, it's simply sought after. The practical nature of these dynamic Web 2.0 pages having to update AND network (linked up) frequently makes it an almost 'biased' favorite in Google. Furthermore, it really helps in spreading the word. I will go into these social media pages one by one. What's for sure is, a place of sharing, discussions, shout-outs and also 'friend add friend' (especially within the same category) would obviously go through indexing more often. Thus, having back links to your website from your social media pages helps it gain more exposure.
• Commenting. An important subset to all that is free. Commenting (when done right) exposes your website or blog in search engines even more. Robots crawling people's blogs or bookmarked articles in Delicious would end up crawling your website (or blog) when you comment them. A simple layman's saying is this, you don't visit other people's work, hardly anyone would even notice yours. So take the time to visit high ranking (and relevant) blogs to leave comments.
• Videos. Like YouTube (which is also social media) is very effective in nature. As web traffic is more responsive towards moving pictures and sound, videos make it great to start discussing a topic, leading your followers to a 'solution' they must buy. Venturing in this field is indeed exciting. Make a few 'how-to' videos and comment on others to get things started and you're well on your way.

• Viral Marketing. Whether it's by email forwarding, re-tweeting on Twitter or even Digging on Digg, viral marketing is by far the fastest way to spread the word. It creates a temporary link to your website to different layers of social networks, making very effective. Viral marketing is like wildfire, except that it benefits your blog or website by having people to coming by and visit. Viral marketing is the best way to go to jump-start an affiliate marketing campaign.
• Directory Submission. There are numerous directories out there for blogs and websites of various categories (depending on your niche) to submit to. What you do is that every time you come across a directory, you submit the web page, website or blog's URL and description. It may not be the most effective, but it does help in rankings by simply having more back links.

So there you have it. Basically those are the top methods of generating free targeted traffic, something you must consider the moment you start a blog or website that you intend to promote. Remember, no web traffic means no money. Period.

Comment me and let me know if I missed out anything.