50 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Increase Web Traffic

[Sta.rtUp.biz]

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic. Everyone will link to you saying your wrong

6. Create free profiles on Ning Social Networks like this one and others like Sta.rtUp.biz

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

See The Rest of the 50 Ways to Increase Web Traffic (11-50)

[Aurelijus Valeiša]

I would not agree with 8th point. It's okey to display 404 page. It's even better to display it, because user and/or search engine should know they reached a page that does not exist.
However, apache generated 404 of course is not a good option. There are many ways, how not to lose users who reached 404 page. One the ways would be adding information that page doesn't exists. Also adding links back to where they came, linking to the main page and adding search field would be very usefull to the user.

[Sta.rtUp.biz]

Good point. I changed my 404 page to have a few links to popular articles and videos instead of forwarding to the home page.