I haven’t written on this topic in quite a while (2 years actually, I looked it up) and just mentioned it the other day as a way of getting traffic to a website: Publicity.

IF you can create a buzz about you, your product, service or company, whether through press releases or PR capers or sheer luck, a tidal wave of publicity can send a huge amount of traffic to your website.

HOW you do that is another story. One client of ours had a line of talking dolls and pens. He sent samples to TV and radio shows, newspapers and magazines. People thought they were really cool and he got on national TV multiple times, major market radio stations and newspapers that generated as much as 3,000 visitors a day.

Of course the competition for those kind of venues is intense. So to get that kind of attention you better have something really unique and INTERESTING, or you better have great connections.
This can also occur in slow motion – becoming well known in a particular industry or niche, perhaps over a period of years.

Either way, you will often get an additional benefit from having other websites linking to your website. Search engines consider incoming links to a website as a popularity vote for that website. That can improve your search engine rankings and generate more traffic.