Most businesses can benefit from free online promotion. If you have a limited budget and want drive traffic to your site here are a few simple ways you can promote your business online for free.

Register your site: Make sure you register your site with directories such as Google, Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org). All top SEO and SEM practitioners know that being listed in web directories is critical towards increased site traffic and overall success for your website.

Google Local: It integrates with Google Maps so, Google Local is a great way to get your business to show up on Google searches.

Yahoo Local: Yahoo local is a directory organized by category and geographic location. You can get a basic listing for free. People searching for your business or industry can find your listing.

Links from other sites: Search engine spiders move from site to site across the internet by following hyperlinks. The more high quality and high trafficked sites you have pointing to your site, the more important the search engine will think you are.

Meta tags: Meta tags are hidden HTML directions for Web browsers or search engines. They include important information such as the title of each page, relevant keywords describing site content, and the description of the site that shows up when a search engine returns a search.

Keywords: Consider likely words or phrases that users might type into search engines to find your site. Make sure your content contains those words or phrases, and include them in your title portions of your site and in relevant content.

YellowPages.com: Yellow Pages have a strong brand name and recognition, and are still used by many people today. They offer a few levels of listings, the most basic is free.

Hotfrog: A multi-list building site, active in several countries around the world and you can list your business for free.

LinkedIn: Join LinkedIn and get connected with people you know and make connections with people you don’t through introductions.

Free Classifieds: Placing classified ads does work, but this method of advertising will take some time before you start to see results. You need to continually submit your ad to these sites, so it stays near the top of the pages of these sites.

Writing articles: Writing articles in ezines, newsletters and blogs, is a great free method for sending traffic to your site.

Email Signatures: Add your URL to all of your outgoing email. Give it a mission statement or a strapline, it will help people understand what you do.