These days, it’s hard to get a brand new site indexed and listed in the search engines quickly. Getting listed in the search engines can take a long time. You can always use paid advertising to generate traffic, but if you’re just getting started, or don’t have the budget, you need to get free traffic, and you need to get it quickly.

Right now the fastest way to get a site indexed is to start a blog. Blogs seem to get picked up by the  search engines a lot quicker than a traditional web site. What makes it even more effective is that every time you publish new content, you can notify the web that you have new content.

There are sites that you can ping every time you make a post. Do a search and you’ll find plenty of sites that have lists of the best sites to ping. Add this list to your blog, and then every time you make a post, these sites will be pinged, notifying them that you have new content available.

One thing that I do is to link to my “regular” web site from my blog home page. The idea is that once the search engines start showing up, it might help to get my site indexed quickly as well. I’m not sure it works, but it can’t hurt.

You can write articles that have links to sales pages or subscribe pages on your site. Or you can link to affiliate programs. You can also ad adsense ads for an additional way to make some cash.

If you’re using wordpress, there are hundreds of free themes that you can use instead of the included default theme. There are also hundreds of plugins that you can use to customize your site even further.

The way things are with web 2.0 and its popularity it’s almost a necessity for an online business to have a blog. It’s pretty easy to get started. If you don’t have a hosting account you can set up a blog for free. If you do have a hosting account, you can install wordpress for free.

If you’re not having much luck getting your site indexed and listed in the search engines, consider starting a blog. It’s a good addition to your traffic strategy.