Now there's a question! I'll probably blog about it sometime soon as there is no short answer, but I think the following will get you started.

Generally there will be three of four streams of traffic to a web site and it's up to the site owner/webmaster to get the most out of those streams (both getting them to your site and converting the visitor to leads once they get there).

1. Referrals, these will be from other web sites where your site is referenced. Maybe one of the other captains will kick in to let you know some of the better traffic producing sites but typically they will be directories (like ours), fishing report sites, fishing forums (like here), blogs (like ours), etc.

2. Direct Traffic, these visitors would come from word of mouth type promotion. A client has a great experience and calls or emails friends passing along your web site name. Local fishing publications that will include your articles will almost always reference your web site and are great sources to improve this type of traffic.

3. PPC, (Pay Per Click) your ads are located on other web sites or as the sponsored listings in search results. The CPC (cost per click) with the terms that you'll probably be targeting will be very inexpensive and it's generally a good way to get an idea of what terms will be your best revenue producers.

Common PPC programs: Google Adwords, Yahoo Publisher Network, Micorsoft Ad Center, etc.

4. SERPS (Search Engine Results Position), definitely the biggest piece of the pie for web sites that are positioned well in the search results. Generally provides 70%-80% of your web traffic depending on the focus of the site, and it's position in the search results.

It used to be very easy to get well positioned in a short period of time but as the "gamers" (gaming the search engines) get better so do the search engine algorithms and their manual review process.

When seeking natural search engine results there are a bunch of techniques that can help... some long term and some short term and others will work until you get found out, at which time a penalty is assessed. The penalties can be quite severe and sometimes very difficult to get removed.

Before I just run on for a couple of days, let me know if you'd like a site review with specific recommendations for your site.