To become popular your website should be get recommendation or links from other websites. But you cannot write an article and expect to get plenty of links.
You need to think beyond.
You must therefore create what I call usable resources for masses. It does not matter if that resource is already available on other websites. If you put it on your site, you would get your share of users.
Free Content & Tools
Downloadable e-books or softwares are great traffic links & traffic pullers. Online resources like mortgage calculators, page rank checkers, site data analysis are few examples.
Think and brainstorm the usable resources in your niche. There would be plenty of opportunities.
Resource Directory
If you create a directory on your website, people would be eager to submit their websites. Web 2.0 directories, article directories are few examples.
Review Articles
Looking to buy products would always look for review first. Identify the products that cater to your niche and write in honest review.
If people trust your reviews, they would recommend that to many others. An affiliate link in the review is another advantage but you must do it subtly. Focus on dispensing the information.
A similar approach can be taken for event reviews.
Top Lists
Top lists like best 7 software sites, top 10 article directories are also hot topics that would be referenced by others soon.
Humorous content
Everybody likes humor and wants to share it with others. It is a great idea to put humorous content pertaining to your niche.
Polls & Surveys
If you happen to conduct research on certain topics and publish the data, that would be seriously noted and recommended by other people searching for information.
Videos
How to do videos are quite hot among users because they explain things better. It’s easy to create a video on your recorder and upload to your site.
Expert Interviews
A interview of an industry expert is always a crowd puller. But interview should not be there for sake of interviewing.
It must contain useful information to visitors.
Do this repeatedly brainstorm & innovate.
Your traffic & popularity graft would surely rise. 
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Tags: free tools, getting links, linkbait, seo, site popularty, Traffic Generation
Thanks for this great info! I’ll give it a try on my website; hopefully I’ll get some more traffic.
Thomass last blog post..I’m Turning 29 (I Feel Old, But You Can Help)
Post your site to some social bookmarking site, this will make your site popular within days.Have a great day!