Public relations can be an excellent way to promote your web site for free. If you're filling a particular niche or have a unique business model you are almost guaranteed to get free exposure. Even if you run a plain vanilla web site that isn't hugely unique, you are very likely to be able to get free press.
I recently had a fellow Internet entrepreneur e-mail this to me after his site was mentioned in the New York Times:
"We've done more biz in eleven days than we did in any previous month. The secret to success in this business is PR and quality products."
There you have it, the power of public relations in just two sentences. But don't worry; your site won't need to be mentioned in the New York Times to generate traffic from news articles.
A great place to start is your local newspaper (whether you live in a town of 1,000 people or 1,000,000). Here's a little secret, reporters are ALWAYS looking for articles to write….always.
Think about it. Writing articles is their job. When you do your job would you rather have to start from scratch and do all the hard work yourself or would you prefer to have somebody approach you with the work almost already done?
If you approach a reporter or writer with a well written press release and a willingness to meet or talk with them at their convenience and answer any questions they might have, you've just gone a long way towards assuring you'll get an article written about you.
Start with all your local papers, then move on to regional papers, then all the papers in your state, and finally national papers. You'll soon realize that press draws more press and that the more articles you have written about you the easier it is to get new articles written about you.
It's also important to remember that other web sites are usually looking for content as well. The same idea applies to them as newspapers and is possibly even more relevant to what you are doing.
If you approach a person who runs a content site that is focused on what you are doing with a press release and access to you, it's almost impossible not to get coverage. And the great thing about getting news articles on web sites is readers are already right where you want/need them - right in front of their computer.