It is, but it's a lot of work. First you have to be doing something someone else isn't (or else be doing it considerably better) and then you have to go wherever your targeted demographic is hanging out and make them aware of your site and why it's to their advantage to visit. The days of "if you build it, they will come" are long over. Google doesn't want to make sites popular, they want to rank popular sites (h/t sugarrae) so you have to figure out how you are going to make your site popular BEFORE you start getting Google traffic.

Thanks for responding netmeg.

FarmBoy

And even after you have a popular site you might still not get Google Traffic. If I ever get substantial traffic from Google it'll just be a BONUS to the other sources of traffic that I have generated.

I don't know. I suspect it is at least 1,000 times harder than say 18 years ago.

In my case I belonged to a number of forums, my first web site only came about as a better means of explaining complicated technical issues where image files of circuit diagrams was really necessary.

It grew as I answered more technical questions and added more topics. People linked to it, others sent links to friends.

Then someone told Yahoo! They wrote to me telling me it was the site of the month. [I've always suspected the Yahoo person was known to me].

Then the new Google became Yahoo's search engine [about year 2000]. Universities and colleges began linking to me, even including NASA.

I had to become an affiliate of Amazon to earn money to pay for ever increasing band width.

The rest is history.

Later Google AdSense was invented in June, 2003.

Ironically, unlike everyone else? I never really set out to have a web site.

Yes, not sure it's 1,000 times harder but it's exponentially harder than a decade ago. Particularly if you run a reference site like I do. Wikipedia owns the number one SERP on just about everything. After them it's university and government sites, which are almost impossible to dislodge. Luckily I've managed to corner long tail search terms for my niche.

A lot of that answer is based on your definition of "traffic".

If your site is solid gold, such that visitor will tell their friends and those friends will tell their friends, thus creating a vial firestorm? If that answer is not YES, then you'll have to do it the old fashioned way, link by link, user by user...

Is it possible to get traffic to a new site without use of a blog, forum posting, paying for ... something, etc.

Are we talking informational or commerce?

Thanks to everyone who has and is responding.

Are we talking informational or commerce?

Informational.


FarmBoy

Getting traffic to new informational sites is more difficult, for the reasons I've mentioned above. Quality is everything, but even the best quality information will take time to acquire a reasonable amount of traffic and be recognised by Google. Between Wikipedia, .edu and .gov sites and established sites with a long domain history, it's very difficult to get onto the first page of SERPs.

I don't like being pessimistic, but from experience I can assure you that getting traffic to a reference or information site is a waiting game. Even if your content is top shelf, expect to wait several months to 1-2 years.

unfortunately I have to agree with trebuchet unless your information is not that "popular", even for my specialised construction products I sometimes find myself being outranked by totally garbage Wikipedia pages with only 3-4 lines of mostly incorrect information...try those Knowledge Graph!

I don't know about anyone else however I feel that the golden age of many people searching for unlimited information died 3-4 years back, in general these days most people know roughly where to find it consequently they do other others like Facebook, Twitter, Houzz etc.

Yes it is possible, for informational sites anyway. But it does take 18 months plus. It's worth the wait though.

Write every single page with the sole aim of being the best that is available.

If your site is solid gold, such that visitor will tell their friends and those friends will tell their friends, thus creating a vial firestorm? If that answer is not YES, then you'll have to do it the old fashioned way, link by link, user by user...

That seems to be happening to some extent. I have a site with lots of information complete with custom content I have created. People use it as a study guide to prepare for a professional certification exam. I don't sell it, I give the information away. My AdSense links are dispersed therein.
It looks like people are starting to tell others about, traffic is growing, I just I'm just impatiently wishing it would grow faster.

FarmBoy

For what it's worth, just using this calendar year so far?

New Visitors - 34.8%
Returning Visitors - 65.2

My sites are receiving less and less SE traffic. Hardly unusual for many of us.

Bing + Yahoo is your friend for informational traffic.