Just market the site like you would a business... yes pay attention to everything that's out here regarding
SEO, search engines will bring a good percentage of the people.
If I had to say one thing that will help both in getting people to the site, keeping them there, getting them to return, AND help your search engine rankings...
CONTENT
Make sure the site is focused on one main topic.
Lots and lots of
unique content (information) about that topic
Unique is major, the same content that everyone else has won't be of any benefit to anyone visiting the site.
Regular updates to the content
Forums to allow site visitors to contribute, and interact and/or
Allow visitors to comment on articles and posts
Longer excerpts from the articles on the front page...
LET PEOPLE SHUT OFF THE MUSIC!!!! That could potentially drive people away
If you create a good, solid, unique site that has a market out there. Your on the way, it should begin to rank well and get some traffic. At that point some paid advertising may help. The idea is to create a site that once someone comes they want to keep coming back, and tell all their friends about it...
No matter what anyone does or says, even the Internet's number one marketing tool is word of mouth!