Unfortunately, even if your website has wonderful design and useful information, today you have very little chance to become successful if you don't use SEO. Google and other search engines use their own algorithms to determine positions for separate websites and their rank in listings. Your aim is to understand the way system works and optimize your website, making it more attractive for search engines.
There are various ways to increase traffic to your website. You can stick to paid products like Google AdWords, but why don't you try to accumulate free traffic. Online businessmen who just make their first steps in this area often have very limited budget, so costly promoting methods can quickly make you ran out of funds. It's always easier to promote your products or services in case you understand how SEO works.
With the help of SEO you can let search engines know what content is shown at that pages and how relevant it is to searches in that niche. In other words, it's not enough to have content that is well-written. Your content should be relevant and contain keywords that will help to rank it higher.
Search engines use algorithms to determine website popularity. These algorithms are nothing else but mathematical formulas. This means they do not see your design and nice graphics. They operate formulas to calculate page relevancy, examine text on the page and all code. For you this means that proper formatting and accurate establishment of theme can make your website more attractive "in the eyes" of search engine robot.
When robot (also known as spider) crawls your website, it checks internal linking and website navigation. This aspect is also very important as clear structure will be helpful in becoming indexed. Make sure you have titles for all pages (it's better if these titles are "search engine friendly"), right keywords and meta tags.
SEO is changing greatly these days. Earlier it has been a widespread practise to put keywords in your content with 2-3% density and get better ranks from search engines. Today many professionals say this is not enough as contextual relevance is something that is really important and it allows reaching results much faster than simple repetitions of keywords.
Without a doubt today it's much harder to promote your website than, let's say, three-four years ago. However, this doesn't mean that you should consider SEO attempts worthless. Search Engine Optimization always has its positive influence. One more advice - do not just read about SEO. Try the techniques you learn in action, sometimes you need seo audit. This way you can determine whether this or that approach is good for your particular case or no.