If you have a blog, website or run an online business, you know how important traffic is. Thereby you need to be on top of your game to help get visitors to your site and retain the old ones. There are so many ways to increase website traffic with some of them being absolutely FREE.
Here Are 31 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website
1. Add new content
One of the best ways to actually increase traffic especially free one is to increase the number of pages on your website.
One thing that you must understand today is contrary to popular belief; Google does not rank websites but pages.
The more pages you have on your website for Google to index, the more likely you are to grow your traffic.
Make the website as interesting as possible to increase your click through rate (CTR).
Obviously you don’t want to have content that people never read.
Make it interesting, educative and more likely to be shared.
Look for new categories you can add as well as content that target your industry specific keywords.
2. Optimize your old content
It not all the time that you need to create new content to increase website traffic.
As a digital marketer, one of my responsibilities is to optimize the content already on the site for search engines.
And how do you optimize old content? By adding the specific keywords that you want to rank for.
3. New product launch
This is an excellent way attracting new users to your website.
And besides growing traffic, with a new product, you will be making money as well.
4. Social media marketing
It’s not enough to just create great content and hope to God that people will just land on your website.
Social media has made us all publishers and this is a great way to leverage free traffic.
Use the social media channels you have to promote your content.
And it doesn’t matter if you are just starting out, even if you have a 100 social medi followers, thats still traffic right?
Each social media channel has its own audience and so you need to pay attention to what you post on each though.
Related: 5 Free Ways To Grow Your Facebook Followers Today
5. Headlines that sell
When you do a search on Google, what compels you to click on one website and not the other even though the content is all the same?
Power headlines have the potential of increasing your CTR therefore driving more traffic to your website.
Your content title should be enough to sell you and make people click.
Of course, make sure that the title is a reflection of the content inside otherwise you will have a very bad case of increased bounce rates.
6. On page SEO
If you think that SEO does not work think again.
If you want free traffic then optimizing your content for search engines should be at the tip of your fingers.
And Google has made it easy with tools like Google Trends, Analytics and Seach Console.
With these tools you know exactly what people want to read instead of just creating content out of the blue.
On page SEO also means, creating the necessary links. Interlinking your content and having external links linking to other authority websites.
7. Target long tail keywords
When digital marketing was still new, pages could rank for single words like ‘marketing’
Then came the phrase keywords, like marketing tips. And now we are in the era of long tail keywords.
The behavior of people on the internet has changed and nowadays people tend to search for specific things like ‘how to create an effective marketing campaign’
So forget two phrase keywords if you want to rank high and drive traffic to your site.
Start targeting industry long tail keywords instead.
8. Create cornerstone content
What is corner stone content? This is content that is well optimized with the specific keywords and that other content links to.
For instance, let’s say you have a very well optimized article on SEO. And now every other content you write links to that specific article.
In the and what you are telling Google is that that content is important and people find it important and Google will have no choice but to rank you high.
9. Guest blogging
What best way to increase your website traffic that to leverage what others have?
Find a reputable website within you niche that accepts guest posts and start writing for them.
There will be a link to your website hence a genius way of driving some of their traffic to your own site.
10. Target referral traffic
If ‘begging’ other websites for traffic is too hard, why not write content that people just want to link to?
Great content will never go un noticed.
Become an authority figure in your chosen niche.
11. Publish on LinkedIn
Unlike in the past when LinkedIn used to be just a platform to find jobs and network, it has become a publishing platform in its own way.
Ensure that you publish on LinkedIn everyday while linking that content to your website.
Bacause of the professional nature of LinkedIn, you will be driving worthy traffic to your site.
12. Implement Schema
Collaboration between Google, Bing, Yahoo and Russia’s Yandex created a centralized home on the web – schema.org to standardize structured mark up.
Schema is a micro data that makes it easy for search engines to interpret information on your web pages so as to display the relevant search results for users.
Implementing schema will not directly lead to more website traffic but it will make it easy for search engines to rank you increasing your CTR.
13. Internal links
Ranking on page one for Google does not only mean linking to other websites’ content and forgetting your own.
When writing content, link also to other pages on your site that have similar content.
That way, you give search engines more information to craw your site and postion you at first page.
14. Quote and interview authority figures
To increase website traffic means visitors finding your content reliable.
This means quoting facts and interviewing key industry players.
15. Email marketing
Even with social media, email still remains that most powerful marketing tool.
Most traffic on websites originates from email and the mistake that most websites make is neglect this powerful marketing tool.
Just be careful not to be all over people’s inboxes, otherwise they will unsubscribe from your emails without a second thought.
16. Make your site responsive
90% of internet users browse with their mobile phones.
Creating a site that is responsive will not only get you traffic but will reduce your bounce rate.
17. Ensure your site loads fast
The attention span of people on the internet is less than 6 seconds.
This means that as a user if your site is taking too long to load I will just hit the return button and move on to another website.
18. Create a sense of community on your site
Nowadays visitors on the web want to have their opinion heard and to weigh in on certain issues.
As a website owner you need to create a little community of your own by ensuring that visitors can comment on your site as well as social media pages.
19. Be heard in the comments
Don’t be that kind of blogger who never answers people’s questions.
If someone asks a question in the comment section, kindly be a doll and promptly to reply to them.
This way, people are more likely to come back to your site if they know you ‘exist’
20. Keep an eye on your analytics
Google analytics provides accurate data on your popular pages to the behavior and demographics of your site visitors.
By keeping a close eye on analytics, you can use that data to determine the posts and pages that are most popular as well as the where, how and when you get most traffic.
21. Leverage the power of aggregator sites
Aggregator sites are very popular sources of referral traffic.
Some just pick up your content while for some you have to pay a small amount for them to drive traffic to your site.
Read More: 5 Best Ways To Actually Increase Your Website Traffic Without SEO
22. Create other forms of content
Don’t just create text based content but go a step further to create videos, webinars, info graphics and the likes.
People don’t just want to read content and you can break the monotony by packaging your content in other forms.
23. Keep tabs on your competition
You can only go far if you know who your competitors are.
After that analyze their content, what are they not doing?
For instance, one of the best ways to increase website traffic is to do something different.
You may be writing about the same content but then you will take another angle that is more interesting.
For example, let’s take an article like, how Google Analytics has boosted business. You could then take that content and come up with your own like how Google Analytics is bad for business.
See, the same content or even keywords but tackled in a different way.
24. Create webinars
You will be surprised at how much people want to learn today.
Webinars coupled with an effective social media campaign are a great way fo earning free traffic to your website.
25. Accepting guest posts
Just like creating content for other websites, accepting as well is a great way of driving traffic to your site.
For SEO purposes, you need guest posts and as long as they are not your direct competition, why not let them contribute to you website?
Chances are, they will want to market themselves for the content they write for you and this means just sitting down and waiting for traffic to come to you.
26. Create info graphics that tell a story
This generates traffic the same way as creating webinars.
Creating interesting info graphics will lead to more traffic to your website not to mention retaining what you already have.
27. Attend conferences & events
No matter what industry you are in, chances are that there will always be conferences that you can attend.
Attending them is a great way of establishing yourself as an authority figure. And it gets even better if you get to talk during such events.
28. Mix up your content
If there was a magic formula to successful content marketing, this blog post would probably not exist.
However, we have to work with what we have. Content marketing is all about experimenting.
Trying different things with your content be it length or format will give you a better understanding of what is working and what is not.
29. Paid Advertisements
As we mentioned, Google ranks pages and not websites.
This means optimizing your content so that search engines can index it.
One way you can use to drive traffic to your website is through paid advertisements – whether on Google or social media.
Just ensure that you have a very good strategy and a use for the traffic that you will get.
Don’t just pay for traffic and not get something in return or what we simply call Return on Investment (ROI).
30. Get listed on online directories and review sites
Getting listed is another great way of increasing traffic to your website.
Add your business on these online directories with a link to your website.
31. Use hash tags on social media
Using trending hash tags when posting on social media will not only make our content visible to thousands of online users but will drive significant traffic to your website.
Twitter is very good with this.
Whatever is trending that day, jump on the band wagon. Start twitting with that hash tag and you will be surprised at how much traffic a single hash tag can leverage.
In a nutshell,
How to increase traffic to your website is dependent on several factors like your content, how fast your site loads and the keywords you want to rank for. If you are looking to increase your site traffic why not first strive to gain free traffic and then you can pay for it later on if you have to.
Tale Weaver 