When do you ask a marketer or businessman what is the most important thing for them in the world? They’ll mostly say “getting more customers.” But have you wondered what comes after customers in the business wish list?
Well, it’s TRAFFIC.
Every online entrepreneur or businessman run after getting more traffic on your website, offer, or social media pages. That’s because more traffic = more sales & conversion.
So, in today’s blog post, I’ll walk you through 25 exceptional ways by which you can drive traffic to your website for free.
So, let’s start.
- Paid ads
When it comes to increasing website traffic, Paid ads will always be on top of my list. Running a paid ad on Google or any other social media site like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can help you increase your website traffic in a quick time.
Here’s what Google ads look like.
You need to create a paid advertising strategy in line with your business Google. Also, you must only focus on getting traffic but conversions too. More conversion will give you better returns.
Also, you need to carefully understand the pros and cons of each social media channel as each platform is different from others.
If you are looking forward to getting more traffic as well as sales, then you need to target commercially intended keywords. Of course, these keywords will be having high competition and high CPC as well.
So, plan your budget and strategy accordingly.
- Social media
More than 3 billion people across the world use social media. Today, people not only use social media to make new friends or to connect with family but also for marketing and advertising.
Hence, even you can think of leveraging social media for driving traffic to your website. On social media, you can create your own community of loyal followers and re-publish your content in the community.
This will help you in getting tons of traffic on your site.
Apart from this, you can also promote your offers, new product announcement, and services on social media communities.
If you are a B2B product company then you can think of leveraging visually based social media sites like Pinterest and Instagram.
- Mix it up
When it comes to increasing websites there is no magic rule or formula for it. You need to try your hands on everything right from creating a blog post to re-publishing content to leveraging paid ads.
Initially, you need to try your hands on everything.
In my personal opinion, you should start by publishing a blog post more frequently. According to research done by Hubspot, business blogging leads to 55% of more traffic on a website.
Hence, you should focus on creating stunning blog posts on regular basis. Blogging will not only help you in getting more traffic but more leads, conversions and sales as well.
Even Google loves blog posts and gives preference to a website that frequently publishes more content.
- Create catchy headlines
The next on the list of 25 ways to increase website traffic is catchy headlines.
Headlines are the most important part of your content. Without having a compelling headline, even the top-notch content created by you will go unread. Hence, try to create headlines that grab the attention of users and entice them to click on your content.
For example;
BuzzFeed, top-rated internet news and media website creates really stunning headlines. In fact, content writers at BuzzFeed create 20 and analyze 20+ headlines for each post before finalizing anyone.
Take a look at headlines created by BuzzFeed.
Such kinds of headlines attract users attention and get more clicks on the content.
- Leverage on-page SEO
Whether you agree or not, on-page is extremely important. In fact, on-page SEO contributes 30% in increasing the ranking of the website on Google SERP. Hence, you can’t ignore on-page SEO.
Within on-page SEO, the following are the factors that you need to focus on:
URLs: URLs appear on top of the website and help search engine bots in better crawl and navigate your website. You need to create short, precise, and sweet URLs which include your targeted keywords.
Example:
Title and Meta tag: Title tag and meta tags appear on Google and helps users and search engine bots in identifying the context of the content. Title tags appear in blue color followed by meta tags in black and white.
Example;
Heading tag: Next to title and meta tag, heading tag is yet another important element of on-page SEO. While creating headlines make sure to follow the proper format like H1-H2-H3-H4-H5-H6.
Image alt tag: Search engine bots can’t understand the context of images until an Image alt tag is used. So, in order to make search engine bots better understand your image content, you must use image alt tags.
Using an image alt tag, you can also get better rankings on Google image search.
Website speed: Website speed is a ranking factor and Google has already announced it in 2018. So, if your site is not loading under 3 seconds then it will be difficult for you to rank your content on Google.
- Target long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are those keywords with 4-5 words in it. These are the keywords that are easy to rank and have a decent amount of search volume. Another benefit of long-tail keywords is that they are highly conversational in nature as compared to short-tail keywords.
So, if your goal is to increase the conversions on your site, then start leveraging long-tail keywords from the beginning.
Following are the example of long tail keywords:
- Best coolers for paddle boards
- Best dry bag for paddle boards
- Best pedal fishing kayak
- Best fly fishing kayak with rod holders
- Best fly fishing pontoon boats
- Start guest blogging
Now here comes my favorite way of increasing website traffic in a quick time. Guest blogging is a technique in which you contribute an article on other high-authority blogs in your niche.
In fact, it is one of the best ways to create backlinks and increase website traffic as well as the domain authority of your site.
In my opinion, you should start doing guest blogging as soon as possible.
Here are the keyword search operators that you can use to find guest posting websites in your niche.
- Inurl:”write-for-us”
- Inurl:”become-a-contributor”
- Inurl:”guest-post-guidelines”
- Invite others to publish a blog on your site
If you are running out of content or you don’t have any content ideas then you can also invite other bloggers in the niche to contribute to your site. This will save your time and will also help you in getting free ready-made high-quality content.
You can create a web page on your site and list down all the details regarding the type of content you are looking for.
You can also charge for the guest post if you are getting a good amount of traffic on your site. You can easily charge around $50-$100 per post depending on your site traffic and authority.
- Focus on getting referral traffic
You might be thinking that it is next to impossible to get referral traffic on your site. However, this is not the case. With the right planning and strategy, you can sure get a good amount of referral traffic on your site.
Here’s an example of referral traffic that I am getting for my website.
I am almost getting 90-100 referral traffic per month.
Getting such a large amount of traffic is quite easy and worth the time and effort.
Here’s what I do to get referral traffic:
- Publish content on high-traffic blogs.
- Share content on social media sites.
- Social bookmarking.
- Article submission.
- Participating in forums.
- Post content on LinkedIn
With more than 500 million users, LinkedIn can be a goldmine of traffic, provided that you use it wisely. Apart from getting jobs and hunting for candidates, world’s largest professional social media site has now turned into a content re-publishing platform.
You can easily re-publish your blog content on LinkedIn and catch a lot of eyeballs on it.
In fact, I am personally doing this and getting good results via it.
- Use schema
If you want to increase your CTRs on Google SERP then start using schema markup in your content. Schema is a code that you can add it in your website HTML to make your web page look more appealing on the SERP.
The scheme also helps search engine bots to better understand the context of your content.
Here is a typical example of how schema-rich results look on SERP
The above result is highlighted with reviews, votes, mins to make and calories count. Such kind of results gets more clicks on Google and catches the attention of users.
- Internal link your content
If you want to see a quick spike in your search engine rankings, then start leveraging internal links. Internal link refers to linking one web page to another within the section of your website.
Although people are aware of internal links still nobody uses them.
Internal links help search engine bots to discover, crawl and index the web pages on your site. It also improves the navigation of your site and creates amazing user experiences.
Furthermore, it also helps in passing on the link juice from high-authority web pages to low-authority pages on your site.
- Interview other bloggers
- Leverage email marketing
- Create a responsive site
- Use forums
- Improve loading time
- Comments on others’ blog