For anyone just getting started with blogging, driving traffic to your new website might be the most difficult task you will ever be faced with. I get a lot of questions from newbie bloggers on how to increase a website’s traffic for free.
Getting traffic to a new website can be quite a difficult task.
But that shouldn’t be the case. It is even more difficult to get Google to love you enough to show your content in top search results especially when your website is just new.
Google doesn’t usually rank new websites to the top of its search results and as a result many websites with high quality content may find themselves at the bottom of search results. You will have to wait for 4-6 months before you can see results from implementing good SEO practices such as On Page and Off Page SEO on your site.
You may not be patient enough to wait that long.
Don’t worry. I have got you covered.
In this post I will be sharing 11 practical ways on how to increase a website’s traffic for free.
1. Guest Posting
This is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website if done properly and strategically.
You will need to look for more authoritative websites within your industry that accept guest posts and submit high quality blogs to their sites.
This will not only boost your traffic but also establish you as an expert in your field which will bring more credibility to your business.
It shows you are active in your niche and also results in high quality backlinks – more on backlinks below.
A good example is Gregory Ciotti of HelpScout who added 36,733 more qualified subscriptions to his email list through guest blogging.
You can find websites that are suited to your niche and accept guest posts by searching for them on Google using the following search queries to see more specific results:
Name of your niche + “write for us”
Name of your niche + “submit guest post”
Name of your niche “ “sites that accept guest posts”
Write guest article + ‘name of your niche” + blog
Guest blog by + “name of writer” (e.g., guest post by “Darren Rowse”).
Pro Tip: When I had just started out with Blogging, I found Elna Cain’s Ready Set Blog for Traffic Course very valuable.
The course will help you learn everything you need to know to grow your website traffic in a short time.
That’s right! You can grab the exact step-by-step strategy that propelled her Twins Mommy blog to (as of early 2019):
90,000+ pageviews/month
30,000+ Pinterest followers
1 million+ monthly views on Pinterest
15,000+ email subscribers
Multiple course sales (and affiliate sales) every single day!
And like many of us she too started with no traffic and no one knowing about her blog!
Elna Cain is a work from home mom of two beautiful twins that spends much of her time helping other moms grow their online businesses. She is behind her very successful blog TwinsMommy and has prominently featured on the Huffington Post and the Entrepreneur.
You can grab her course at a discounted price here.
This is a LIMITED TIME OFFER!!
Read Also: 7 Best PLR Sites in 2021
2. Internal linking
This is an often ignored practice by many bloggers that might make a difference in your traffic and retention levels.
It is one of the easiest ways to increase a website’s traffic for free.
When a visitor comes to your blog, your goal is to get them to continue reading on other pages of your website. And that’s why internal linking is very important.
You can direct your visitors to related blog posts within an article and this will result in more conversions and also increase the credibility of your site in search engines. Visitors that stay longer on your website are more likely to convert or even become repeat visitors to your site.
3. How to increase a Website’s traffic by Repurposing Content
This is a technique that I have found very helpful in growing my own blog to thousands of readers monthly.
If you are finding difficulty in creating high quality content to increase website traffic then this is a trick worth trying. Simply take a well-performing blog post and repurpose it into a video.
If you have a podcast that really did well you could also convert that into a blog post instead. High quality content that did well for you will most likely do well again if you transform it while ensuring you are adding value for your readers.
This will continue to drive traffic to your site.
Read Also: 6 Realistic Easy Ways to Make Money Online
4. Embrace Email Marketing
This is still one of the most profitable marketing tactics around.
It is one of the traditional marketing approaches that has stood the test of time and it will be detrimental for any business to ignore it.
The beauty of email marketing is that it is very inexpensive and therefore it delivers a high ROI per dollar spent.
When it comes to email marketing you have the option to leverage your email subscribers to increase website traffic by encouraging them to share your content and also increase conversion rates from both new and current subscribers.
Provide useful information and links to pages on your website where they can learn more, such as through blog posts and landing pages for particular offers.
Read Also: How to Get Adsense Approval Fast For New Website
Email marketing software also makes it easy to track and analyze the efficacy of your marketing campaigns. You will be able to know how your campaigns are performing in terms of how much traffic you are getting, the sources of traffic and the conversion rates. This priceless information will enable you to optimize your campaigns to improve performance.
So you can leverage email marketing to increase a website’s traffic for free.
5. How to increase a Website’s traffic by Creating Video Content
Many of us would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. Your website visitors are not any different.
Research shows that Videos yield a 157% increase in organic search traffic as well. A single search for a query will show video results at the top of the results page. This shows you just how effective videos can be.
Furthermore, 46% of consumers act after watching a video advertisement.
This shows how effective this strategy can be in increasing a website’s traffic.
So even as a blogger, it is important that you create a YouTube Channel for your business. This will allow you to connect with your audience more while generating new leads and increasing your website traffic.
You can also create YouTube Videos to supplement some of your blog posts especially tutorial articles.
These videos can be embedded within your blog posts. This is a tactic popular websites such as WPBeginner have taken advantage of to grow their audience as seen in the image above.
Notice that they provide their audience a link to the text version of their content on the website.
Read Also: 7 Best Blogs to Learn SEO, Marketing and Copywriting
6. Create High Quality Content
Looking for links from other websites is not only tedious but also time consuming. If you haven’t much time to do guest post pitches, consider creating valuable high quality content that just begs to be linked to.
High authority and popular websites may pick up your content and that will result in a tremendous source of traffic for your website.
You can also add some relevant keywords to optimize your blog title to improve its ranking on search results.
Ensure you also create powerful headlines to capture the attention of your readers.
Read Also: Super Affiliate System Review 2021 (SCAM or LEGIT)
7. Create High Quality Backlinks
You probably know just how much Google values backlinks as a ranking factor for websites. If websites with high authority link to your site, that gives you more credibility.
Irina Nica, senior content strategist at HubSpot says, “There are two main ways in which high-quality backlinks can help drive more traffic to a website: boosting ranking and driving referral traffic.
It is also important to note that not all backlinks are good. Some backlinks will do more harm than good.
Adopt an effective backlinking strategy to improve your site’s link profile. Thus this will also improve your ranking in Google.
Nica adds, “On the other hand, backlinks can also drive a substantial amount of referral traffic. This will come naturally once you get featured or mentioned in a popular website.
You can learn more on how to implement an effective backlinking strategy here
8. How to increase a website’s traffic by Answering Questions on Quora
This is one of my favorite methods of driving free traffic to my website.
Simply answer questions related to your niche on quora and link the right keywords to anchor content on your site or blog.
However don’t use this platform to spam other users. Be respectful and if you are not very knowledgeable about a particular topic don’t voice your own opinions as fact.
Here’s a screenshot of a question I answered just today that has already driven over 350 visitors to my website in just a few hours. Think of how much traffic that will have in a month’s period.
9. Leverage Your Presence On Social Media
Social media can massively impact your business and its ability to generate traffic and sales.
According to statista.com, almost 4.57 billion people were active internet users as of April 2020, encompassing 59% of the global population.
Social media sites such as Facebook average over 2.5 billion monthly active users. This is a treasure box.
Source: Statista
You can tap into this pool of traffic by sharing your posts to social media sites and also ensuring you have social media share buttons on your blog posts.
Read Also: 8 Best WordPress Themes for Blogs in (2021)
10. Create Infographics
This is also one of the amazing ways to drive traffic to your website.
Building high-quality infographics is an incredible form of clickbait that can essentially create an enormous amount of traffic for your site.
Platforms like Pinterest can be a great place to share your infographics and drive traffic to your website.
Ensure you carry out intensive research and gather relevant statistics. This might prove to be the most difficult task when it comes to creating infographics but there are a variety of tools and resources you can utilize to get the job done:
Statista is one of my favourite sites with statistics on almost anything you can think about.
Pew Research Center also provides a detailed look at hot topics including politics, religion, global and social trends.
Read Also: 350+ Pinterest Group Boards to Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic
11. Improve Site load time and design
Ever found yourself waiting 1 minute for a web page to load? Me neither. If your site takes forever to load, your bounce rate will skyrocket. And the same applies to the general outlook of your website.
First impressions are very important. Visitors are more likely to click off websites with poor designs and slow loading speeds.
This will negatively impact your traffic as well as conversion rates. If you can’t fully optimize your website for responsiveness, consider hiring an expert to do it for you.
Read Also:How to back Up a Website for Free:Step by Step Guide
Conclusion
After reading this post, you should now be familiar with the different methods that you can use in order to increase a website’s traffic for free.
Try one of the methods we have discussed above or you could experiment with all the methods and see how it plays out for you in terms of driving high quality traffic to your blog.
Now it’s Your Turn!
Hey, I really hope you enjoyed reading this actionable guide on how to increase a website’s traffic for free.
Now I would like to hear from you:
What have you experienced when it comes to generating massive traffic to your website?
Please let me know in the comment section below right now!
Also, share this post with your friends and struggling bloggers who want to learn how to increase their website traffic.