by Andriy Haydash
11 Ways To Drive Traffic To A Website For Free
One of the most common questions that people with new websites have is how to get traffic for free?
Today I'd like to present to you 11 free ways you can get free traffic to your website.
Inspired by a post from thrivehive.
1. Google My Business
If you have a local business, claiming your Google My Business (GMB) listing is one of the best ways to get started.
You can add your website to your listing as well.
This way, once people find you - they can go to your site and contact you.
In order to get decent listing results, you're going to need to collect good reviews from your customers.
2. On-Page SEO
Technically everything you do in SEO is split into 2 parts - on page and off page.
On-Page SEO serves as a strong foundation.
There are multiple things you need to do to get more traffic:
- Write engaging, helpful and informative content
- Interlink your pages
- Add structured data to your website
- Write compelling title and meta description tags that contain your keywords and people want to click on
- Optimize your website for performance and great user experience
All of the above will help your website get higher rankings.
3. Online Directories
Online directories are one of the best ways to kickstart your SEO, especially for a local business.
While they're not as important as they used to, they can still get you a substantial amount of traffic.
Websites like Yelp, YellowPages, and ChamerOfCommerce have a high amount of visitors every day.
People visit those listings to look for a local business. Once someone finds you, they might visit your website as well.
On top of that, web directories also help you build citations which is still important in 2019.
4. Social Media
Social media is very saturated these days.
Nonetheless, it's still a great way to drive traffic to your website.
You should definitely add your website to your profiles.
If you're writing articles, you have to also post them on social media.
If people like it, they will comment and share them.
If you're doing roundup posts or simply mention an influencer in your article - let them know and ask to share it.
This is how you can leverage influencers.
5. Use Hashtags
This one goes hand in hand with a previous point.
Hashtags are crucial when posting on social media.
All major platforms support them.
Make sure you only add relative ones.
That's how you'll get much more exposure and eyeballs.
6. Long Tail Keywords
Targeting long tail keywords is a great way to get initial traffic to your website if you're just starting.
They usually don't won't drive a huge amount of traffic (hence long-tail), but they can still help you get a decent amount of visitors.
But what's really cool about them is that the competition is not very big.
Therefore you have a great chance to get ranked.
7. Landing Pages
Landing pages usually have a very specific purpose - lead generation or sales.
They're often times used in a combination with Facebook or Instagram ads to drive traffic.
But if your offer is compelling and you have enough attention (followers, friends, shares) - you can get traffic for free.
8. Email Marketing
Email marketing still remains one of the most efficient marketing channels, in fact it is able to get you massive ROIs. Getting people to subscribe is as easy as 1,2,3, as long as you make sure your sign up forms are on fleek, using your website and the “owned media” there, one-time traffic can be turned into subscribers and returning visitors.
Once you have written a new post, use email together with your blog and make sure your subscribers are up to date on all the latest content and announcements. As long as you send them good educational or funny content - your open CTR should be much higher than on social media.
There are many tools to do this, like Mailchimp or any other MailChimp alternative as an email marketing tool, as long as it has the pricing and features you are going for.
9. Guest Posting
Guest posting is a great way to get referral traffic to your website.
But there are certain rules that you have to keep in mind:
- You need to find blogs in your niche that have a big audience
- Write engaging, helpful, and informative content. It must be unique and plagiarism free. Content evaluation through a plagiarism checker will help you become successful in your on-page SEO strategy.
- Your article has to include at least one link to your website or post (which not all blogs allow for)
- You're much better off writing upside down guest posts for getting traffic back to your site
On top of that, guest blogging for big websites with authority can help you build links that will amp up your SEO rankings.
10. Online Engagement
If you're a member of a Facebook or LinkedIn group in your industry - be active.
Help people out, ask questions and make connections.
Once you help others, they'll be thankful and will likely go to your profile and might check out your website as well.
This strategy will not have a huge ROI, but can still help you drive some traffic.
11. Analytics
And last but not least - analytics.
As an old saying goes: "What gets measured - gets improved".
Analyzing your traffic sources is absolutely crucial.
You must know which channels are getting you visitors and which aren't.
If you're using a tool like Google Analytics it will also show you where your users are coming from, devices they're using and rest of their demographics.
Once you have all that data - you can see which marketing channels you have to improve or abandon, which ones are doing great.
This will "open your eyes" and help you plan strategize for the future.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are multiple ways of driving traffic to a website for free.
Some of them are more effective then others, but they all work.
If your website is new, I'd suggest you try them all out and see which ones are working the best for you.
Once you know that, you can double down on those channels and don't bother with the other ones.
I hope this article was helpful.
If you need help driving traffic to your website - feel free to contact us.