20+ Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic for Free

1. Have a Business Blog

You need content if you want to increase your website traffic. 

One way you can do this is by having a blog for your business where you publish useful and related content. Reports show that businesses that blog get over 50% more website traffic than businesses that don’t. 

Besides, more people will visit your website if you have something to offer them, which in this case would be content on different niche-specific topics.

2. Target Topics People Search For

Now that you have a business blog, you can’t just write about any and every topic. 

You have to be strategic with the topics you write about and your target audience. 

One way you can do this is by writing on topics your prospective audience search for online – this will help you search engine ranking and generate consistent site traffic.

You may be wondering how to find these questions that are asked online. 

Several tools can be used, like Google Trends, Answer the Public, Ahrefs, SEMRush, SERanking or BuzzSumo Question Analyzer. 

Once you have these niche-related questions, you can either create complete blog posts answering these questions or incorporate them into your content. 

Additionally, you can write long-form blog posts covering different aspects of a topic and create supporting blog posts – this will help generate long-term traffic to your site.

3. Create Evergreen and High-Quality Content

It is not enough to write articles based on what people search for; you also need to ensure that your posts are evergreen and of high quality. Delivering high-quality articles will help develop your website’s authority and increase your SEO efforts. For content to be evergreen, it has to be relevant and drive traffic to your website all year round. Some examples of evergreen content include:

• Product reviews
• How-to guides
• Frequently asked questions
• Reference guides
• Tutorials
• Training guides

A way to ensure your content stays evergreen is to review and update it regularly. This way, the traffic to your site remains constant.

4. Repurpose and Update Old Content

Updating old content is a sure way to generate traffic and leads. With content, once it becomes outdated, Google may lower your search ranking, and you do not want that. 

To maintain your search rankings, you need to keep your content updated.

With blog updates, you don’t have to rewrite the entire content; you have to improve readability, ensure the statistics are up to date, pictures are appealing, links are not broken, etc. 

Plus, it is a good tactic for business blogs with a large repository of old posts that have built many followers and subscribers.

You can also repurpose your content to other formats, ensuring you reach new audiences on other mediums. Repurposing your existing blog post into a downloadable guide or video will increase your site traffic. Some examples of repurposing ideas you can try include:

• Blog post to Video Content
• Blog posts to podcasts
• Infographics blog post to slideshow
• Blog posts to downloadable guides
• Visual blog content to social media posts
• Internal process guides to whitepapers

5. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your website because you will get a link back to your site. It is also a good way to get a backlink and build brand awareness for your business. 

👉 Also read: what is the ROI of guest blogging?

You need to reach out to websites in your niche that accept and publish guest posts, and you can do this with a simple Google search. 

However, there are several factors you should consider before choosing a website to guest post on:

• Does the website get traffic?
• Does the website fit your niche?
• Do they have good authority?
• Does the website match your target audience?
• Do they have multiple pages indexed by Google?

Answering these questions will give you an idea of the type of websites to reach out to and those to avoid. The tactic is to go for quality rather than quantity. 

Additionally, you need to be willing to accept contributions from guest bloggers.

You can invite other bloggers in your niche to write high-quality articles for your audience – this is a sure way to bring more traffic to your site.

6. Publish Long Form Content

Even though there is no one-size fits all content length, it has been observed that longer posts (>1000 words) do a lot better. Most long-form posts are usually comprehensive, covering the topic in complete detail. 

Thus, helping with SEO and traffic as they usually contain answers to frequently asked questions related to the topic.

BuzzSumo and Moz report that long-form content receives more shares than short-form content. Longer content also ranks higher on search engines. 

However, you must note that word count alone does not equal ranking and shares.

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7. Combine Video Content/YouTube

Video content is vital if you want to increase traffic to your website because it can attract visitors and keep them engrossed. One way you can use video content is by embedding it into your blog posts –this way, your post will appear in video search results. 

Besides, you should have YouTube on your radar as a business.

YouTube is one of the most popular search engines in the World, and Statista reports that over 70% of internet users between the ages of 15 and 35 use YouTube for its video content. You can use YouTube to create tutorial videos and awareness for your business. 

Also, YouTube videos rank on Google, which will inevitably help your site traffic in the long run.

Other video platforms that you can utilize for Video content include Facebook Watch, TikTok, and Instagram Stories.

8. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a trusted way to drive website traffic, but you still need to have an email list to do this. 

You can use different techniques to get people to sign up for your mailing list; some include adding incentives, easy access signups, content offers, and others. 

You can send newsletters or promotional emails detailing articles, offers, or events.

When you write new content, you can use your mailing list to promote it to your subscribers and increase your traffic. 

To ensure that you keep your subscribers engaged and you don’t lose a large percentage of your email subscribers, here are some best practices you can adhere to:

• Ensure the newsletters are mobile-friendly
• Include an enticing newsletter subject line
• Insert a link for your subscribers to read the content
• Use personalization techniques to make subscribers feel special

9. Influencer Marketing

Industry influencers are a good way to increase traffic to your site, as they have made a name in your industry. This means that your target audiences are more likely to follow whatever they advise. You can use them to gain credibility and build brand awareness. 

Some ways you can use influencers includes

• Paying for their rates
• Asking for an interview
• Asking an influencer to read your posts
• Use PR outreach to introduce them to your business

You must ensure that the influencers you are reaching out to are in your industry. 

Some tools you can use to find influencers include Klear, Upfluence, Pitchbox, BuzzSumo, and BuzzStream Discovery.

10. Keyword Research

Keyword research involves identifying the keywords that drive traffic to your site. It is a vital part of search engine optimization, which can help increase your website’s traffic. 

Knowing the terms people constantly use will make it easy for you to increase your site visitors.

You can use different tools, like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs, and Serpstat. 

These tools show you high-ranking keywords, how often online users search for the keywords, which keywords your competitors are ranking for, and others. 

Additionally, after keyword research, you can strategically include the keywords in your blog posts to ensure that your site ranks for the keywords.

👉 Also read: 5 essential keywords metrics (& 5 new ones)

11. Internal Linking

You must add at least three links to other pages on your site when publishing a blog post. This will increase traffic to your site and keep your visitors longer. 

They are also more likely to become brand supporters when they realize your website has a lot of vital resources. 

Besides, internal linking also increases your website’s credibility on search engines and your chances of ranking.

12. Build Website Backlinks

Building links from sites with authority act like votes of confidence for your website. Google uses the quality and quantity of website backlinks’ as one of its major ranking factors. 

This goes to show just how important backlinks are. 

The more links you have from reputable sites with high Domain Authority, the more your Domain Authority will increase, eventually leading to higher search ranking and site traffic.

Backlinks also increase your brand awareness and help establish your customers’ trust. You can reach out to credible sites and offer a guest post with a link to your website. 

Sometimes, your content is just too good that other content creators cannot help but link it. 

If you need to know where to begin with building backlinks, you can use BuzzSumo or SEMrush.

13. Optimize Content with LSI Keywords

LSI Keywords, or Latent semantic indexing keywords, are words or phrases related to your primary keyword. Since the introduction of the Hummingbird algorithm, everything related to SEO has changed. 

Now, Google not only understands keywords, it understands topics as well. LSI keywords are a good way for you to ensure that Google understands your blog topic.

Including these keywords will help increase your ranking and, inevitably, your site traffic. Two free tools you can use to find these LSI keywords are LSI Graph and Google Trends. 

Once you get the keywords, you can strategically place them in your post, and you are good to go.

14. Improve Page Speed

No visitor will wait a long time for your website to load. 

So, if your site speed is low, your bounce rate will be very high, affecting your ranking. 

Web pages should typically take less than 3 seconds to load. Additionally, you need to ensure that the pages on your site are optimized to improve your ranking chances, reduce bounce rate, and increase traffic.

15. Have Good Visuals

Like page speed, your website must be visually appealing to your audience. You must ensure that the images in your blog posts are clear. 

This is because images also help with site ranking on search engines. 

You can also use simple design and visualization tools like Canva and excel to visualize data, create charts, and produce infographics for your content. Besides, the greater the visuals, the greater the opportunity to rank.

16. Optimize for Long Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are very specific to the product or service you are offering. According to SEMrush, the longer and more specific the keyword, the more the conversion rate increases. They are also less competitive, making them easier to rank for. You can find long-tail keywords by simply using Google.

Just type out your main keyword and let Google provide suggestions based on what others are searching for. You can also use the people also ask or related searches box to find long tail keywords.

17. CTR Optimization

Rather than struggle to rank high on search engines, you can focus on optimizing your click-through rate to increase your site traffic. CTR is critical to Google’s algorithm, as it is the percentage of searchers that use Google search results to click through to your site. 

This means that with a high CTR, your chances of ranking will increase. Some methods you can use to optimize your CTR include:

• Adding Your Keyword to your URL
• Use a compelling meta description
• Add a number to your blog title
• Add structured data
• Optimize page speed
• Clean your URL

To view your CTR, go to Google Search Console and click on Performance.

18. Advertising

The advertisement comes in numerous forms, but here we will be referring to digital advertising, which encompasses everything from social media to display ads. 

You can take advantage of these different ad processes to increase your website traffic. 

You first need to understand your audience and know where they hang out, ensuring that you are not wasting money on ads your target audience isn’t seeing. 

Some advertising methods you can utilize are pay-per-click ads, Google Ads, Facebook ads, Twitter Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.

19. Use Social Media Platforms

As previously indicated, social media is a very vital platform for businesses, as it is an avenue for you to connect with your customers and prove that you are authentic. 

You can use the different platforms to increase traffic to your site, and one way you can do this is by sharing snippets of your blog posts. 

Your traffic will increase by sharing interesting snippets of your content and including a link they can follow to continue reading. However, you have to ensure that you are sharing consistent content.

Your content for different social media platforms has to be dynamic. You cannot share a wordy image on Instagram, but you can share the entirety of your blog post on LinkedIn. 

Your audiences on the platforms are different, and the content you share must reflect that.

20. Social Share Buttons to Your Content

Including social share buttons in your blog posts is very important as it enables your readers to share your content with others. This way, you can increase your traffic just like that. 

Some marketers believe that adding quotable lines to your content increases your chances of sharing your content. 

However, an excellent blog post cannot help but be shared amongst peers on different platforms. So, ensure that whatever you are creating is of high quality.

21. Research your Competitors

By researching what your competitor is doing, you have all the information you need to improve your website. 

You can find the keywords your competitors are ranking for, their social media activity, website traffic, etc. The number of things you can learn about your competitors is endless, and one tool you can use to do this is SimilarWeb.

22. Track and Analyze Your Results

You must track your website traffic-building strategies, or else you will not know which strategy is working and which are failing. You need to track and analyze your results to tell what needs improvement. 

You should track web traffic, lead generation, conversion rate, and sales. Additionally, Google Analytics is a good tool you can use to do this.

Conclusion                   

There are many more ways to increase your website traffic, but these highlighted ones have been tested and trusted. Plus, they are good for businesses just starting, as most of the tools mentioned are free to use, and the strategies are easy to master.