In today’s world, creating a website is one of the most important steps toward small business success. It is the foundation for establishing an online presence and expanding your business. Dive into the world of digital marketing and understand the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. 

Understanding and applying the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website is a continuous process in the ever-evolving digital landscape. With the right tools, you can learn much about the people visiting your website and convert them into advocates, partners, or clients. If any of these things happen, it’s a victory. Now, how do you attract visitors to your website?

The following list will help you increase website traffic, generate more leads, and improve ROI.

Free Ways To Increase Website Traffic: 30 Ways To Get More Traffic

1. Content Creation

In the realm of online marketing, mastering the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website is a key objective. Inbound marketing aims to attract the right people to your company. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to create content via blogging. 

To create content that will attract the right visitors to your website, you must first identify the buyer persona you are targeting. Once you understand your audience, you can create content that will naturally draw them to your website.

But how do you write a good blog post that will attract the right readers? Take these five steps:

Identify your buyer persona: Learn more about your target market. Understand everything, from job titles to pain points.

Conduct SEO research: Discover what your target audience is searching for on search engines so that you can provide the best content.

Write a draft: Create a post responding to your audience’s questions. Use unique angles to make your post stand out.

Publish: Share your post on your blog. Use effective SEO tools to improve your content.

Promote: Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to increase traffic. The more traffic your post receives, the higher it will rank in search results.

2. Topic Expertise

Ranking higher on Google will drive more organic traffic to your website. 

To be viewed as an expert, create a pillar page, which is essentially a longer blog post that covers all aspects of a subject. Then you write “cluster content,” or supporting blog posts, focusing on long tail keywords to demonstrate that you have thoroughly covered a topic. Focusing on long-term traffic will help you rank higher in search engines.

Understanding why keyword research is important is crucial for driving traffic to your website effectively. Employing keyword optimization in your content is deemed one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website.

3. Organic Social Media Marketing

Though it’s not a new strategy, marketers should still be aware of organic social media. In addition to sharing content on social media, you can use Facebook Messenger, live video, IGTV, Instagram Stories, and the swipe-up feature. Using new features on organic social media platforms quickly is essential.

For example, Facebook recently released a feature for businesses to create an automated chatbot experience within Messenger that links to content offers on your website. This feature is called automated lead generation. This feature is excellent for increasing website traffic.

Utilizing the appropriate social media platforms, rather than just Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and experiencing a varied social media strategy are also essential. Social media sites like Pinterest and YouTube can drive a lot of traffic to your website.

4. Website Analysis

Let’s try reversing some of the way we think. It’s crucial to understand your audience before trying to attract people to your website. Use platforms to analyze your website and determine where visitors are departing and arriving. With this knowledge at your disposal, you can create content that attracts the right type of visitors to your website. Crafting compelling and shareable content is deemed one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website.

5.  Influencers

Employing influencer partnerships is acknowledged as one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Customers are more likely to purchase products from businesses that have excellent word of mouth, as we all know, but how do you create great word of mouth? Initially, make your customers happy. Work with influencers as a second step.

Influencer marketing is more than a quick trend. In actuality, it’s an inexpensive way to increase website traffic. Influencers can help you increase traffic to your site by sharing links, reviews, discount codes, and giveaways with their audience.

6. Email List Building

One of the best ways to increase website traffic is to leverage your current popularity and customer base. You can quickly increase traffic by promoting new blog posts or content offers to your subscribers and followers. With content-heavy websites, repeat readership is beneficial for traffic, website conversion rate, and lead generation.

To get started, create or expand your existing email list. Here are some strategies you can use:

Content offers: Publish content that requires visitors to provide their email address to access it. Place CTAs for content offers on your website.

Easy newsletter sign-up: Include sign-up forms throughout your website, from the homepage to the about page. If visitors had a positive experience on your website, they may want to sign up for your newsletter.

Social media: Sharing your email newsletter on social media, whether through a post or a contest/giveaway, is an excellent way to convert your current followers into subscribers.

7. Community Engagement

The more well-known your brand is, the more referral traffic your website will receive. Being active and engaged in the market is one way to increase brand recognition. You can start implementing an engagement strategy as soon as possible by incorporating Facebook group discussions in your industry, answering questions on public forum websites, and interacting with your social media followers.

8. On-page SEO

SEO optimization is the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. On-page SEO can help your website rank higher in search engines, resulting in more traffic. Some on-page SEO elements include the page title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and URL (among others). Showing up in search engines is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website.

Related: Is SEO Worth It For Small Businesses: Proven SEO Tips

9. Quality Backlinks

To drive more traffic to your website, you must rank high in search engine results. To rank higher in search engines, you must first establish yourself as an industry authority, and acquiring quality backlinks is one way to accomplish this. If high-authority websites link to your site, it increases your credibility.

Here are a few more reasons why backlinks are important for your business:

• The higher you rank in search engines, the more visitors your website will receive.
• Backlinks contribute to the establishment and growth of consumer trust.
• Backlinks can increase people’s awareness of your brand.

Here are a few effective link-building strategies: 

1. Reach out to credible sites and offer to write a guest post with a link to your website in the body or author bio. 
2. Use an SEO tool to identify broken links on other websites and provide your own as a replacement.
3. Create unique, high-quality content that begs to be linked to.

10. Video Marketing

The audience is looking for video content, so it’s time to incorporate it into your content strategy. According to Statista, 77% of internet users aged 15 to 35 use the website to consume video content. Incorporating video marketing is considered one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Text-based content is excellent, but video can attract and engage more visitors. Here are a few ways to use video to increase website traffic:

• Embed videos in your blog posts to appear in video search results.
• To rank higher on YouTube, use YouTube SEO and include links to your website in the video description.
• Add call-to-action buttons in your video that direct viewers to your website.

11. Content Repurposing

Need content to drive traffic to your site but struggling to come up with ideas? I get it. A great way to address this hurdle is to transform old content. Take an efficient blog post and repurpose that into a video. Exploring the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website is essential for online success. If you have a successful podcast, write a blog post about it. Using content that has already performed well will continue to drive traffic to your site.

12. Search Engine Optimization Tools

So there’s a problem in all of the strategies mentioned above. They won’t drive traffic to your website if no one can find them. And, with the first page of Google accounting for 71% of search traffic clicks, you need an SEO strategy.

SEO is the practice of optimizing a website for search engines (hence the name “search engine optimization”) so that it appears higher in search results for relevant queries.

13. Historical Optimization

SEONerds uses historical optimization to update old blog content which is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website and generate leads. If you’re like us, older posts account for the vast majority of your monthly blog views and leads.

Historical optimization is best suited for a blog that has been around for a few years because you must 1) generate a significant amount of organic search traffic, 2) have a critical mass of blog subscribers and social media followers, and 3) have a sizable repository of old posts available.

14. Voice Search Optimization

Discovering and utilizing the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website is crucial for digital marketing strategies. Voice Search Optimization (VSO) is a key component of contemporary digital marketing tactics and is essential for increasing website traffic. Users are turning to spoken queries to find information because voice-activated devices and virtual assistants are becoming more common. To optimize your website for voice search, you must make sure it is mobile-friendly, adjust your content to the natural language patterns of spoken queries, and take into account long-tail conversational keywords.

Another free tool you can use to see how frequently your website shows up in search results, which search terms bring you the most traffic, and how many people click on your site when it appears in search results is Google Search Console.

15. Local SEO

Make sure you take advantage of Google’s local algorithm, which will return local results for your website. Your website can appear when someone searches for locally tailored services in their area thanks to local search engine rankings. For example, if you live in Chicago and need air conditioning repair, you can search for “air conditioner repair in Chicago” online.

You can attract local business from those in nearby areas by improving your local search reputation. Additionally, customers can post an online testimonial to share their positive brand experience, which lends credibility to your company and increases web traffic. 

To appear higher in local search results:

• Make sure your social media pages and Google My Business pages have the same name, address, and phone number (NAP).
• Use a directory management tool to monitor directories.
• Examine and utilize location-based search terms on websites such as Google Trends, which examines trending search terms in different areas.

16. Implement Schema Markup

Although using Schema markup, or any other microdata format, will facilitate search engine bots in discovering and indexing your pages, it won’t necessarily result in more website visitors. Better rich site snippets can increase click-through rates, another advantage of using schema for SEO.

17. Regularly Refresh/ Optimize Your Content

Over time, even the most timeless content becomes dull, and fresh content influences rankings. You’d be surprised at what a content update can accomplish, even if your post is still appearing on Google’s first page. An increase in CTR and a few ranking points from a new publish date on the SERP can result in a sudden increase in traffic.

However, you can’t simply modify a few words and then update your post’s publish date. Google is more informed than that. The following are some methods for increasing traffic from evergreen content:

• Refresh and/or add new data and statistics.
• To illustrate concepts, update old images or make new ones.
• Update the links to more recent sources.
• Resolve broken image and link issues.
• Utilize Search Console’s query report to add new keywords (more on that later).
• Make changes to your meta description and title.

18. Optimize For Google’s Mobile-First Index

As you might have heard, Google rolled out their “Mobile-First Index”:

With an increasing number of users accessing websites via mobile devices, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly content in search results. By making sure your website is responsive and provides an excellent user experience on smartphones and tablets, you not only comply with Google’s indexing preferences but also meet the needs of a larger audience. Mobile optimization improves your search engine visibility, leading to higher rankings and more organic traffic.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website Using Social Media

Employing social media marketing is recognized as one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Social media marketing has several advantages, one of which is referral traffic to your website. Here are some tips for turning these massive platforms into traffic generators for your website.

19. Promote Your Website Content On Social

It is not enough to create excellent content and hope that people notice it. Promote your content on the most popular social media channels among your target audience.  Twitter is ideal for short, snappy (and tempting) links, while Google Business posts can help your website appear in local search results. If you’re a B2C product company, image-heavy social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram can help you gain popularity.

Not only will this increase traffic to your site, but the more people see your content, the more likely you are to receive the backlinks.

20. Add Hashtags

To increase the reach of your posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other hashtag-friendly sites, use relevant hashtags. Keep the hashtags relevant to the post’s topic, though, so you can be discovered by people who are most likely to read, share, and/or link to your content.

21. Add Social Share Buttons

This is an easy way to drive website traffic. Social share buttons enable readers to quickly share the page they’re reading with their social networks.

Another option is the click-to-tweet feature, which allows readers to publish a prewritten tweet with a single click. Check to see if either of these plugins is available for your website and give them a try.

22. Research The Competition

If you don’t know what your competitors are up to, you’re at a disadvantage. These services aggregate the social performance of specific sites and content to give you an overview of what topics are popular with readers and, more importantly, make the rounds on social media. Find out what people are reading (and talking about), and create similar content to drive traffic to your website.

23. Post At The Right Time

Implementing the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website enhances online visibility and engagement. If you want to get into the weeds, you can look at your social media analytics to see what times of day and week your audience is most engaged, and then share your blog post links during those times. Begin with the overall average best times and then drill down into the data to refine further.

Regular and engaging posts increase brand awareness while also encouraging direct interaction with the audience, fostering a sense of community and trust. Furthermore, social media presence improves search engine optimization, increasing online visibility and credibility. It is a cost-effective marketing tool that allows for targeted advertising and product or service promotion.

How To Get More Website Traffic Sources With Listings

24. Business Directories

Business directories are a promising source of website traffic, but simply adding your website to a listing is insufficient. It is critical to optimize your listings so that they can rank on their respective platforms and be discovered by local searchers.
To optimize your listings:

• Fill out all of the sections available.
• Include your business category.
• Keep your information consistent across listings.
• Collect reviews and respond to them.
• Add photos.
• Keep your information updated regularly.

Paid Ways To Increase Website Traffic

25. Contests And Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are a simple way to increase traffic to your website. This can help you get a quick boost while also rewarding your followers. You can run giveaways on social media, via your email list, or both. Utilizing email marketing campaigns remains one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website.

Implementing this strategy can be simple. Simply follow these six steps.

1. Choose the platform on which to host your giveaway. (You may use multiple.) 
2. Select a prize. (Free tickets, discounts, etc.) 
3. Select the criteria. (Website comments, email sign-ups, etc.) 
4. Write the advertisement copy. 
5. Create the graphics. 
6. Post and promote your contest or giveaway.

26. Interview Industry Thought Leaders

Think interviews are only for major leaguers? You’d be surprised how many people will agree to speak with you if you simply ask them. Send out emails requesting interviews with thought leaders in your industry, and then post the interviews on your blog. Not only will name recognition boost your credibility and drive traffic to your website, but the interviewee is also likely to share the content, further expanding its reach.

27. Guest Posting

In the same vein, writing guest posts can increase traffic to your website. Utilizing guest blogging is recognized as one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Guest posting demonstrates your involvement in your community while also linking to your website — more on generating backlinks below.

To implement a guest posting strategy, first identify a site that is a good fit for your company, then draft a blog post and write a pitch.

28. Paid Advertising

Leveraging paid advertising on search engines is acknowledged as one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Paid advertising allows you to quickly increase traffic to your website. Search engines allow you to run pay-per-click or retargeting ads. Social media allows you to run display ads and sponsored posts. Your strategy will most likely include a variety of advertising types, such as social media, display, and search ads. In fact, according to the 2020 CMO Survey, firms expect social spending to increase by 62% over the next five years.

More Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Website

29. Start An Online Community

People want to express themselves and weigh in on topics they are passionate about, so creating a community on your website is an excellent way to start a conversation and increase traffic. Implement a robust commenting system using third-party solutions such as Facebook comments, or set up a dedicated forum for visitors to ask questions. However, remember to manage your community to ensure that minimum decorum standards are met.

30. Participate In Forums

Utilizing online forums and communities is recognized as one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Join forums and social media groups such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit to share your knowledge. Only include links if they are permitted and appropriate; if you do, do not post only links or include links in every post. Make sure the link points to a specific blog post on a relevant topic. The primary goal here is not to increase traffic to your website. The goal is to add value and raise brand awareness. People who are interested will look for your site on their own or visit your profile, where they can find it.

Website Traffic Is Waiting For You

Driving traffic is a never-ending task, but it generates results long after you begin. There are numerous paths your potential customers can take to reach your website; all you have to do is choose the one that works best for your company. Incorporate one of these methods into your next quarter’s demand generation strategy for a significant traffic boost.

Most Effective Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Website FAQs