How To Drive More Traffic To Your Website For Free?
Website traffic not only indicates but drives your business growth. It helps you to:
- See the results of your marketing efforts
- Gain insights about your audience for decision making
- Enhance your SEO and search engine credibility
- Produce more leads, boost conversions and attract more customers
However, to achieve these benefits, you must drive the traffic to your website in the right way and focus on attracting quality traffic. In this blog, we will be discussing free ways of how you can drive quality traffic to your site.
Free Traffic vs. Quality Traffic
Getting more traffic to your website will increase your rank in the SERPs, which in turn will drive even more traffic. But you would also want to ensure that the increase in traffic is leading to an increase in audience engagement as well. Because if your website traffic is improving, but your conversion rates are declining, it means you are not fetching the right traffic.
You can optimize your website for conversion in several ways, like positioning the CTA button in the right place, allowing viewers to navigate easily and intuitively, offering the exact information which the audience has come looking for, etc. But you need to start by driving the right audience to your website in the first place. When it comes to website traffic, your goal should be attracting more qualified visitors, i.e., the ones who are more likely to get converted into leads and consumers.
Strategies To Drive Quality Traffic To Your Website
There is no “set it and forget it” tool that can drive free and high-quality traffic to your website. Instead, there are combinations of a few channels that work side by side to attract visitors. However, they will all require either time, effort, or money.
Some of the tools, when appropriately utilized, can drive traffic to your website are:
- On-page/Off-page SEO
- Online directory listings
- Blogging
- Social Media
- Online advertisements
Let’s discuss the most effective and reliable ways of increasing your website traffic for free.
Free Ways To Boost Website Traffic From Google
- Make a free Google My Business Listing
Are you aware of the fact that an optimized Google My Business Listing receives 7 times more visits than an incomplete one? Your listing links directly to your site, which is a great way to bring in more traffic.
Also, remember Google is getting smarter day by day with results. If your listing offers complete information that a prospective customer requires to make a decision, they might eschew your site and directly contact or visit your company. Now, this is even better than a mere website visit!
- On-page SEO
There are plenty of SEO techniques that you can utilize to increase the rankings of your web pages on SERPs to attract more traffic. This involves creating high-quality content that your audience is looking for and writing short and crisp meta descriptions for individual pages.
The meta description is displayed underneath the URL of the page in the search results. It tells the viewers what the page is about, which gives them a clear idea of what is in it for them and increases their chances of clicking it. Although On-page SEO is free, it does require time to give the desired results.
Other Ways To Generate Website Traffic For Free
- Get your business listed in online directories
Getting listed in free online directories and review websites is a great way to increase your website traffic. In the majority of these sites, your business profile will contain a link to your website. Updating these listings often and acquiring positive reviews will probably lead to more website traffic.
- Build strong backlinks
A backlink refers to a link from another site to your website. Backlinks from complementary organizations and industry influencers will put your business in front of a much bigger audience base and drive quality traffic to your site. Moreover, when Google sees other reputed websites pointing to yours, its trust in your business increases. The more trust Google has in you, the more your rankings will improve, and simultaneously, your website traffic will increase.
- Utilize social media
Social media platforms today have become one of the most potent free marketing tools, and it can bring in more website traffic. You can utilize popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote your blogs and other valuable web pages. This is a great way to reach more audiences and direct them to your website.
- Add relevant hashtags in your posts
By including relevant hashtags in your posts promoting your blogs and other web pages, you can expand your reach beyond your network. People searching for your products or services will be able to discover you via these hashtags. The more people come across your links, the more free website traffic you’ll be drawing.
- Utilize landing pages
Landing pages are another source of acquiring free website traffic. These offer specific pages like to redeem a discount code or start a free trial or download a free guide. Landing pages contain all the details a viewer needs to convert. Therefore focus on one primary call-to-action button to guide your users and drive more traffic.
- Start targeting long-tail keywords
No doubt that short-tail keywords are mostly searched, but they are the keywords most difficult to rank for. However, long-tail keywords provide a better chance for your website to rank higher even on the first page sometimes! The higher your ranking is, the more traffic you will get. You can use several tools to search for ideal keywords that you can target.
- Use email marketing
Using emails to send newsletters and promote offers is an excellent way to keep in touch with your consumers. These might also help you in driving more traffic to your site. Be careful with your emails. Include adequate information, images, links, and use smart subject lines that will entice them to open your emails. Make sure you don’t bombard them with too many emails, or else they might just unsubscribe or get uninterested in them.
- Guest blog
Get into collaboration with any industry influencer and have them post a blog on your site or turn an interview with them into a blog post. This way, not only you’ll attract organic traffic but also the audience from the influencer’s content promotion. This will also help you generate strong backlinks.
Although this method is still free, there must be some mutual benefits for the influencer, too, with this collaboration. You can also become a guest blogger for any complementary business. You can write a blog post relevant to their products or services and include a link to your website in it.
- Engage with your audience online
Being active in an online group or website relevant to your industry is free. This can help you boost your website traffic. Drop comments on blogs or social media posts and participate in conversations related to your industry. When you engage, you will grab more people’s attention and get more profile visits. Including your site link in your profile will be very helpful. However, engage genuinely. Refrain from adding your website links in your comments, or you might appear salesy.
- Track and learn from your analytics
You can use Google Analytics for free, and their insights can help you understand where your traffic is coming from. You can identify which strategies are working the best for your website, which ones need improvement, and which ones are not worth spending your time on.
So these were the few ways to generate more traffic for your website. You can also go for paid tools like online advertisements. Avoid using auto website traffic generators. Google can detect these spammy approaches, which can hurt your rankings or get your site banned. Let us know about your views regarding these channels in the comments below.