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February 24, 2021
14 min Read
10 Methods for Getting Free Traffic To Your Website
Whether you are running an online store, a website for your local business, or even a blog, you need to increase your traffic to grow. Unless you are using your website only for internal purposes, it will not serve you much purpose if there is no traffic from your potential customers.
But what can you do to increase the traffic to your website?
In this article, you will learn how to drive traffic without paying a single peso. Let’s start!
To get Google to send traffic to your website, you need to show up for the right keywords that have a high search volume, which is the number of people that search for that keyword every month, and low keyword difficulty, which is how difficult it will be to rank for that term.
Fortunately, there are free keyword research tools that you can use like:
When looking for keywords with high search volume and low difficulty, also look for long-tail keywords, which are phrases that have more than three words in them. These keywords are more specific and less competitive, hence, are often easier to rank for.
For this, you can use tools like:
Here is an example of how Google Autocomplete works:
The next step is to write excellent content that will keep your visitors coming back for more. This will help your website rank high for those keywords.
It is also important that you pay attention to your website’s technical SEO health and observe best practices in SEO like:
Don’t forget to submit your website to search engines and have them listed. Technically, submitting your website is not a requirement. But submitting your website shortens the time it takes for search engines to index your website and make them visible to searchers.
Some of the best places to find online communities include:
For finding relevant communities on Facebook and LinkedIn, all you have to do is run a search on those platforms and see which groups your target audience may be hanging out with.
For example, if your audience is business people with websites, you can run a search for “web hosting community” on Facebook, you will get the following results:
As for finding communities in Discord and Slack, there are numerous websites out there that provide a list of communities for both these platforms. Discord Servers has an excellent list of servers and this Medium article lists 400 Slack communities you can check out.
When promoting your website in online communities, it is important that you do not spam them out. You need to build a connection first by providing value to the group or community and cultivate your relationship with the group administrator.
Unfortunately, not many people know about relevant forums or where to look for them. The good news is that you can straight away search for a good forum right from Google itself. All you have to do is use these combinations:
For example, searching for “blogging forum” will give you the following result:
When searching for a forum, look at how engaged the audience is and whether or not it is still updated. Don’t worry too much if the forum’s design looks a little bit outdated, what is important here is that the audience is still there.
As for promoting your website to a forum, here are some things you need to remember:
In addition, you must also complete your profile. Take note that you must not seem like someone who is only a one-off contributor. Forum members, especially active ones, will notice promotional engagement a mile off.
Depending on the type of forum, you may also get a chance to add your own signature. If this is the case, you should also put a link to your website in your signature. That way, even if you only engage with posts, others will still be able to visit your website by clicking on your signature.
For instance, let’s say your website is about helping people how to start a blog and some of your content is about using WordPress, a popular content management system. Knowing this, you may search for relevant questions on Quora and see which ones are worth answering.
Once you found a question, all that is left is to provide an answer.
Take note, however, that you must apply good copywriting skills if you want your answers to drive free traffic to your website. For this, you can use the AIDA formula:
So where do you provide the link to your website?
There are two ways to do that:
Most of the time, the first one works really great. However, some people may see it as purely promotional. On the other hand, the second method will work great for people who want to learn more about the answer you have given.
The first step in this method is to find influential bloggers in your niche. There are some tools that will enable you to find them fast:
Check out all the niches in AllTop:
Remember that even if you reach out to every blogger that fits the criteria, not all of them will reply or even share your content. However, if you want to reach out to those who have a higher chance of sharing your website, select those who:
It also helps if there is something you can do before you drop in their digital doorstep. For example, you can get on their radar before sending a message by doing simple things like:
When you send your outreach email to them, make sure they are all personalized and feel like they are written for the recipient alone. It is also best to ask them what they think of your content first. If they like what they see, they will promote it themselves.
Here is an example of a guest post by Neil Patel, a popular marketer, on HubSpot:
That link can send traffic to your website and make others become more aware of your brand, which in turn will help increase your website’s ranking on the results page in search engines, exposing your website to more people.
The usual problem, when it comes to guest posts, especially if did not search for bloggers and influencers beforehand, is finding relevant blogs that are willing to accept guest posts. Fortunately, you can remedy it with a simple Google search:
After getting relevant blogs, the next step is to apply the same outreach principles to key contact persons. Remember to not sound too promotional.
If you need help composing emails, there are a lot of templates you can find online. HubSpot has one where they actually showed nine email outreach templates that work.
Here are some tips on what you can do to create and rank videos on YouTube:
Write at least a 200-word description of your video. As for tags, you can add as many as possible to help searchers find your video. For the thumbnail, use an enticing one that will compel searchers to click through.
Here is an example of a YouTube video with good SEO elements:
In addition, it is also important to promote your videos, especially during the first two days from publishing. The more people who watch your videos, the better. Pay attention to the comment section too and respond to all of them.
But how does this generate free traffic to your website? There are a lot of ways to do this including:
But how do you find content creators that will have you as a guest?
Well, the method is similar to finding bloggers for outreach:
What is amazing here is that you can make use of that interview again and again. For example, you can create additional content about it on your website. You can also let your own followers know about the interview.
In addition, content creators love it when you send some traffic their way by promoting their content too. Once other creators get hold of this, they may also try and contact you to be a guest on their website, which will bring another batch of free traffic your way.
If don’t have an email list yet, you should start now by putting up an email capture form on your website. You can then implement tactics that will entice your visitors to drop their email addresses:
Here is an example of an email capture form from Backlinko:
The reason why having your own email list, and using it to promote your website, is a better method of driving traffic, is that those people are probably already interested in your content. They are the ones who are most likely to share your website with others.
As for the tools you need to collect emails and in sending messages to your list, the platforms listed below are a great way to start since they all have free plans:
You may also want to design a welcome email series, which is automatically sent to your subscribers when they first sign up. Aside from giving them a good impression, these emails can contain links to pages on your website.
This method works really great if you have a lot of posts and pages that are shareable and contains a lot of information that is beneficial to its readers. For starters, you can look at some of your aged content, like those that are more than two years old.
What you need to is to simply republish them to Medium and LinkedIn and apply the following:
Here is an example of a LinkedIn article with a short bio:
If you have fewer posts, this may lead to you republishing inconsistently on these websites, which your followers may not like. To remedy this, you can also write thought leadership pieces on both Medium and LinkedIn.
Then, link those new, unique pieces, back to your website. For example, if you have written a guide on LinkedIn about why businesses should have a website, you can link it to a piece on your blog about how to build a successful website.
However, paid traffic is just that. It is more of a miss or hit method where only interested folks may get visit your website and stay for more than ten seconds.
To conclude, here are methods you can use to get free traffic to your website:
That’s it! Have fun and good luck!
Sources:
https://www.hostinger.ph/tutorials/promote-website-for-free
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/04/10/23-proven-ways-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/?sh=18b2dc142654
https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/#3-promote-content-in-online-communities
https://kinsta.com/blog/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/#promotion
https://backlinko.com/increase-website-traffic
But what can you do to increase the traffic to your website?
In this article, you will learn how to drive traffic without paying a single peso. Let’s start!
1. Implement a Good SEO Strategy
Nowadays, understanding search engine optimization is the key to achieving long-term results. If your website ranks high in Google, you will be able to generate passive, free organic traffic to your site consistently.To get Google to send traffic to your website, you need to show up for the right keywords that have a high search volume, which is the number of people that search for that keyword every month, and low keyword difficulty, which is how difficult it will be to rank for that term.
Fortunately, there are free keyword research tools that you can use like:
When looking for keywords with high search volume and low difficulty, also look for long-tail keywords, which are phrases that have more than three words in them. These keywords are more specific and less competitive, hence, are often easier to rank for.
For this, you can use tools like:
- Answer The Public
- Google Autocomplete
- Google Related Searches
Here is an example of how Google Autocomplete works:
The next step is to write excellent content that will keep your visitors coming back for more. This will help your website rank high for those keywords.
It is also important that you pay attention to your website’s technical SEO health and observe best practices in SEO like:
- Setting up an SSL certificate
- Optimizing the URL structure
- Using 301 redirects and 404 pages
- Going for a better website loading speed
- Writing a meta description that stands out
- Making sure that the website is mobile-friendly
Don’t forget to submit your website to search engines and have them listed. Technically, submitting your website is not a requirement. But submitting your website shortens the time it takes for search engines to index your website and make them visible to searchers.
2. Promote Your Content in Social Communities
A good SEO strategy is a long-term strategy. To supplement it with a short-term one that can boost your traffic, you need to share your website or content in relevant online communities, places where your target audience hangs out.Some of the best places to find online communities include:
- Facebook groups
- LinkedIn groups
- Discord
- Slack
For finding relevant communities on Facebook and LinkedIn, all you have to do is run a search on those platforms and see which groups your target audience may be hanging out with.
For example, if your audience is business people with websites, you can run a search for “web hosting community” on Facebook, you will get the following results:
As for finding communities in Discord and Slack, there are numerous websites out there that provide a list of communities for both these platforms. Discord Servers has an excellent list of servers and this Medium article lists 400 Slack communities you can check out.
When promoting your website in online communities, it is important that you do not spam them out. You need to build a connection first by providing value to the group or community and cultivate your relationship with the group administrator.
3. Be an Active Contributor on Forums
Driving traffic from forums is an underrated way of getting visitors to your website. Becoming an active contributor to a forum will make your name more popular to those who visit the forum and will drive people to your website.Unfortunately, not many people know about relevant forums or where to look for them. The good news is that you can straight away search for a good forum right from Google itself. All you have to do is use these combinations:
- “website niche” + “forum”
- “website niche” + “community”
For example, searching for “blogging forum” will give you the following result:
When searching for a forum, look at how engaged the audience is and whether or not it is still updated. Don’t worry too much if the forum’s design looks a little bit outdated, what is important here is that the audience is still there.
As for promoting your website to a forum, here are some things you need to remember:
- Don’t spam the forum.
- Provide quality content.
- Start new engaging threads.
- Engage with posts first before you promote.
In addition, you must also complete your profile. Take note that you must not seem like someone who is only a one-off contributor. Forum members, especially active ones, will notice promotional engagement a mile off.
Depending on the type of forum, you may also get a chance to add your own signature. If this is the case, you should also put a link to your website in your signature. That way, even if you only engage with posts, others will still be able to visit your website by clicking on your signature.
4. Answer Relevant Questions Online
People often post questions on popular platforms like Quora. This is a great opportunity for you to answer questions that may be related to your website’s niche, establish authority, and bring in more free traffic to your website.For instance, let’s say your website is about helping people how to start a blog and some of your content is about using WordPress, a popular content management system. Knowing this, you may search for relevant questions on Quora and see which ones are worth answering.
Once you found a question, all that is left is to provide an answer.
Take note, however, that you must apply good copywriting skills if you want your answers to drive free traffic to your website. For this, you can use the AIDA formula:
- Attention: Catch their attention with a witty or relevant remark. Make them stop even for a second to take a look at your answer.
- Interest: Keep them interested by throwing in some facts, examples, stories, and use cases. The key here is to keep the attention that you have captured earlier.
- Desire: Make them feel a desire for your answer. This is the part where you drop your answer and keep them satisfied until the end.
- Action: Lastly, get them to act.
So where do you provide the link to your website?
There are two ways to do that:
- Include a link to your website on a relevant phrase within your answer.
- Show them where to go to learn more about a particular topic, which should lead to your website.
Most of the time, the first one works really great. However, some people may see it as purely promotional. On the other hand, the second method will work great for people who want to learn more about the answer you have given.
5. Promote Your Website With Blogger Outreach
Reaching out to bloggers is one way to promote your website and get free traffic. Take note, however, that this works best if you have a blog post or a page that has tons of information and can be considered as something that is “shareworthy”.The first step in this method is to find influential bloggers in your niche. There are some tools that will enable you to find them fast:
- AllTop (free): A website aggregator that collects top news and information in real-time. They have a list of blogs in almost every niche.
- BuzzSumo(paid): A platform with a tool that will enable you to find influencers. All you need to do is search with a keyword that describes your website and you will see a list of bloggers to reach out to.
Check out all the niches in AllTop:
Remember that even if you reach out to every blogger that fits the criteria, not all of them will reply or even share your content. However, if you want to reach out to those who have a higher chance of sharing your website, select those who:
- Shared related content
- Have been featured on your site
- Have written similar content (but not in direct competition)
It also helps if there is something you can do before you drop in their digital doorstep. For example, you can get on their radar before sending a message by doing simple things like:
- Following them on social media
- Commenting on their posts
- Sharing their content
When you send your outreach email to them, make sure they are all personalized and feel like they are written for the recipient alone. It is also best to ask them what they think of your content first. If they like what they see, they will promote it themselves.
6. Write Guest Posts
Researching bloggers and influencers in your niche also serves another purpose. You can invite them for guest blogging, which is a tactic where you write for other blogs in exchange for allowing a link back to your site.Here is an example of a guest post by Neil Patel, a popular marketer, on HubSpot:
That link can send traffic to your website and make others become more aware of your brand, which in turn will help increase your website’s ranking on the results page in search engines, exposing your website to more people.
The usual problem, when it comes to guest posts, especially if did not search for bloggers and influencers beforehand, is finding relevant blogs that are willing to accept guest posts. Fortunately, you can remedy it with a simple Google search:
- “website niche” + “write for us”
- “website niche” + “guest post”
- “website niche” + “contribute to”
After getting relevant blogs, the next step is to apply the same outreach principles to key contact persons. Remember to not sound too promotional.
If you need help composing emails, there are a lot of templates you can find online. HubSpot has one where they actually showed nine email outreach templates that work.
7. Create and Rank Videos on YouTube
Although Google stands at the top of the pinnacle when it comes to the most popular website, YouTube comes in second. If you can use this fact correctly, YouTube can be a great source of free traffic to your website.Here are some tips on what you can do to create and rank videos on YouTube:
- Find keywords with a search volume. You can use a combination of YouTube Suggest and Google Trends to find good keywords. You can also use a YouTube keyword research tool like VidIQ (free) or YT Cockpit (paid).
- Publish high-engagement videos that can keep the viewers glued as long as possible. YouTube is all about high engagement and keeping viewers on the platform for as long as possible.
- Optimize your video. YouTube also has its own SEO. At the very least, you need to fill out the video title, description, tags, and thumbnail.
Write at least a 200-word description of your video. As for tags, you can add as many as possible to help searchers find your video. For the thumbnail, use an enticing one that will compel searchers to click through.
Here is an example of a YouTube video with good SEO elements:
In addition, it is also important to promote your videos, especially during the first two days from publishing. The more people who watch your videos, the better. Pay attention to the comment section too and respond to all of them.
But how does this generate free traffic to your website? There are a lot of ways to do this including:
- Adding a link in the channel header
- Invite your viewers to visit your website
- Adding a link to your website in the description
- Offer freebies to your viewers to be claimed on your website
8. Become a Guest on Videos (and Podcasts)
If you don’t want to create your own videos or other content like podcasts, you can be a guest on those that do, in the form of an interview. This method also drives a lot of free traffic to your website because of the recommendation you get, aside from getting in front of a new audience.But how do you find content creators that will have you as a guest?
Well, the method is similar to finding bloggers for outreach:
- Find podcasters and video creators that do interviews on your niche.
- Write your pitch and send it to them. Make sure to listen or watch their content and get an idea of what you can contribute.
- Guest on the podcast or video and naturally share your content without sounding too promotional.
- Share the content with others.
What is amazing here is that you can make use of that interview again and again. For example, you can create additional content about it on your website. You can also let your own followers know about the interview.
In addition, content creators love it when you send some traffic their way by promoting their content too. Once other creators get hold of this, they may also try and contact you to be a guest on their website, which will bring another batch of free traffic your way.
9. Build an Email List
Another way to get free traffic to your website is through email marketing. No matter what type of business you run, or whatever your reason is for starting a website, building an email list is one of the better ways of driving traffic.If don’t have an email list yet, you should start now by putting up an email capture form on your website. You can then implement tactics that will entice your visitors to drop their email addresses:
- Offer an ebook
- Content upgrades
- Run a free course through email
Here is an example of an email capture form from Backlinko:
The reason why having your own email list, and using it to promote your website, is a better method of driving traffic, is that those people are probably already interested in your content. They are the ones who are most likely to share your website with others.
As for the tools you need to collect emails and in sending messages to your list, the platforms listed below are a great way to start since they all have free plans:
You may also want to design a welcome email series, which is automatically sent to your subscribers when they first sign up. Aside from giving them a good impression, these emails can contain links to pages on your website.
10. Repurpose Old Content to Medium and LinkedIn
Repurposing old content and republishing them to other sites like Medium and LinkedIn are both underutilized methods of gaining free traffic, especially if you have a massive following on these platforms.This method works really great if you have a lot of posts and pages that are shareable and contains a lot of information that is beneficial to its readers. For starters, you can look at some of your aged content, like those that are more than two years old.
What you need to is to simply republish them to Medium and LinkedIn and apply the following:
- Make sure that you include a short bio at the end of your post that will help direct people back to your website or blog.
- Add a call to action that will invite people to download a specific resource or go to a specific page that will help them learn more about you.
- Don’t forget to add an attribution that will signify that the post you are republishing was first published on your website.
Here is an example of a LinkedIn article with a short bio:
If you have fewer posts, this may lead to you republishing inconsistently on these websites, which your followers may not like. To remedy this, you can also write thought leadership pieces on both Medium and LinkedIn.
Then, link those new, unique pieces, back to your website. For example, if you have written a guide on LinkedIn about why businesses should have a website, you can link it to a piece on your blog about how to build a successful website.
Bring More Traffic to Your Website
These ten tips that bring free traffic to your website will not cost you anything. Naturally, if you have more resources to spare, you can do more promotions and buy paid traffic from places like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google.However, paid traffic is just that. It is more of a miss or hit method where only interested folks may get visit your website and stay for more than ten seconds.
To conclude, here are methods you can use to get free traffic to your website:
- Implement a good SEO strategy
- Promote your content in online communities
- Be an active contributor forums
- Answer relevant questions online
- Promote your website with blogger outreach
- Write guest posts
- Create and rank videos on YouTube
- Become a guest on videos (and podcasts)
- Build an email list
- Repurpose old content to Medium and LinkedIn
That’s it! Have fun and good luck!
Sources:
https://www.hostinger.ph/tutorials/promote-website-for-free
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/04/10/23-proven-ways-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/?sh=18b2dc142654
https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/#3-promote-content-in-online-communities
https://kinsta.com/blog/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/#promotion
https://backlinko.com/increase-website-traffic
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