15 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Website
Traffic is the lifeblood of any business. Conversions matter, sure, but if nobody’s looking at your page, conversions are the least of your concerns. Paid traffic is one option, but it’s far from the only way to get eyes on your site.
Here’s a telling fact: organic traffic converts at 10 to 13 times the rate of paid traffic. When someone finds you organically, there’s a lot more built-in trust behind that visit; people tend to assume that if Google surfaced you, whatever you’re offering must be worth a look.
Whether you lean on organic strategies to grow your traffic or go the paid route, you need a clear picture of the landscape first. Knowing what to do is only half the job, actually doing it is a different challenge entirely.
The list below will help you grow traffic to your site, generate stronger leads, and improve your ROI.
15 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Website
- Build A Free Google Business Listing
- Do On-Page SEO
- Get Listed In Online Directories
- Build Backlinks
- Post To Social Media
- Add Hashtags To Your Posts
- Use Landing Pages
- Target Long-Tail Keywords
- Start Email Marketing
- Guest Blog
- Engage Online
- Learn From Your Analytics
- Advertise
- Giveaways/Contests
- Community Engagement
# 1 Build A Free Google Business Listing
An optimized Google Business Profile gets roughly 7 times more visits than an incomplete one. Since your listing links directly to your website, keeping it complete is a genuinely easy way to drive more traffic.
Keep in mind Google is getting smarter with how it surfaces results. If your listing already answers everything a potential customer needs to decide, they may skip your website entirely and head straight to your business, which is arguably an even better outcome than a website visit.
# 2 Do On-Page SEO For A Traffic Boost
There’s a lot you can do on every page of your site to improve its ranking and pull in more visitors. That includes writing genuinely useful content your audience is actually searching for, and writing tight meta descriptions, the snippet that shows under your URL in search results. Making it clear what a page covers and why it’s worth clicking makes people far more likely to actually click. On-page SEO tactics like these cost nothing but time.
# 3 Get Listed In Online Directories
Another free way to grow your traffic is getting listed on free directories and review sites. Most of these carry a link back to your website, so keeping listings updated and gathering positive reviews tends to translate into more traffic. Several directories, Yelp being a good example, also carry strong domain authority with Google, so your free Yelp listing has a real shot at ranking well for relevant searches.
# 4 Build Backlinks
A backlink is simply a link to your site from somewhere else. Backlinks from complementary businesses or industry influencers put your business in front of a bigger audience and drive genuinely qualified traffic your way. Google also factors backlinks into how much it trusts your site, more trusted sites linking to you tends to mean higher rankings, and higher rankings mean more traffic. Quality backlinks are a legitimate free way to get noticed on Google.
# 5 Post To Social Media
Social media is one of the most accessible free marketing tools out there, and it plays a real role in driving traffic to your site. Use Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote blog posts and other useful pages on your website. That turns your social followers into website visitors, and if the content resonates, it can pull in traffic from their networks too.
Creating genuinely useful content is free and less difficult than it sounds. You already know your product or service better than anyone; your job is just to make that knowledge easy for your audience to use.
# 6 Add Hashtags To Your Posts
Adding hashtags to posts that promote your blog and website pages extends your reach beyond your existing followers and helps people searching for your kind of product or service find you. More eyes on your links means more free traffic reaching your site.
# 7 Use Landing Pages
Landing pages are another free traffic source. These are pages built around a specific offer, a discount code, a free trial, a downloadable guide, that give visitors exactly the information they need to move forward, built around a single, clear call to action. Because landing pages are so narrowly focused, your messaging can stay tightly targeted, which tends to increase the traffic that actually reaches them.
# 8 Target Long-Tail Keywords
Short-tail keywords get searched a lot, but they’re genuinely hard to rank for. Long-tail keywords give you a much better shot at ranking well, sometimes on page one, for searches closely tied to your specific products or services. Higher rankings mean more traffic. As search engines and voice-to-text tools keep improving, people are also searching with more specific, conversational phrases than before. Plenty of free tools can help you find keywords worth targeting, Answer the Public is a solid starting point.
# 9 Start Email Marketing
Sending regular newsletters and promoting offers by email is a genuinely effective way to stay connected with customers, and it can drive real traffic back to your site. Share useful information and link to pages where readers can learn more, blog posts, landing pages for specific offers, and so on. Just don’t flood your list with too many emails, or readers will delete, ignore, or unsubscribe.
Put real thought into your subject lines too. They heavily influence whether anyone opens your email at all, and an email that never gets opened can’t send anyone to your site.
# 10 Guest Blog
Invite an industry influencer to write a post on your site, or turn an interview with them into a blog post. That drives traffic both through organic search and through the influencer sharing the content with their own followers. It also adds real variety to your content and shows visitors you’re genuinely active in your field.
Alternatively, ask the influencer to mention your business in their own review or roundup post. Still free, but it depends on the relationship being a genuine two-way exchange.
You can guest blog yourself too. Find complementary businesses in your space whose audience overlaps with yours, and offer to write a post for their blog in exchange for a link back to your site. Keep the content genuinely useful to their audience so the trade feels fair on both sides.
# 11 Engage Online
Being active in online communities and on platforms relevant to your industry is free, and it genuinely helps bring in traffic. Comment on social posts and blogs, answer questions, and join conversations happening in your space. The more you engage with your community, the more profile visits and exposure you pick up.
If your social profiles link to your website, that engagement becomes another channel driving traffic your way. Just keep it genuine and don’t overdo it, avoid dropping links into every comment, or you’ll come across as spammy and damage your reputation. Traffic shouldn’t be the goal of engaging, it should be a natural side effect of it.
# 12 Learn From Your Analytics
Google Analytics is free, and the insights it surfaces can genuinely help you drive more traffic. Use tracked links for your marketing campaigns and check your analytics regularly. That tells you which strategies and content types are working, which need improvement, and which aren’t worth your time.
A free audit of your Google Business listing is also worth running, most tools like this will automatically assess your listing and tell you exactly what to improve.
# 13 Advertise
Advertising puts your website directly in front of people most likely to care about what you offer. If you go this route, and it’s worth seriously considering, get clear on your goals first: are you after more traffic, more conversions, or more engagement?
Depending on your goals, there are plenty of advertising channels to choose from.
# 14 Giveaways/Contests
Contests and giveaways are an easy way to drive a quick traffic boost while rewarding your existing followers. Run them on social media, through your email list, or both.
Running one is genuinely simple. Just follow these steps:
- Pick a prize (a discount, free tickets, etc.)
- Decide which platform to run it on (can be more than one)
- Set your entry criteria (email signup, website comments, etc.)
- Design the graphics
- Write the ad copy
- Post and promote it
# 15 Community Engagement
The more brand recognition you build, the more traffic tends to follow. One solid way to build that recognition is genuine involvement in your community. Start today by joining Facebook group discussions in your industry, answering questions on public platforms, and actually talking with your followers on social media.
Taco Bell is a good example of a brand that does this well, showing up in social conversations with customers regularly rather than just broadcasting at them.
Just remember to stay human and genuinely helpful. Nobody wants a spammy link dropped on them when they’re asking a quick question online.
Putting It Together
Growing your website traffic doesn’t happen overnight, but the hardest part, knowing where to start, is already behind you. Work through Google Business Profile optimization and the other channels above, and you’ll start pulling in the right visitors, and more importantly, turning more of them into customers.
