22 proven ways to drive more traffic to your website
So your website is up and running, and now… crickets? Look, website traffic is a relative number. For one business 500 visits a month will be enough to sustain them, for another 20,000 will be the right number. Getting hung up on the number is not the point here.
But, delivering a steady flow of high-quality, relevant traffic to your website will help ensure you have a healthy stream of leads and customers coming into your business. And with a little effort you can achieve just that.
Ready to get stuck in?
Below are 22 mostly free, traffic strategies and methods to grow your website traffic, which you can start using today.
1. Create great content
Here’s a little secret… great content will form the basis of almost all of your marketing. So although this is just the first method, it’s the one thing that can underpin almost your entire traffic-driving strategy. What makes great content? Basically, anything that helps your audience solve their most frequent and challenging problems. This value is what will get visitors coming back to your site time and again, AND get them to share your content for you, amplifying your own efforts and expanding your reach to the widest audience possible. Your homepage is usually the first point of contact potential customers have with your business, so start by making sure the copy on your homepage is benefit-focused and speaks to your customers’ needs.
2. Research your keywords
Keywords and phrases are how people find what they’re looking for online. Some keywords get searched dozens of times per month, some thousands of times. Which one would you rather rank for? Obviously, the second one. So for every piece of content you create – research the best keywords or phrases that will help you drive traffic to that content. And use them in your URL, article or blog title and in your page content.
3. Refresh old content
Have a plan for routine housekeeping of old content on your website. Prune content that is outdated, too long, or no longer relevant. Elsewhere, update references, stats and numbers where you need to. And if you are going to delete a post altogether - always set up a 301 redirect.
4. Add internal inks
As you create new content, it’s important to link pages within your site to one another. Look at your analytics to see which pages are most popular on your site. Add links from your top landing page to key relevant pages on your site. Make sure your blog posts link to the ‘commercial’ pages on your site, where you talk about your products or services. As you add new content, cross-link pages that cover similar topics. Not only will this help keep users on your site for longer, but the increased engagement (time on page, time on site) will signal to Google that your site meets the needs of searchers, giving a further boost to your rankings.
5. Build authority by sharing your content
LinkedIn is the perfect platform to share content with leads, clients and industry peers, and doing so will help you position yourself as a thought-leader in your space. If you’ve written a high-quality post on your website, re-purpose it as a post on LinkedIn, but linking back to your own website or blog for the original, more-detailed version. Include specific and relevant hashtags to increase the reach of your posts and get discovered by more people.
6. Answer questions and participate in discussions on forums
Answering questions for your audience is one of the keys to producing content they will value as we’ve seen – but you shouldn’t limit this activity to your own channels. Get active on forums on social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora and Reddit. Share your knowledge, answer questions and provide value. Have a complete profile or bio, including a link to your website, and if it’s within the guidelines to do so - link back to relevant articles or blogs on your site using keyword anchor text.
7. Amplify your reach on social
If the content you produce is genuinely useful, people will naturally want to share it. But you can greatly help this process along by adding social share buttons that make it super simple for them to shoot it off to their individual networks at the click of a button. A no-brainer.
8. Build an email marketing list
Email marketing has 3x the conversion rate of social media and email is the first thing most of us check on our phones when we wake up in the morning (before coffee, before even getting out of bed). If you do nothing else on this list, start building an email marketing list today. Having a subscriber list is the cornerstone of your email marketing strategy. Add signup forms to your website, and be specific about what you’ll share and how often.
9. Create a lead magnet
A lead magnet is a great way to grow your list fast, but you have to create something of value to your audience – something they will want badly enough to part with their email address. Think infographics, white papers, reports, how-to guides, playbooks, templates. A great lead magnet can be anything – but whatever the format, it should offer insight, insider knowledge, or a unique solution or time-saver that your audience wants.
10. Set up an automated email flow
Automated email flows will save you a ton of time and let you deliver targeted communications to leads or customers based on what stage they’re at in the funnel and how they’ve interacted with you so far. Start simple by setting up a welcome series to go out to anyone new that subscribes to your mailing list. It’s the perfect opportunity to introduce who you are, your products and services and how you can help them with their main challenges. Sequence the emails and spread them out over a few weeks. Include a call to action and an introductory offer to convert leads to customers.
11. Create a well-designed infographic
A high-quality infographic is super-shareable, and that means more reach and more traffic for you. Design is key, so you will need to either find the perfect Canva template, or better yet, have a designer build a custom design. For the most mileage – try to use evergreen content – nothing seasonal or dated – that way your infographic can continue to drive traffic to your site for a long time.
12. Create a lead generation quiz
Customers love tailored information, personalised recommendations and insights relevant to them. With a quiz, you can not only learn more about your audience but also provide them with a personalised and tailored response. Win-win. Link to the quiz from your socials and use relevant hashtags to expand the reach beyond your current followers.
13. Become a regular on LinkedIn
For professionals, LinkedIn is one of the best channels to help build your personal brand, grow your following, reach your perfect target audience, and increase your website traffic. To help your posts stand out and capture attention – use video or rich media when possible. Shorter updates often perform better than longer ones. Post during the morning hours to maximise engagement. And of course use hashtags to help people searching on your topic. Mix your content up with a blend of original posts and reshares from your network, and don’t forget to include calls to action on the former – this is where you will get your traffic boost from.
14. Use video to educate
Did you know YouTube is the second biggest search engine globally, after Google? That means video is a great opportunity for traffic generation. You can use video to showcase your products or services, educate your audience through detailed or bite-sized trainings, and just provide them with the opportunity to get to know and like you (key to doing business together!). To get started, set up a YouTube channel and link it back to your site, add calls to action within videos (and their descriptions) to send people to your site and embed videos in your blog posts so they will appear in search.
15. Host a podcast
Did you know there are over 21 million podcast listeners in the UK? Like video, podcasting is another hugely popular medium through which you can reach a new and growing audience. There is literally an audience out there for any topic you can think of. It’s tricky to drive traffic directly from a podcast to your site, since obviously people can be listening on the go and there’s no link to click. But hosting a podcast is a great way to boost awareness of your business and personal brand, and you can include links to transcripts, resources and more in each episode description.
16. Create a course
Teaching a free mini-course is a great way to become better known and drive traffic to your site. You can add your course to sites like Udemy or Teachable. If you find you have a knack for it, create something more in-depth and you can add an ongoing source of passive income to your business (after the initial effort). Just make sure you do your research and know you’re creating something uniquely valuable and in-demand.
17. Host a webinar
A webinar is a great platform for driving traffic to your site. People love to learn and they love free content – with a free webinar, you can give them both! Hosting is easier than ever on Zoom or Webex. Promote a week or two out on your socials and to your email list. Send a reminder email the day before and an hour before start time. And make sure to record it and make it available on-demand afterwards. Keep the content educational, practical and actionable, and avoid being too salesy which will only put your audience to sleep and discourage them from joining future events.
18. Use paid marketing
Most of these tips are focused on organic traffic, but if you want a quick traffic boost and you have some budget – paid ads are a great way to go. You can do CPC advertising on Google to capture searchers or on whichever social channel makes sense for your target audience.
19. Get press coverage
Does your business have a great story behind it? Have you achieved incredible results with a client or for yourself? Do you have a unique product or service that no-one else is offering, or do you solve people’s problems in a fresh or unexpected way. These are all angles for a good story, and journalists are always on the lookout for just that. They also need insights into specific industries and topics they don’t know anything about. Find journalists that cover businesses like yours by signing up to a service like Help a Reporter Out (HARO). One or two features in a high quality publication will not just boost your traffic directly, but also your authority and your SEO rankings.
20. Do a guest post
Leverage someone else’s audience to boost your own! Do a guest post for a blog that serves a similar audience to yours, but with a complementary and non-competitive service. This is a great way to get seen by more people, and by linking back to your own site where relevant – you’ll get a traffic and SEO boost. Guest-blogging is also a good way to boost your credentials and start to become known as the expert in your field.
21. Call on friends and family to share
People love to see each other succeed and supporting small and local has never been more popular, so don’t be shy - ask your friends and family to help promote your business. Send your website link, make sure they understand who you can help and what you can help them with (keep it short and simple), and ask them to help spread the word through their own networks, both offline and through social media. Encourage them to comment, like and share your posts. Send a friends & family offer code. These people want to see you succeed – use that to your advantage!
22. Audit your website and customer experience
OK, so technically this last one isn’t directly about driving traffic, but it will help you ensure that the traffic you DO get converts better. This is a process you should do every quarter. Take a cold, hard look at your website, trying to get into the mindset of a customer or lead, and assess the experience from an external perspective. Is the navigation crystal clear – can I easily find what I’m looking for? Is your branding consistent and memorable? Does the copy clearly and succinctly articulate how you can help solve my problems? Is there a clear call to action on every page? Are you using social testimonials throughout the site to help establish trust? By making sure all of these elements are in place, a bigger proportion of your site visitors will become leads and customers, and you will start selling more on autopilot.
