The top priority of a website owner is to generate relevant traffic. But driving traffic to a website is not an easy feat. Sometimes, you feel like you are doing everything and still not getting any results. Several factors come into play when it is about attracting online searchers. Having a website is not enough. There are more than a billion websites on the Internet and, probably, thousands of websites, if not a million, in your domain. It means you need to make more efforts to compete and gain spots among top search results and boost the traffic on your website.
Proven Ways to Drive Website Traffic
In this guide, you will learn more than fifteen proven ways to drive website traffic, and most of them will help you increase your website traffic for free.
PPC Campaigns
Content Creation on Topics with Search Traffic Potential
Start Guest Posting
Invite Others to Guest Post on Your Site
Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
Implement Schema Microdata
Internal Linking
Email Marketing is Still Popular
Improve Site Experience
Build an Internal Community
Get Active on Social Media
Leverage Insights from Analytics Data
Submit Content in Online Communities
Use Video (Along With Text)
Get the Gist of What Your Competitors Are Doing Better
Host Webinars If Possible
Make Your Site Secure
Create Authority and Thought Leadership
Now, let’s get started.
PPC Campaigns
Pay-Per-Click campaigns are, of course, the most famous way of driving traffic to a website. In this model of digital marketing, as an advertiser, you will pay a fee for each click you get on your advertisement. In short, you will pay only for you what you get. If you can create relevant PPC campaigns with high potential, search engines may also reward you by charging less.
However, before you invest in any campaign, remember that each paid channel comes with its perks and perils. So, think carefully about what objective you want to fulfill with a paid campaign, and then create your strategy around it.
Content Creation on Topics with Search Traffic Potential
The type of content you have on your website decides how much relevant traffic your website gets. While it is good to cover rare and unique topics related to your products, services, brand, or industry, you should focus more on themes that can bring high search traffic.
You need to write content on topics that more people find interesting and worth engaging. Choosing low competition keywords with considerable search volumes will provide a good start.
Check out social media, Google search console, and discussion forums to learn about what people are discussing, what they want to know about, and how you can help them.
Find out websites and blogs with high authority and credibility and that are willing to accept guest blogs. You can use Google search operators to find such sites with “write for us” or “become a contributor” pages. Or, you can directly connect with a website owner and ask for guest posting. A lot of websites don’t advertise but don’t say ‘no’ to free content. Once you find such a site with a good domain rating, create compelling content, and submit it.
Guest Posting will help you accomplish three goals: get more referral traffic, create more backlinks and enhance your brand awareness.
Invite Others to Guest Post on Your Site
Other website owners are also looking for sites to publish their content for a strong backlink profile. So, why not use it to your advantage? Invite other bloggers in your domain to share their blogs and articles on your site. However, be wary of low-quality content and spammy links. Make sure that you approve only good quality, original content. It can help you bring substantial traffic to your site.
Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
The keywords that bring you highly relevant traffic are often long-tail keywords. They account for a significant number of online searches that are potentially relevant and profitable for you. Since they have relatively low competition, they are easy to rank for and thus, have more potential to increase website traffic.
Implementing and updating schema microdata will not directly drive website traffic, but it will make it easier for search engine bots to index your website pages. Plus, it will also help in rendering better rich site snippets that can improve click-through rates.
Internal Linking
The traffic to your different web pages also depends on how strong is your internal linking structure. When you create and publish new content, figure out if there is an opportunity for creating internal links. It strengthens your SEO strategy, generates more traffic, and helps you impart a smooth and seamless user experience as people can easily find relevant content without any effort.
Email Marketing is Still Popular
Do you think email marketing is not relevant and beneficial nowadays? Think again. Email marketing is far from dead. Email marketing continues to yield results as people open their emails regularly.
Just make sure that you make irresistible headlines and make compelling offers for your targeted customers. Do not bombard people by sending every update about your business.
Your target is not to spam their emails but to remind your potential and existing customers that you have an exciting offer for them. And you are always one click away!
Improve Site Experience (Responsiveness, Speed, and Visual Appeal)
Before you make any assumptions, check out the following data revealed by SWEOR:
75% of consumers determine the credibility of a company based on its website design
85% of users think that a company’s mobile website should be as good as or better than its desktop version.
47% of people don’t wait for a website that takes more than 2 seconds to load
88% of online consumers don’t consider returning to a website after a bad experience
Hopefully, you’ve understood why you need to improve the overall website experience. Along with other factors, you need to work on the responsiveness of your website as more people browse on smartphones or tablets these days. Besides, find ways to improve the loading speed and visual appeal of your website. Otherwise, people will quickly switch to other websites. They have no lack of choice online.
Build an Internal Community
People love to share their thoughts and experiences online. So, why not let them snuggle and make part of your internal community. Provide your consumers with an easy way to discuss your offerings or share what’s on their minds after reading your post.
Incorporate a robust commenting system into your website with the help of Facebook comments, Disqus, or any other third-party commenting system.
Alternatively, you can also create a dedicated forum where your site visitors can ask questions. While doing this, ensure that your discussion forum meets the minimum standards of decorum.
Get Active on Social Media
Rather than using social media as a broadcasting channel, get social and interact with your followers on social media regularly. Find out relevant hashtags and join discussions wherever and whenever you can. Exhibit your workplace culture, spill your thoughts, ask for suggestions, share relevant videos, create polls, and arrange contests. Let them see you behind the curtain; meaning, don’t hesitate to show yourself and your experts who can share their experiences or insights with your followers.
Use Google Analytics to get insights on almost every metric you can think of and keep an eye on them. Observe what types of topics get more traffic and see how, where, and when your website traffic is rising. Then, create and refine your promotional and content strategies using this information. When you have the correct data in hand, you can use it as the best way to increase traffic on your site.
Submit Content in Online Communities
Several communities, such as Reddit and Quora, allow businesses to discuss or write blogs on trendy topics. If your content is original, relevant, and helpful, you can generate high referral traffic. However, be aware that members in such communities are super savvy and can easily detect spam content disguised as legitimate links. If you aren’t doing this right, your content might get restricted. So, submit your content carefully.
Use Video (Along With Text)
More people love to watch a video rather than reading a long blog post. The most popular video types include explainer videos, presentation videos, testimonial videos, sales videos, and video ads. So, creating a high-quality video on popular themes and topics routinely can help you drive traffic and encourage people to stay on your site for more time.
And yes, add subtitles! Many people prefer to watch videos with subtitles, especially if videos are not available in their mother tongue.
Plus, keep in mind those people who prefer reading text content. Add your content in text form below the video as well. People learn to trust those websites that take care of even little things for the comfort of their visitors.
Get the Gist of What Your Competitors Are Doing Better
Not having an idea of how your competitors are driving traffic means you are missing out a lot. You can easily find software tools for SEO competitive analysis to get the gist of how your competitors impress site visitors and social media followers. You can use this information to get started on all those things you haven’t tried till now to boost website traffic. Besides, you can also find those areas where your competitors are not doing well. Use that opportunity to fill the gap and attract their customers to your site.
Webinars are a great marketing tool as they directly or indirectly help increase sales and improve the interaction between your brand and your followers. As a result, businesses are using webinars worldwide to attract customers, promote their offerings, and increase brand loyalty. When you advertise webinars with effective email marketing and social media campaigns, you can get better results. Remind your followers about the last chance to register, and make sure to archive your webinars for later viewing.
Make Your Site Secure
It might be a little thing to many website owners, but you must not neglect it. Not securing a website using an SSL certificate is a blunder. Even though moderately, HTTPS correlates with higher search rankings. Google Chrome data shows that more than 70% of Chrome users visit HTTPS-enabled websites. So, you can easily conjure up that if you want to rank higher, boost your site credibility, and gain more traffic, you need to make your website more secure via SSL/HTTPS.
Create Authority and Thought Leadership
Another proven way to boost your website traffic is to interview industry experts and thought leaders in your niche industry. Publish those interviews on your blog. It will help you increase your website traffic and build authority for providing great insights from experts’ perspectives. Send e-vites requesting for an interview to personalities who are highly revered in the industry by your audience and prepare a list of questions that your consumers might want to know about or help them get unique insights. Make sure that you have all the equipment and material ready to ensure that the interview goes smoothly.
That’s all for now! If you need help using the above strategies to boost website traffic, get in touch with our SEO experts. To get started with us, give us a call or send an email.
Vijaya Raj Laxmi Tyagi has been an avid content writer for over five years with a keen interest in writing SEO articles and blogs. She also finds great enthusiasm in writing about a vast variety of topics, including gardening, interior designing, health & wellness, and tourism. Her educational background in Computer Science and Engineering has given her an edge to write about technologies that tend to mark a great impression on daily lifestyle and behaviour, while her intrigue towards Mother Nature drives her to discuss green topics.
