How To Increase Traffic To Your Website For Free

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The most important question for every internet marketer is how to get more traffic to the website that doesn’t cost anything.

In my post, I am going to go into more detail how you can increase traffic to your website for free. There are a few different ways how to do that.

When your website or blog are quite young, maybe just a few months old, you want to get your name out into the internet world.

You can put so much engaging and quality content on your site, but if no one is reading it, you won’t get your message out. That can be very frustrating.

So in this post, I will list five ways how you can drive free traffic to your site.

Five Different Ways To Get Free Traffic

Ranking In The Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo)
Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords
Social Media Presence
Video’s
Offline Advertising

I will discuss each of these options and show you, how you can use these tactics to increase your website traffic.

1) Ranking In The Search Engines

Organic listing, preferably on page 1 on Google, is the best way of getting free traffic. Since you are competing with so many other websites, it can be a long process to get good rankings.

It requires consistent work and also knowledge about optimizing your posts for the search engines.

Writing quality content is still king. Search engines love informative long posts with images which are providing value to its readers.

It is not enough to post once in a while, instead, posting at least once a week on a regular basis shows Google that you are serious about your online business.

Always have your reader in mind. Just imagine you would write to your friend or a colleague. Traffic means real people are coming to your site and looking for answers to their problems or questions they have.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is another crucial factor.

My advice: Put the keyword you are using in your Headline, meta description, in the first paragraph of your post and again closer to the end of your article. Also, it is beneficial to put the keyword in the alt text of your image.

Don’t overdo it, though. It has to make sense in within your written content.

To make SEO easier, I recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin. (you find it in the WP directory) It works like an on-page analyzer. It gives you a checklist and a score regarding your SEO. It also checks your content regarding the readability.

Not only that, it shows you how you can improve your score step by step. (refer to the screenshot)

As you can see on my screenshot, there is room for improvement. So I need to go back and follow the suggestions the plugin is showing me next to the red dots.

Follow A Procedure

I also have a procedure once I have published a post.

Step 1:

I don’t wait for Google to crawl my site for new posts. I copy the URL of my new post and go to Google Search Console. Once there, I will click on my website (under properties). Then I click on Crawl (1) ⇒ click on (2) Fetch as Google ⇒ paste my URL in the space provided (3) ⇒ click Fetch(4) ⇒click request indexing (5). Done! Now Google will index your new post in a few minutes.

Rinse and repeat with your next post!

Step 2:

I share my post on social media. I recommend having at least a Google+, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter account. More about this subject further down.

2) Low -Hanging Fruit Keywords

I wrote an in-depth post about long tailed keywords and low-hanging fruit a while ago.

[What Is Long Tail Keyword Research]

It is essential to do a proper keyword research to attract the right audience to your website. My favorite keyword research tool to do so is Jaaxy.

Especially when you are starting out with a blog or website, you will need to find keywords that have some good monthly searches and a low number of competing websites. If you concentrate on these low-hanging fruit keywords, you not only have better chances to get higher rankings in Google but also get a highly targeted group of readers to your site.

Over time, writing content with using specific low-hanging fruit keywords, will increase the number of visitors to your site.

I recommend posting to your site at least once, even better twice or three times a week. It all depends on your schedule and other commitments you may have.

3) Social Media

Social media has become a great source of free traffic. Not only do you want to become an authority in your chosen niche. It is also desirable to build a brand through the use of social media.

My favorite social media platforms are Pinterest, Facebook, and Google+. Just recently I also created an Instagram account for my HonestSuccesOnline site.

Pinterest is my top favorite social media platform. I love how easy it is to use and how people can pin your site and can always get back to it. It is like bookmarking your site.

I have started to use a helpful little tool called Tailwind which I will review once I have got more experience with it.

Tailwind is an app and can be utilized for Pinterest and also for Instagram. You can sign up for a free trial with no credit card required.

Another free tool to gain Facebook shares, Pinterest followers, and many more features is Linkcollider. Again, I only recently started using it and will do a review very shortly. So far it looks very promising.

Update on March 15, 2017: Here is my review of Linkcollider.

I suggest concentrating on a couple of social media accounts to start off with. Choose your preferred medium and stick with it.

Always add social share buttons to your site so people can share your content. I use the Sumo Plugin because it has the most variety of social media to choose from.

And you never know, your next awesome post might be going viral one day. 🙂

4) Videos

It is no secret that videos are ranking high in the search engines and therefore can drive a lot of traffic to your site.

The most popular platform is YouTube.com. Here are a few tips for getting ranked.

When you upload your video, optimize it the same way you would your post. Put your keyword in the title and use it in the description.

Use roughly 400 words to describe your video, so the search engines know what the video is all about. Add yourURL of your website to the video so that visitors can click through to your site.

Obviously, the more active your YouTube channel is, the easier it will get ranked.

5) Offline Advertising

Why not using the good old business card to get the word out about your website or blog? Have them handy in your handbag or wallet and hand them out when you talk about your business.

Yes, your website is your business!

It is quite cheap to get business cards printed. Don’t forget to put your logo on it, contact details and also your social media accounts. I use Vistaprint which is easy to use, great value for money and it delivers to over 120 countries.

Summary

There you have it. My five different ways how to increase traffic to your website for free.

I guarantee, if you put my suggestions into place, you will see an increase of visitors to your site.

Don’t forget to write quality content and always have your reader in mind. It also might help to have a checklist handy:

Is your post SEO ready?
Have you requested indexing on Google Search Console?
Did you use low-hanging fruit keywords with low competition?
Have you shared your post on social media?
Have you got social share buttons on your site?
Would a video complement your post?
Have you got business cards?

Please share your thoughts in the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you!