You may not know it, but if you own a website, you’re engaged in constant battle.
No, I’m not talking about cybersecurity, although that’s important too — I’m talking about the battle for attention. Your foes? Every other website owner in your niche, many of whom are likely doing a better job at driving traffic to their website than you are. That means that potential customers, readers, or other interested parties are discovering their business, but not yours.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to take back some of that attention. Instead of simply wondering why your website isn’t getting any hits, there are actionable steps that you can take to raise that pageviews metric. Whether free or paid, basic or advanced, here’s how to increase website traffic the right way.
8 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
When it comes to knowing how to increase website traffic, you don’t actually have to spend any cash. Sure, paid tools can be helpful in the arsenal of a website marketer, but it’s a good idea to leverage free tools first.
1. Optimize Your Existing Content
Your content needs to be working for you. This is where content optimization comes in. Put simply, it means checking that every piece of content you’ve published is targeting a specific keyword (that is, a phrase people commonly type into Google when searching, e.g., “best running shoes”). This is not to say keyword optimization on its own will ensure you are driving the users you need to grow your business – you will need a robust content plan first to make sure you are covering the topics and answering the questions your users are most interested in. However, once your have that foundation in place, optimizing your content to align with users’ intent will support your traffic growth.
There are various tools on the market to help content marketers conduct keyword research for their upcoming posts. In recent years, these services has been expanding, too, not only helping you research keywords, but also helping you optimize your existing content to better target keywords, and offering suggestions about how you may repurpose it to better perform.
A well-optimized site will give you a bedrock of reliable monthly traffic that you can then use as a foundation for everything else.
2. Make More Content
The best way to increase web traffic is to have more content for that traffic to go to. That’s right, simply write more, and you might start seeing an increase in traffic to your website.
Of course, there’s more to it than that. If your goal is to increase web traffic, then start by creating a real content plan for your website. Then, conduct keyword research on the topics that you’ll cover, ensuring that your content can properly rank (more on how to do that below). Make sure you get a good idea of what kinds of search terms your audience is using, so that you can cater your content to them. It’s also worth researching top topics in your industry, so that you can build sets of content around those topics, establish expertise in your industry, and grow your site’s reputation.
Once you’ve created a content plan with the right keywords, assemble your content and publish it on your site. If you were able to put together a solid plan and target keywords that your audience is actually using, you should start to see increases in traffic over time. That’s what happened to a site of my own — once I put together a content plan and put some more effort into keyword research, I saw some pretty huge traffic gains.
You can find tools to identify trends within your niche, allowing you to put together content to take advantage of those trends. These services will also help you to identify influencers in the niche, which you can look to for ideas for your own content, or to approach for sponsored content on their platforms. Some of these tools can even help you connect with influencers, cutting out the hassle of having to track down accurate contact information.
3. Hire Influencers
These days, influencer marketing can have a massive impact on your website’s traffic over time, not to mention the effects it can have on brand awareness. Influencers don’t have to be solely on TikTok or other short-form video platforms — they could have large followings on sites like X or Threads, big YouTube accounts, or others.
Paying for sponsored posts around your product or website can be a big part of understanding how to increase website traffic, especially if they link directly to your site.
4. Make a Real Social Media Plan
Social media is tricky, but since this is the “free” section, you’re probably not looking to hire a social media manager. That means it’s down to you, and these days, simply throwing a post up every few days probably isn’t good enough.
To make a social media plan, start by ensuring you have accounts for your brand on all of the major platforms, including short-form video platforms like TikTok. Video content is a big deal these days, and it can be hugely helpful in raising awareness around your brand. Once your accounts are in order, come up with a list of topics in your industry that you think might do well on social media. Look for short, snappy topics that can be tackled easily. Lastly, create content and posts around those topics, and schedule them.
There’s plenty of discussion around how often you should post, and that largely varies by platform, but aim to have at least three or four posts per week, if not more, on each platform. Learn how to create content for social media.
Social media management tools will help you plan, edit and schedule your posts and manage your social media profiles. These tools integrate with all of the biggest social media platforms, and preferably with short-form video platforms.
5. Create (And Use) a Mailing List
Email marketing is still a big deal, and it can still help drive large amounts of traffic to your site each time you send out an email. As such, it’s worth creating a mailing list that you can leverage over time.
To start building a mailing list, make sure you have an easy newsletter sign-up form on your website, and post about the newsletter on social media. As more people sign up to the mailing list, you’ll be able to leverage that list to drive more and more traffic. Just make sure you don’t spam your subscribers with too many emails, as doing so will cause them to unsubscribe.
Of course, simply having a list isn’t necessarily enough — you’ll also need to create content that you can send out to your mailing list. That, however, will vary depending on your brand. It could be shorter versions of stories that link to your website’s content, coupons for your product, and so on.
6. Pay For More Content
Building a sense of expertise in your industry can be hard, especially when it involves dozens of posts and other content that you might not have the time to put together on your own.
A great way to accelerate the creation of content on your site is to pay for it. Hire freelance writers to produce content, including both written content and video content. This will help accelerate your content strategy and ensure there’s no missed opportunities when it comes to ranking on Google and other search engines.
7. Buy Ads
On top of paying for more organic content from influencers, it may be worth buying ads on social media or in search outright. These kinds of ads will show up in a user’s feed on social media platforms, or at the top of a search page in the case of search ads, both of which will also help raise brand awareness.
You will likely have to experiment a little to find the right kinds of ads and platforms that work for your brand. Try to buy a few different kinds of posts on a few different platforms, and pay close attention to the analytics of those ads after a few days. That’s true for search ads too — try out ads with different titles and copy, so you can see what works best. Lastly, make sure your ads are specifically targeted to your audience, as there’s no use paying for ads that show up to users who can’t actually use your service.
8. Distribute Your Content on the Open-Web
Content recommendation is a system for suggesting content to visitors based on what they are already interested in – on the open web. You will often see these types of ads in the form of widgets, display banners, and feeds.
Content recommendation tools include website plugins and software platforms. These tools make use of AI technology to recommend your content based on keywords, tags, and how users are engaging with content in real time.
See how Europa Press Boosts KPIs with Taboola
Key Takeaways
Figuring out how to increase website traffic isn’t necessarily easy, and it involves a lot of time and effort. The good news is that there are actionable steps you can take to drive traffic to your website for free — though if you are willing to pay for help, you may find that you’re able to increase traffic to the site quicker.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
How does SEO increase website traffic?
SEO helps organize your content so that search engines can easily understand what your site and pages are about, and show them when users search for relevant keywords. SEO is constantly changing, and Google’s algorithms are always shifting, too. But by using best practices for good SEO, Google is likely to rank your website higher in search, increasing the likelihood that potential customers will click on a link to your website.
How can I increase traffic to my website without SEO?
There are a few ways to increase traffic to your website without SEO. For starters, you could pay for ads on social media or in search. This will place your website in front of potential customers without you needing to create concise content. You can also pay for posts from social media influencers, or simply lean into social media and email marketing yourself, instead of relying on search.
Why is my website traffic so low?
There are a few reasons your website traffic could be low. It’s possible you’re not making use of SEO to ensure your website ranks as high as it could. Make sure you use a combination of SEO, social media, and other marketing tools, to increase website traffic.
