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.
Free 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.
Optimize Your Existing Content
The very first step is making sure that what you already have is working for you. This is where SEO 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”). Using tools like Semrush (more on that later), you can see what people are actually searching for online, and tailor your existing content to be more discoverable to them. A well-optimized site will give you a bedrock of reliable monthly traffic that you can then use as a foundation for everything else.
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.
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.
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.
Paid Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Website
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.
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.
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.
Tools to help drive traffic to your website
Semrush
Semrush is the go-to tool for content marketers who need to conduct keyword research for their upcoming posts. In recent years, the service 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 keywords you might want to target. It can also help analyze indicators like backlinks to your website, another marker for search engine optimization (SEO).
Remember, keywords aren’t the only thing to look at when building content — you’ll need a robust content plan first. But once you’re at the phase of actually putting that content together, or when you need ideas for ways to expand on the content in your niche, Semrush is the way to go. I’ve used Semrush on many occasions, finding it to be a helpful tool not just for research, but for the tracking of search placement over time.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best-known social media management tools, and whether you go for that or a similar tool, you’ll need something to schedule out and manage your social media profiles. Hootsuite integrates with all of the biggest social media platforms, although it has limited integration with short-form video platforms. That said, even when it comes to those platforms you can at least use Hootsuite to plan out and even edit that content, so all you have to do is hit the “post” button.
The best thing about Hootsuite, however, is that you can use it to schedule out posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, platforms you’ll want to leverage as part of your plan.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a great tool for identifying trends within your niche, allowing you to put together content to take advantage of those trends. The service 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. Buzzsumo will even help you connect with those influencers, cutting out the hassle of having to track down accurate contact information.
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.
