In this article, I am going to look at how to increase traffic to your blog or website. You may or may not be familiar with these methods, but the reason that they have been around for so long is that they work and they continue to work.
Getting website traffic is really important for website owners and bloggers, but for the beginner marketer who doesn’t know all the best ways to get traffic, nor has a big spending budget for ads, it is the biggest task they struggle with.
I know there are a lot of new marketers out there who have built their own website or have had one built for them and these are good websites that would be profitable if they could simply get good targeted traffic to it.
There are many different traffic generation strategies, but here are five that you can focus on, and these are great tactics that beginners and more advanced marketers can use to get a steady flow of traffic.
Remember, at the start of your online career, it’s unreasonable to expect a tsunami of traffic (no matter what any over-hyped sales page says) with one click. Every marketer starts with little amounts of traffic and builds it up gradually. This is true whether they buy traffic or get free traffic.
Generally speaking, imagine getting traffic is like you are a spider building a web. You build one strand at a time, and after many strands, you have a massive web through which people can reach your site.
Too many times, a newbie will try one method, get a few clicks, and maybe even a few subscribers but then give up because the results are not coming in fast enough for their liking. Have patience and think of that spider’s web-building analogy!
How To Increase Traffic To Your Blog For Free
Make Faceless Videos
Most beginners don’t like to get in front of the camera and talk but you don’t need to because there are several types of videos you can make without showing your face or talking.
Explainer videos are perhaps the easiest to start with. Think of some “How to” topics related to your niche. You should go to Google Keyword planner, Google search, or use Jaaxy to get a list of some “how-to” keyword ideas you can use for video titles. These keyword ideas will also give you an idea of what people are searching for. You want to try to use popular keyword terms for your video titles so you can actually get a decent number of views, etc.
The next step is to create a PowerPoint slideshow covering your “5 Steps To A Flatter Stomach in 7 days” (or whatever title you choose) and record it with some screen-capture software like Camtasia or the free OBS Studio software.
You don’t even need to speak on the video. People can read. Get some royalty-free pics to throw on it as well as some music to go with your slideshow to spice it up a little. There you go! You’ve got your first video to upload to Youtube. Put your website link in the description box under the video while posting it. It’s a good idea to also have a call to action at the end of your video to tell people they can get more info at your website. It also helps to remind people to subscribe to your video channel for more free helpful tips in the future.
Facebook groups
Find and join groups on Facebook that are on the same niche topic as your niche website. If you have a blog about horses, join horse riding, show jumping, or dressage groups.
After you have been accepted into the group(s), start by getting involved in the conversations. The aim at the start is to make yourself known and become a familiar face. If you start posting your links on day one you’ll have a very short stay in the group.
After a while, you will start to gain credibility and perhaps even some authority if you can contribute useful info on the topic. Once you have some credibility you could start writing posts for the group. Make posts on the FB group feed itself. Then, when you feel you have a good following in the group, post links to content on your site.
If you become a bit famous and hold some authority in those groups, then you can start your own FB group and become the star of your own FB show. Facebook groups are an excellent method on how to increase traffic to your blog.
Search Engine Optimization And Blogging
Search Engine Optimization aka “SEO” is the term that means making your website optimal so the pages rank high in the Google search results pages. Ultimately, if your page was in the top spot on Google for the keyword “how to make money online” then you’d get thousands of visitors to your site every month. (10K to 100K people search for that term monthly – thanks to Google keyword planner. Because this is organic traffic, those visitors would be absolutely free!
Never discount SEO because Google search traffic is up there with the best quality traffic there is.
Here’s how to SEO your site. I highly recommend you use WordPress to run any type of blog content-rich site. There are so many plugins and themes and WordPress can grow with you to a full-scale full-time online business.
After you’ve got WordPress installed on your domain, run through this SEO for WordPress checklist for a better chance on how to increase traffic to your blog:
- Do You have speedy hosting – Your website should load up in a matter of seconds or you will lose visitors and Google hates slow websites.
- Make sure that the theme you choose is responsive on a mobile phone.
- For every article you do, make sure you do your keyword research. Without this, your pages will just get lost out there in cyberspace.
- Use the SEO or Yoast Plugin which will tell you if your page is optimized and what you need to do to improve.
- Make sure you have an SSL certificate. Wealthy Affiliate offers this with all their hosting.
- Make sure your permalinks contain your keywords for that particular post.
- Verify your site with Google Search Console and submit your XML sitemap.
- Use optimized headings and subheadings in your article relating to your keyword.
- Use optimized names for all the images that you post.
- Link to other posts on your blog from within your post, but make sure the link is relevant.
- Link to your social media profiles each time you do a post.
Once you have your site up and running with great content which is both helpful and relevant, Google and other search engines will start to index your pages and the traffic will start to come.
Keep adding posts regularly to your site so that Google knows that your site is active and is getting updated content all the time.
Instagram can be a lot of fun and is an awesome traffic source for you.
Here is a way you can use Instagram for free marketing without having to create content.
Create a new account for your niche. You’re going to be posting a collection mish-mash of other people’s content (this is all cool if you tag and mention the original creator) so give your account a catch-all type, generic name like “Golfers Paradise” or “Gym Bunnies”.
The first thing you need to do is brand up your Instagram account page.
You should create a logo or get one made on Fiverr for $5. Put your website link in your profile.
Now, find the top accounts and influencers in your niche and follow them. Your feed will start to become very full! Then it’s a matter of reposting the popular posts while giving credit to the creator. You can do this by taking screenshots of the post and doing it all manually, or, to save time, get the Repost app on your smartphone which makes reposting much, much easier.
Again, this will be a long-term strategy and it’s a numbers game. The more you post, the more followers you’ll gain. The key to getting the most bang for your posts is to add a dozen or so relevant hashtags to each post.
Wait until you have a decent following before you post your own stuff, and make sure you tell your readers that your link is in your profile because, you know, you can’t post clickable links on Instagram.
This same basic method can be applied to sites like Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In, and other social media sites. You’ll be busy if you try to do this on all the social media platforms so you might want to stick to just a few or get a virtual assistant to help you post on a daily basis.
Link trading with other marketers
This is a forgotten method that still kicks butt as far as how to increase traffic to your blog. It’s a 10-minute job that can have you get long-term traffic well after you have set up the link.
Here’s how you can set up link exchanges. For this to work best I recommend you have a blog or other content-rich type of site.
First, go join a bunch of newsletters (email lists) in similar niches to yours. You want to read these emails and try to build relationships with them. Reply to their emails and heck, get wild and buy one of their products! Get your foot in the door because these are the guys that you can work with to build your business.
Once you’ve got some communications going and are friends with a few marketers, ask them if they’d like to exchange website links. I.e. You put their site URL on your site and vice-versa. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got a good website because they will not want to link to a site that is sub-par. If they say yes, awesome! You can score a link on their site which will send traffic and also help with your SEO, assuming that their site is well ranked.
The real gold here though is that you’ve made a contact and friend that you can do other work with in the future. You could do blog post exchanges, banner ad exchanges, email ad swaps or anything you can think of that will be mutually beneficial.
The internet is great for connecting with people easily, but we sometimes overlook building real meaningful personal relationships on here. We’re all too busy doing our own thing to get ahead of the competition and don’t realize that working with others can be fruitful too.
In conclusion, these are 5 of the top free methods for generating website traffic even if you’re just starting out. These are doable for anyone of any skill level and they have been working for years, and will probably go on working for years to come.
Traffic will come little by little, so don’t become discouraged if you don’t get 1000s of visitors on day one. Stick with even just one of these methods and you will see traffic start to snowball over time. These are the best time-tested methods on how to increase traffic to your blog long term.
