31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
What is Website Traffic?
Website traffic tells you how many users visit your website. Google Analytics tools will often tell you both the number of page views and the number of unique page views.
Page views are the total number of times anyone has visited your site while unique page views tell you how many people visited your site — some multiple times and some only once.
The idea is that the more website traffic you get the more opportunities you have to convert users.
How To Increase Traffic to Your Website With Innovative Ways
The challenge for any business is to make sure that when people look for a product or services they find you and not a competitor.
If you ask any business owner or marketer – what would they like the most in the world and their answer will certainly be – more customers!
What is next on a business’ wish list? More traffic to their website.
There is plenty you can do to increase traffic to your website at no cost except your time.
Today we are going to look at 31+ creative ways to increase website traffic and this includes several ways to increase website traffic for FREE.
There are in no order of importance since all of them are equally important and it will depend on your business goals and objective how you choose and mix them to achieve your desired outcome.
Table Of Content
Below are the content of 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website.
Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.
- 1. Simple Advertising
- 2. Build Up Internal Links
- 3. Increase Social Media Presence
- 4. Leverage Long Tail Keywords
- 5. Encourage Incoming Links
- 6. Mix Blogs Up
- 7. Blog Regularly
- 8. Start Guest Blogging
- 9. Write Amazing Headlines
- 10. Plug Into Blogosphere
- 11. Optimise For Your Audience
- 12. Improve Your SEO
- 13. Research The Competition
- 14. Attend Conferences
- 15. Crete High Quality Conntent
- 16. Submit Content To Reddit
- 17. Get Active On Social Media
- 18. Energise Email Marketing
- 19. Speed Up Your Site
- 20. Interview Industry Thought Leaders
- 21. Create A Sense Of Community
- 22. Blow Your Own Trumpet
- 23. Participate In Blog Commenting
- 24. Marketing On LinkedIn
- 25. Mobile Responsive Website
- 26. Use Analytics To Optimise Results
- 27. Produce Video Content
- 28. Host Webinars
- 29. Go On Podcasts
- 30. Add Share Triggers To Content
- 31. Use Question Analyser To Create Content
- 32. Improve Organic CTR
- 33. Use Influencer Marketing For Credibility
- 34. Add Schema Mark Up To Content
- 35. Use The Power Of Retargeting
1. Simple Advertising
This is definitely obvious so we will look at it first. Paid search, social media advertising and display advertising are excellent ways of attracting visitors, building brand awareness and getting your site in front of people.
Create and amend your paid strategies to suit your goals – do you just want more traffic or are you looking to increase conversions too?
Each paid channel has its pros and cons so think carefully about your objectives before you reach for your credit card.
If you are hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, you will need to target high commercial intent keywords as part of your paid search strategies.
Yes – competition for these search terms can be expensive and fierce but the payoffs are more than worth it.
2. Build up On Internal Links
Once you have built up a decent catalogue of content then you can link it to your blogs and website guiding visitors to more relevant content.
The strength of your link profile is not solely determined by how many sites link back to you – it can also be affected by your internal linking structure.
You lost me here …..
When creating and publishing content always ensure to keep an eye out for opportunities for internal links.
This will keep visitors on your website for longer which helps boost your SEO and provide a better, more useful user experience – UX whilst driving traffic to your website.
However do not overuse internal links since too many of it will trigger a spam like reaction and visitors will bounce away.
3. Increase Social Media Presence
It is not enough to produce great content and hope that people find it – you have to be proactive.
One of the best ways to increase website traffic to site is to use social media channels to promote your content.
Build a presence on social media networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook etc. All of these activities help to get your name and website address out on the internet.
Twitter is ideal for short, snappy with tempting links, whereas Google+ promotion can help your site show up in personalised search results and seems especially effective in B2B niches.
If you are a B2C product company you might find great traction with image-heavy social sites like Pinterest and Instagram. This strategy will increase website and social media traffic for your business.
Here is more advice on making the most of social media marketing.
Add share buttons to your site to make it easy for people to share your content. And write content worthy of sharing and this is how to increase traffic to your website through social media.
Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings
4. Leverage Long Tail Keywords
Do not just go with the most popular or high intent keywords in your market.
Then it is time to target long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords account for a majority of web searches – meaning that if you are not targeting them as part of your paid search or SEO efforts then you will be missing out.
No Way ….
Use keywords that are more specific to your product or service. With time Google and other search engines will identify your website or blog as a destination for that particular subject.
This in turn will boost your content in search rankings and help your ideal customers find you.
Ranking on Google is about owning a sphere of influence for a specific niche topic.
For example this blog post is targeted for those who want specific learnings on increasing organic traffic. We are not targeting every SEO-related keyword.
5. Encourage Incoming Links
Google prioritises sites that have a lot of incoming links especially from other trustworthy sites.
Wow really!!
Encourage clients, friends, family members, partners, suppliers, industry experts and friendly fellow bloggers to link to your site.
The more incoming links you have the higher your site will rank because the more authoritative you become in the eyes of search engines.
You need to be aware of sites that try to trick Google with spammy links from low-reputation sites and these links can actually damage your SEO.
This is how you drive traffic to your website using SEO.
6. Mix Blogs Up
There is no magic formula for content marketing success. For this reason – vary the length and format of your content to make it as appealing as possible to different types of readers.
Inter mix shorter, news-based blog posts with long-form content as well as video, infographics and data-driven pieces for maximum impact.
7. Blog Regularly
Blogging is perhaps the most effective way how to increase website traffic organically.
Why ….
It lets you go into more depth than your website allows and creates a large catalogue of helpful, persona-optimised content centred on your market niche.
Blogs also help improve your SEO because you are constantly adding new content to your page.
As a result of your improved SEO strategy – your organic lead generation will increa
Each time you write a new blog post you can email it to your subscribers. Post about it on social media.
Now you are able to generate new leads and get more traffic from multiple sources with just one blog post. This can help increase website traffic organically.
However poorly-written, spammy or cheap content can do more harm than good therefore avoid it at all cost.
8. Start Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is still alive and kicking despite what you may have heard.
It is a two-way communication. In addition to posting content to other blogs invite people in your niche to blog on your own site.
Securing a guest post on a reputable site can increase blog traffic to your website and help build your brand into the bargain.
They are likely to share and link to their guest article which could bring new readers to your site.
Just be sure that you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links because Google is cracking way down on low-quality guest blogging.
Here are a few tips on creating a guest post that will actually knock them out and create a stream of leads to your site.
So writing a popular guest blog post goes like this:
- Use simple words – You want people to be able to read and understand quickly what you are writing about especially if it is about a complex topic. So write as a 5th grade level.
- Write advanced how-to blog posts– Once you have your topic – sit down and write out all the steps to accomplishing your stated goal. Then revise, working in greater and greater detail.
- Links– Put plenty of internal and external links into your post. Bloggers love this.
- Create a conversation – Ask questions throughout your post that invite readers to think about and respond to what you are saying.
- Prove you are the authority – Fill your post with research and statistics that prove your point and show readers that you are an expert on this information.
- Create powerful headlines – Finally, concentrate on generating some truly persuasive headlines. This is by far the most important feature so work hard at it and we know you can.
9. Write Amazing Headlines
Headlines are one of the most important parts of your content. Without a compelling headline – even the most comprehensive blog post will go unread.
Comprehend the art of headline writing.
Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO
10. Plug Into the Blogosphere
The blogosphere is a reciprocal sort of place.
Read, comment and link to other people’s sites and blogs especially those operating in your market and hopefully they will read, comment and link to yours therefore attracting more prospects.
A good place to start is Quora. A neat tactic for getting your voice out there is to spend some time answering other peoples’ questions on Quora and providing real, valuable and tangible insights for the specific area you are an expert in.
11. Optimise for Your Readers
First you need to write your buyer personas so you know to whom you are addressing your content.
What ….
By creating quality educational content that resonates with your ideal buyers you will naturally improve your SEO.
This means tapping into the main issues of your personas and the keywords they use in search queries.
Optimising for search engines alone is useless and all you will have is keyword-riddled nonsense.
Please your buyer personas and you will automatically please the search engines and increase your SEO ranking.
12. Improve your SEO
Optimising your content for search engines is still a valuable and worthwhile practice.
Are you making the most of image alt text? Are you creating internal links to new content? What about meta descriptions?
Wait a minute …..
The meta title, URL and description are the three key ingredients for an optimised web page or blog post. It is simple yet effective.
In fact all on-page SEO factors are important to get right but meta descriptions and meta data means you can tell Google exactly what you are talking about.
You can use a number of tools including Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, HubSpot’s SEO tools and Ahrefs to help us optimise your pages but you have to work on each page in turn.
Optimising for on-page SEO does not have to take ages and it could help boost your organic traffic.
This is another way how you increase website traffic using SEO.
Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast
You can use software like BuzzSumo to check out what your competitors are up to.
Really ??
These services aggregate the social performance of specific sites and content to provide you with an overall view of what topics are resonating with readers and making the rounds on social media.
Find out what people are reading and talking about and create that type of content to bring traffic to your website.
Whatever industry you are in the chances are there are at least one or two major conventions and conferences that are relevant to your business.
Attending these events is a good idea but speaking at them is even better.
Even a halfway decent speaking engagement is an excellent way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and gain significant exposure for your site.
This is a great exposure for your business and will also increase website traffic through social networking.
Try to write and publish as often as possible without compromising the cost of quality.
The more high quality content you have on your website or blog – the better opportunities you create on how to get traffic to your website organically.
16. Submit Content to Reddit
A notice of great importance – do not spam Reddit and other similar sites hoping to hit the jackpot of referral traffic because it is not going to happen.
Members of communities like Reddit are extremely savvy to spam disguised as legitimate links but it does not hurt to submit links that these audiences will find genuinely useful every now and then.
Choose a relevant sub-reddit and submit your content then watch the traffic pour in.
17. Get Active on Social Media
It is not enough to just share content through social channels – you need to actively participate in the community.
Where do I …
Do you have a Twitter account? Then join in the group discussions with relevant hashtags for your niche or industry.
Are your audiences leaving any comments on your Facebook page? Answer these questions and engage with your readers.
Nothing turns people off quicker than using social media as a broadcast channel.
Use social media as it was intended and actually interact with your fans to get your brand across, increase your engagement, help resolve their issues and increase your conversions. This will help you how to increase website traffic from social media.
18. Energise Email Marketing
So many businesses are focused on attracting new customers through content marketing that they forget about more traditional methods.
Honestly …
Email marketing can be a powerful tool and even a moderately successful email blast can result in a significant uptick in traffic.
Just be careful not to bombard people with relentless emails about every single update in your business.
And do not overlook the power of word-of-mouth marketing especially from people who are already enjoying your products or services.
A friendly email reminder about a new service or product can help you boost your traffic especially if you have a created an effective content marketing funnel.
19. Speed Up Your Site - Turbo
It only takes 5 seconds for a potential customer to go to your competitors and you have lost your sale if your webpage is still loading.
If your site takes forever to load then your bounce rate will be sky high.
Make sure that your pages are as technically optimised as possible including image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins.
You can read more on how to increase your website speed and enhance your performance by clicking here.
The faster your site loads the better it will be for you – lower bounce rate, increased leads, conversions and sales.
20. Interview Industry Thought Leaders
Today interviews are for anyone who is willing to face the challenge and is confident in facing the questions, public and themselves.
You would be amazed how many people will be willing to talk to you if you just ask them.
How do I …
Send out emails requesting an interview to thought leaders in your industry and publish the interviews on your blog.
Not only will the name recognition boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website but the interviewee will probably want to share the content too thus further expanding its reach.
21. Create a Sense of Community
People want to speak their minds and weigh in on subjects they feel passionately about so building a community into your site is a great way to start a conversation and increase traffic to your website.
How do you …
Implement a robust commenting system through third-party solutions such as Facebook comments, Postmatic, Comments Evolved or create a dedicated forum where visitors can ask questions.
However do not forget to manage your community to ensure that minimum standards of decorum are met.
This is how you increase website traffic through social networking.
Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure
You can also link to your content yourself to your own personal blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and more without spamming of course.
If people come in from social media and spend time with your content then it is a strong signal to Google that the content is relevant, useful and interesting.
You probably visit at least a few sites that are relevant to your business on a regular basis so why not join the conversation?
No Way!!
Commenting does not necessarily provide an immediate boost to referral traffic right away.
By providing insightful, thought-provoking comments on industry blogs and sites is a great way to get your name out there which will ultimately drive traffic to your site.
Just remember that as with guest posting – quality and relevance are key therefore you should be engaging and networking with others in your niche to increase website traffic.
A well-thought-out blog comments can also demonstrate that you have the depth of knowledge and the expertise on the topic that make you a valuable contributor in the industry as a whole.
Who knows maybe your blog comment can lead to a guest posting position within that blog?
Of course you want to be the first commenters as more comments come pouring in.
The more your well-crafted, polished response will sink to the bottom the better it will be. To help with this try to use If This Then That or IFTTT
IFTTT uses recipes to perform user-specified actions. For example – If I post a photo to Instagram then save it to my Dropbox.
LinkedIn has become much more than a means of finding another job.
The world’s largest professional social network is now a valuable publishing platform in its own right which means you should be posting content to LinkedIn on a regular basis.
Duhh..
However because of its targeted audience – LinkedIn has the ability to connect you to other fire-starters who can help you leverage your existing platform and grow your site beyond anything you could do strictly on your own.
LinkedIn’s own advertising network lets you target your ads precisely — including to specific job titles, company size, job functions and more.
You can even access group statistics on LinkedIn for groups you are not a member of thus enabling you to determine which groups will potentially bring you the best return on your investment of time and research.
Doing so can boost traffic to your site as well as increase your profile within your industry especially if you have a moderate to large following.
Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks To Your Website
25. Mobile Responsive Website
The days when internet browsing was done exclusively on desktop PCs are long gone.
Today more consumers than ever before are using mobile devices to access the web.
So if you asking your visitors to pinch and scroll their way around your website then you are chasing them away.
This is why you need a mobile friendly website that is mobile responsive to enable the ever increasing millennials to browse you website.
Even if you have a basic website you still need to ensure that it is accessible and comfortably viewable across a range of devices including tablets and smartphones.
26. Use Analytics Data to Optimise Results
Google Analytics is an invaluable source of data on just about every conceivable aspect of your site – from your most popular pages to visitor demographics.
Keep a close eye on your Analytics data and use this information to inform your promotional and content strategies.
Pay attention to what posts and pages are proving the most popular. Inspect visitor data to see how, where and when your site traffic is coming from.
Being able to see where they come from and what keywords they searched for allows you to fine tune your content. This is how you increase website traffic through google.
27. Produce Video Content
Text-based content is all well and good but video is definitely a valuable asset in both attracting new visitors and making your site get more engagement.
Data shows that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than it is for text.
Honestly ….
That is why 87% of marketers produce video content online. Videos yield a 157% increase in organic search traffic as well.
On top of that – 46% of consumers act after watching a video advertisement.
Give the people what they want. Your business should have a YouTube channel set up and you need to add new videos to it on a regular basis.
You do not need to spend a fortune to produce video content. It is simple and easy to create and edit your videos in-house.
People would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. This is a top reason why marketers say video content helped them increase website traffic.
This means that video marketing strategy is an excellent way to grab hold of your audience’s attention and boost traffic to your website at the same time.
Further Reading: How to Create Engaging Graphic Content For Social Media
28. Host Webinars
People love to learn and webinars are an excellent way to impart your wisdom to your eagerly waiting audience.
Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars are a great way to increase traffic to your website.
Send out an email a week or so ahead of time and as well as a last chance to register reminder the day before the webinar.
Make sure to archive the presentation for later viewing and promote your webinars widely through social media.
This will help you increase website and social media traffic at the same time.
29. Go on Podcasts
Podcasts are expanding rapidly today. In fact one survey found that 26% of Americans regularly listen to podcasts.
Does that mean that you should grab the nearest microphone and start a podcast? No.
Instead we recommend going on other people’s podcasts as a guest.
This strategy works well and you need to go onto 1-2 podcasts per month.
And these episodes have brought us thousands of visitors. For example we once had 984 visitors in 60 days from a single podcast episode.
As a bonus you may usually get at least one backlink in the show notes which can help your search engine rankings.
Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks
30. Add Share Triggers To Your Content
In our experience, content largely succeeds or fails based on one factor – Does your content have Share Triggers.
What are Share Triggers? They are things you include in your content that push people to share it.
A lot of these principles were first discovered by behavioural scientists like Dr. Katherine Milkman, Jure Leskovec and Dr. Jonah Berger.
And they have proven in the lab what we discovered through trial and error. When you include Share Triggers in your content – people are more likely to share and link to it.
This is an example of increase website traffic from Backlinko:
One of the most powerful Share Triggers is Social Currency.
Social Currency is the idea that we share things that make us look good. And this Share Trigger is a large part of the reason that The Shrinking Dollar infographic mentioned below did so well.
This infographic confirmed what influencers were already saying: inflation is a big problem and their content backed up their rants with meaty data:
Every time an influencer shared their infographic with their audience it boosted their Social Currency.
So they shared it… again and again and it even got included in Google News thanks to a feature in The Christian Post.
All because they strategically added the Social Currency Share Trigger into their content – a brilliant idea of using share triggers.
31. Use Question Analyser to Create Useful Content
This strategy is an excellent and awesome way to make your content better. As you are aware – the better content = more traffic.
All you need to do is:
- Find questions that your target audience asks online.
- Answer those questions in your content.
Here is how to do it –
First use a tool like Buzzsumo’s Question Analyzer or Answer the Public to find questions that people ask:
Then you can either create an entire post to answer these questions …
Or include the answers into your content.
It is simple as that – a win-win for both of you and your target audience.
Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO
We have great news for all of you – If you want more traffic from Google then you DO NOT need higher rankings.
Seriously ….
Yes – you can focus on improving your click through rate (CTR).
For example – let us say you rank number 3 for your target keyword and your CTR is 4%.
And after a few tweaks here and there you double that CTR to 8%.
Now – you have just doubled your organic traffic without improving your rankings.
But wait there is more…
CTR is now an important ranking signal in Google’s algorithm so when you get a higher CTR – you will also improve your search engine rankings.
Hallelujah!
So how did you actually improve your CTR?
Here are a few tips that work great:
- Add a number to your title like 23 or 98%
- Write a compelling meta description
- Test different titles and see which one gets the best CTR
- Use titles that are highly emotional
- Include your keyword in your URL
This is another way how to increase website traffic through Google.
If your website is credible then you will be able to generate more site traffic.
One of the best ways to gain credibility is to leverage your relationships with influencers. You can approach this tactic in many different ways.
How ….
If you have the budget then you can use celebrities to promote your brand.
That is because these people are already known and trusted. Working with a celebrity shows your brand is legitimate.
Their endorsements will reach a wider audience. The problem is it is obvious to consumers these celebrities are getting paid to pitch for your products or services.
As an alternative solution you can use micro influencers to increase your product credibility.
One of the top reasons why we are advocates for using micro influencers is because they have high engagement rates with their followers.
Get these people to post about your products and you will get more traffic to your website.
Your new leads will be more likely to trust your brand if the recommendation comes from a social influencer.
Now you will have an easier time generating conversions and ultimately drive more traffice to your website with higher profits.
Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO
Schema mark-up is a form of optimisation that involves putting a small piece of code on your webpage to help search engines return more useful results for users.
Whooosshhhh …..
It can also increase your likelihood of securing coveted featured snippets or position-zero rankings.
Implementing schema would not necessarily increase traffic to your website on its own but it will make it easier for search engine bots to find and index your pages.
Another benefit of using schema for SEO is that it can result in better rich site snippets which can improve click through rates (CTR).
Retargeting is the tactic of advertising to lapsed users who already have installed an app well after the conversion takes place.
Also known as remarketing this technique is popular because a user’s previous intent often makes them more likely to convert than new users.
Retargeting involves targeting customers through ads on other sites long after they have visited your own site.
Depending on the type of retargeting – you can often convince them to circle back to visit your site by displaying a product they may have looked at, an ad for an item they searched for and so on.
There are three main types of retargeting:
This is the simplest form of retargeting – showcasing your ads on other sites that your visitors go to.
The idea is that this keeps your brand in their peripheral vision and in the back of their mind.
There is a great deal of flexibility here which lets you display the actual product the customer viewed, multiple products, image ads and so forth.
This type of retargeting is more complex and results when a user follows certain behaviours that could potentially lead to a click through on your ad.
They may have made purchases on similar websites, searched different keywords or have the same interests as your customer base.
This type of targeting can also be segmented geographically based on their level of interaction with your other lead generation channels like surveys, emails or a combination of factors.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the combination of practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle with the goal of improving customer service relationships and assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth.
CRM systems compile customer data across different channels or points of contact between the customer and the company which could include the company’s website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials and social media.
CRM based retargeting focuses on your email list especially those customers who have not opened your emails.
CRM retargeting uses cookies to track your mailing list users online and show ads for your site on the pages they visit.
There are several retargeting tools and services available – each with varying price levels and features.
Here are 2 that you can compare.
AdRoll – One of the biggest and most popular brands in the retargeting industry. Includes pricing based on impressions + fixed-price margin.
Retargeter – Also offers ad design services in addition to retargeting. It offers search-based, CRM, Facebook and dynamic retargeting.
Further Reading: What Are Backlinks
Conclusion
We get really excited just talking about all of these tactics that can drive traffic to your website because they are the tactics that anyone can use.
As we have tried to show you throughout this article they have been used by people effectively.
We have used them for ourselves as well as for clients and so we know they work.
Ultimately to increase website traffic all you need to give your customers is what they want – quality advice, on-time information and clear insight.
Experiment with any of the above creative ways and if you have any questions – Contact us today and we will help you resolve them.
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Further Reading: Benefits of SEO
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