20 Ways on How to Drive Free Traffic to your Website

When you’re a blogger or a small business owner, and you’re just starting out, you probably want to know what to do, in order to drive free traffic to your website. You have all this content, and you may try social networking, but there’s a lot more ways to gain visitors. In this article, you’ll find 20 ways on how to drive free traffic to your website. While they are free, you will need to spend time on these tasks.

1. Create content
2. Share content to social networks
3. Comment on other forums and sites
4. Guest blogging
5. Blogger collaboration
6. Email newsletter list building
7. Repurpose content
8. On-Page SEO
9. Guest podcast
10. Be interviewed by other bloggers
11. Press Releases
12. Publish Lists
13. Create How-to articles
14. Create a Knowledge Base
15. Display social share buttons on site
16. Get your content syndicated to other sites
17. Make social network posts more enticing
18. Optimize site for Google’s mobile-first indexing
19. Create articles on LinkedIn
20. Create videos on Youtube

1. Create content

Creating content is the first and foremost thing you should be doing. You don’t have to do it everyday, but you should be regularly creating content. Make sure that your content is adding value to your niche, rather than just adding the same old thing. Ask yourself what it is you can do unique from the others out there, and what problems can you solve.

2. Share content to social networks

You can’t always expect other people to share your content. You’re going to have to be the first person to tell the world what you have done. It’s the same with local brick and mortar stores - if you don’t tell people, then they won’t know. You’d be relying on people that happen to be passing by your store.

With the internet, think of it just like the world around you. There are places you can go and freely share your information, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There are billions of potential audiences to reach with an image, a few words, and links to your content.

If you’re using social media to promote your content, make sure you’re not always throwing just your content at them. Add a lot more value and good karma by sometimes sharing content from other resources.

3. Comment on other forums and community sites.

There are a lot of forums and community based websites, outside of social networking sites, that you can communicate with like-minded individuals. If you provide a service related to what can help your community, you can discuss your business there. This isn’t to say that you can spam, so make sure to follow the rules that the community posts.

4. Guest blogging

Guest blogging can be pretty powerful if done right. When guest blogging, make sure to add great resources, and include a couple valuable links to your own blog. Make sure that those links aren’t pointing to your services, as no blogger will allow you to hijack their site so you can make a buck. Be humble and grateful when given the opportunity to guest blog on another person’s site, as they are giving you free access to their audience.

5. Blogger collaboration

Blogger collaboration is where you reach out and work together with another blogger. It could be where you exchange guest posts, do podcasts together, exchange links, or do projects on social media with them. This means you both are exposing your content to each others’ audience, and a total win-win.

6. Email newsletter list building

Building a newsletter is super important, as there are over 4 billion email users. Your newsletter subscribers are people who already like you and want to see what you’re doing next. They will be the people most likely to keep coming back to your site, and even buy more from you.

1. Repurpose content

Repurposing content is where you take your current content and redo it into other types of content, like text, audio, image, and video. You can chunk out your content in smaller pieces, and produce little blurbs in any type of medium, and lure people into visiting your site.

8. On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is where you optimize each and every individual page on your site. Some tasks of on-page SEO include making sure each page is loading fast, using proper heading tags, creating an enticing meta description, or using a pretty permalink. This is super important in order to convince people to click on your page from the search engine results, rather than someone else. The better your on-page SEO is, the more potential each page will rank better.

9. Guest podcasting

Podcasting is popular, as more than 50% households listen to podcasts. Like guest blogging, you’re hopping on another podcaster’s show to flex your knowledge and connect with their audience. You can use it to also mention your site’s resourceful articles.

10. Be interviewed by other bloggers.

Being interviewed by another blogger means that you are being featured. This is a free mention, and a way to formally introduce you to another blogger’s audience. Make sure to be thorough, informative, and entertaining when being interviewed, in order to appeal to the other blogger’s followers. Interviews should never feel like a chore. If you answer with short responses, you might not attract people to follow you or even venture over to your website.

11. Press Releases

If you’re a small business, and want to introduce a product, there are a lot of online news sources that offer free press release submission. You can use this to announce your business and the new things you have to offer to the community.

12. Publish Lists

People love lists, as they make things easy to remember and depending on the topic, can be meaningful and spark your audience to share and comment on them. Additionally, lists have an ending, which works if you’re a person on the go, and don’t have time to read a 4,000 word in-depth guide.

13. Create How-to articles

People are always searching to learn something new. Even though there’s about 1.17 billion websites, there’s still a lot of content that still needs to be covered. Make sure that you are tackling subjects that have already been covered quite a few times, to see how you can improve your or add new information. Your added value could help rank you better, and ultimately get your how-to article read and shared a lot more.

14. Create a Knowledge Base

A great example of a knowledge base is what we have at Verpex. These are designed to answer some common questions, and great references. They save time for business owners who offer customer support.

Just create a knowledge base article and send the link to your customer, alongside a short response. This saves a lot of time having to explain things in-depth, or sending people off of your website for information. Additionally, it proves to be a great way to attract new customers who were searching and came across a knowledge base article on your site.

15. Display social share buttons on site.

While you should be promoting your content, you need to provide an easy way for your website readers to share your content to social media sites. It takes only seconds for someone to share your article on their social handles, and expose your business to their audience.

16. Get your content syndicated to other sites.

Content syndication is where your articles are also being published and featured on websites with a larger reach. Huffington Post often has invited experts in their field to be syndicated in their platform.

17. Make social network posts more enticing.

Enticing titles, well-written descriptions, and well done images can all make the difference of whether people will pay attention and click on what you share on social networks.

18. Optimize site for Google’s mobile-first indexing

Make sure your site is mobile responsive. If you only have a responsive design, you might want to look into either building a mobile app for your site, or having a mobile-friendly design created. In 2022, more people are buying while using a smartphone, so it’s best to provide a version of your website that can give your customers a better and faster user experience.

19. Create articles on LinkedIn.

Now, in creating articles on LinkedIn, it’s important to note that you should only post content related to professional jobs, as it’s not your normal social network. People use LinkedIn to display their resume and get hired, so if you’re posting about job related articles, then you’ll be in the right place. With your LinkedIn articles, you can link back to some of your articles, and attract people to your site.

20. Create videos on Youtube.

Did you know that Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine, after Google Search? Creating videos is a fantastic way to tap into a lot of potential traffic. You can mention your articles and even leave links for people to click on. The great thing is that you can make short videos based on content you’ve already written, or even chunk out some of your other longer videos as way to cross-promote your stuff.

There are so many more ways than what is on this list on how to drive free traffic to your website, and even paid ways like advertising. However, as long as you’re tackling some of this list, you’ll be seeing traffic come in. Once they are on your site, make sure you’ve added great calls to action to whatever you want your visitors to do once they arrive, so your click-through rate on them are successful. Good luck!