10 Free Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your WordPress Website
How do you increase or drive traffic to Your website? First, you need to be consistent, have well-formed content, and rank high on Google in your niche to get recurrent visitors. This requires a high degree of commitment, a lot of time, and hard work.
Still, you want to make sure you are focusing your energy and efforts on meaningful tasks and not just wasting time on something that’s not producing any meaningful results.
With that in mind, we have compiled a list of things that have a proven record of increasing traffic. These are:
- Guest blogging
- Optimizing content for search
- Using long-tail keyword
- Posting on Social Media
- Building an Email list
- Answering Questions on Online Forums and Q&A sites
- Posting content on Medium
- LSI keywords
- Online Courses
- Podcasts
We will explain how these things direct traffic to your website. We will also provide you with a basic how-to and some recommended tools that will help you along the way.
1. Guest Blogging
You may think that guest blogging is not a great way to get more web traffic. After all, it requires a bit of work and can be a hassle. That said, if done right, this method will end up increasing traffic to your website by a significant amount.
How does guest blogging help you get more website traffic? The answer is backlinks. In case you don’t know, a backlink is just a link from some website that links back to your website. This will help increase your website traffic in two ways.
First, people will click on backlinks and visit your site. That’s obvious. This type of traffic is also called referral traffic and you can track it with google analytics.
The second way is not as obvious that is if you did not go down the rabbit hole that is Search Engine Optimization. For SEO it’s good to have quality backlinks from bigger trusted websites that link to your website. This tells the search engines that your website is trusted by other similar sites. Therefore your site is more likely to come up in search results. This is going to drive more search traffic to your blog.
So, did we convince you to try out guest blogging? If so how would you go about doing it? There are two ways to write and accept guest posts. Let’s first see how you can write guest posts.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Website – Write guest posts
We already said you can increase your website’s traffic is by writing guest posts. When you write a guest post you get an opportunity to link back to your website. Therefore people reading this post might click on links and get to your website.
How do you find a website that is going to accept you as a guest writer? You probably already read blogs from your niche so just go and ask them.
That said we have one more tip. You can search on google for websites that have ‘write for us’ page. To do this use wild card search just type: ‘your niche’ + *write for us on google. This will give you a list of websites that have the option to write guest posts for them.
Even more tips? Try typing *writeforus as one word or some other variant like contributions. And if this is the first time you are hearing about the wild card characters research them they are useful.
If you don’t have post ideas you can do a ‘how-to’ articles. They can drive a lot of organic search traffic.
With everything said, one warning is in order don’t spam links when writing guest posts. In general, you should use links that are related to the post’s topic. We have a couple of reasons for saying this.
First, you are going to annoy people if you spam unrelated links. Also, your post might not get accepted if you do this.
Finally, you want people to stay on your site, not to just open then close it when they realize that it has nothing to do with what they are reading. For SEO, people need to engage with your website. So the more time they spend on your website, the better.
Accept guest posts
In general, if you have a well-established blog people will start asking you to write guest posts for your blog. If you do not accept guest posts so far you should start accepting them.
Also, you can take it one step further. To do this add a ‘write for us’ page. That way people will know that you accept guest posts.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Website – blog commenting
Even if you don’t get accepted as a guest on someone’s blog you can comment on their posts. That way you can build a relationship with them and eventually they may accept your request for a guest blog post.
On some blogs, you might be allowed to post links in comments so if it’s relevant to the topic you can link to your blog.
2. Optimize Your Content for Search
To increase blog traffic you need to make your content searchable. So before you write the next post you need to do some research. When we say research we mean finding well-targeted keywords to focus on.
Unless you do keyword research you are just guessing if people are interested in your articles. There are many keyword planners out there. For instance, you can use Google trends or Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
When looking for keywords don’t go for top ones. Competition for these keywords is fierce. Instead, go for less popular and more specific ones.
Also, you can optimize your old posts for search. First, find keywords that match the article. Then rewrite some of the sentences to include keywords.
One more tip: you don’t need to spam keywords in articles just using them a few times should do the trick.
3. Use Long-Tail Keywords in Your Posts
Still on the topic of keywords. If you don’t know what long-tail keywords are they look something like this:
- ‘free proven ways to drive traffic to your WordPress website’
- ‘how to get more page views on my blog’
This is an example of long-tail keywords that are related to this article you are reading now. The first example is the article’s name.
To find long-tail keywords use Google search autocomplete to see what people are searching for. Alternatively, you can look at the related search.
4. Post on Social Media
Promoting content or products on social media can increase your website’s traffic. Some of the popular social media platforms to use are:
- YouTube
When promoting on social media people make one big mistake. Spamming links in Facebook or Reddit groups is one sure way to annoy people and not get any traffic.
The one tip for all platforms is using them as if you don’t have an agenda to promote the website. That means joining the community and making friends. Once people have trust in you only then you should plug links to your website. Also still make sure the links you give are related to the topic.
Out of the social network platforms that we listed, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube might be overlooked by people.
LinkedIn is not just for a career profile. You can also post articles there. So it’s worth giving it a try.
YouTube – How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
YouTube is the second biggest search engine. Therefore making videos is a good way to increase traffic on your website. Also unlike other platforms, YouTube is going to promote your videos to viewers.
When making videos we don’t mean just a promotional piece of content. You can make step by step guide showing people how to use your products. If you are a blogger you can make a summary video of your blog post content. Include that video in a blog post and also link blog posts in the video description.
When making YouTube videos you need to do keyword research as you would when writing a post for your blog. There are SEO tools out there for YouTube like TubeBuddy or vidIQ.
That said you might not have the time or knowledge to make videos. If so, you can still use YouTube in another different way. We recommend commenting on the videos you watch. That way you can become a part of the community of some bigger YouTube channel.
Then you can occasionally post links if the creator of the channel allows you to do so.
Promoting a website on social media can be an article on its own. Unfortunately, we can’t cover everything related to this topic.
5. Build an Email List to Drive Traffic to Your Website
An email list is awesome for promoting blogging content or products. This is because you know the audience you are reaching. That said building an email list can be hard. Therefore you need to get creative to get people’s emails.
One good way to get people to sign up for a newsletter is targeted popups. Before you say no to popups we don’t mean those annoying ones. We would call this type of popup smart popup. It’s only shown if the user does something, not at random.
For instance, let’s say someone just finished reading one of your articles. The conditions would be they spend X number of minutes on that page and they scrolled to the end of the page. If that condition is met you show a popup that asks them if they want to sign up for the newsletter so they don’t miss new articles.
Also, don’t forget to make a sign for the newsletter page on your website. While not many people will use this those that do will probably be your loyal customers.
The next step is to manage your email list properly. Here you can find our top picks for the best email marketing services
6. Answer Questions on Online Forums and Q&A sites
We like this method because answering questions is a nice thing to do. You help people with their problems and you also promote your website.
To do this method, find questions on forums related to your posts. Then do your best to answer them at the end plug links to your website. Like always, don’t spam. We think we mentioned spam enough times in this article so this is the last time. OK!
So what online communities should you use? We suspect you already have some forum in mind. But if you need an idea, try answering questions on Quora.
7. Post Content on Medium
Medium is a publishing platform where you can post your articles. What is unique about Medium is that it prioritizes good quality articles. So if you want to write about something that might not rank well for SEO then Medium is perfect.
They will promote your article to viewers that are interested in that topic.
So, how do you get viewers from Medium to your website? You can post articles that you have written for your site to Medium.
A good idea is to also promote that Medium article everywhere you can to boost its rating on Medium. Then Medium will continue to promote your article to its viewers and embedded links in Medium articles to your website.
8. LSI Keywords – How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
Search engines are getting smarter every day. In the past, Google was just looking at keywords on your site. However, since 2013 when Google released an update to a search engine called Hummingbird things have changed.
We know 2013 was some time ago but not all the people got the memo about this change. Now, Google looks also at LSI keywords.
LSI stands for ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’. To put it simply, they are keywords that are related to the topic of your post. As an example, we used LSIGraph and similar tools to find LSI keywords related to this article that you are reading now. And we got this list of keywords:
- how to drive massive traffic to your website
- increase website traffic fast
- how to get traffic to my blog for free
- get traffic to your website free
- how to drive more traffic to your website
- get traffic to your website free
- how to drive traffic to your website for free
- WordPress traffic
- how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website
In case you did not know about LSI keywords, we strongly recommend including a few in your next post if you can.
9. Increase your website’s traffic by creating Online Courses
If you have enough experience in your field, you can start teaching others. This is a really good way of promoting your website. So how would you go about doing this?
First, you’ll have to pick up some extra skills or maybe pay a freelancer. Anyway, you’ll need to record and edit videos. This skill set can also be used for YouTube so it’s definitely worth picking up.
There are many tutorials on this topic on YouTube and also on sites that we want to publish courses on. If you think you need to spend money on expensive equipment and software, you are wrong.
Equipment
For equipment, you already have what you need. We are guessing that you have a phone with a decent enough camera. Also, let’s assume you have a mid-range PC or laptop. Well, you are all set for hardware.
Software
What about software? Well, you can do some research for free screen recording and video editing software. That said we are going to recommend OBS Studio for screen recording ,DaVinci Resolve and Movavi Video Editor.
OBS is completely free and open-source software that can be used for streaming and recording. DaVinci Resolve and Movavi Video Editor are professional video and audio editing programs that can do almost everything that you need.
DaVinci Resolve and Movavi Video Editor have a free and premium version. Its premium version includes every feature in the free version along with HDR Grading, motion blur effects, 3D, multi-user tools, etc.
Platforms for releasing online courses
Ok, so you made a course, where should you release it to? For starters, you can put it on your website if hosting can allow for that. That said, it’s much better to release it on websites that offer online courses since they will promote your course.
There are many options and depending on the type of content you made some might be better than others. So you’ll have to do some research. That said we have a mini list of websites that you can check out:
Also, don’t forget YouTube. You can publish a course there or at least you want to publish a teaser video for your course.
10. Make a Podcast and Appear on Podcasts
Almost half of the population of the US listen to podcasts. This is understandable since you can do something else while you listen to your favorite podcasts. Getting stuck in traffic is a really good example.
Listening to a podcast is a good way to pass the time. So since so many people listen to podcasts this is a good option to promote your content. You can do this by making a podcast or by asking someone to be on the podcast.
Also if you got bored with SEO strategy, this can be considered traffic without SEO. People will have to search on google for your website when they hear the name of a website on a podcast. Effectively, this is organic traffic.
Make a podcast
This is not going to be easy. You’ll need to learn some new skills. This is similar to the previous entry on our list. If you did make an online course or made YouTube videos, doing a podcast, shouldn’t be harder. You don’t need much to get started.
You can use your phone to record. For editing podcasts, there are many options. For example, you can use audacity. This sound editing software is completely free and open-source.
Appear on Podcasts
If you don’t have time to make a podcast you can appear on one. This is not that hard to do. Just search on google for a topic of your latest post + ‘podcast’. Then you just get in contact with the producer of the podcast and see if they will have you on their podcast as a guest.
Conclusion – How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
In this article, we presented you with 10 free sources to increase your website’s traffic. Try doing, at last, a few of them and hopefully you’ll boost traffic to your website.
Also, there is an option of spending money. We know you might not have a budget but you can put some money into paid marketing, it might boost your traffic by a lot. Few ideas to explore for paid traffic would be:
- Buying google ad, Facebook ad, or use some other online advertising platform.
- Finding influential peoples to promote your content or products on social media. This is called Influencer Marketing.
- You can do video marketing. Run a video ad online or on television.
For more WordPress tutorials check the rest of our blog here. If you have further questions, write them in the comment section below. Have a great day!
