How to Increase Your Website’s Traffic
Looking to drive more traffic to your website? It all starts with creating great content that resonates with your audience. But great content alone isn’t the whole game; there are plenty of different avenues you can focus on to increase traffic.
Understanding what your audience wants and needs is key. While paid ads can deliver quick results, most effective strategies require a solid process and some patience. Don’t feel overwhelmed—start with a few strategies, test them out, and see what works best for you.
In this article, we’ll cover straightforward methods to enhance your website’s visibility and attract more visitors. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to refine your approach, these tips will help you build a solid foundation for increased traffic.
Methods to increase website traffic
Search Engine Optimization
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving a website’s position in search results pages (SERPs) to get more traffic from organic search results. We can talk for hours about the different types of SEO (on-page, off-page, and technical) and the different strategies to attack it, but for now, let’s stick to the basics.
There are plenty of SEO tools out there you can use. Ahrefs is a big one and helps you track keyword research as well as helping you track links, track site rankings, and do competitor analysis. Keyword and topic research will help your website strategy become more fine-tuned, and gives valuable insight into what your target audience is actually searching on Google for.
Internal linking and backlinks strategy are two SEO topics that you should be focusing on as well, as both help lead people to your site while on different pages. Internal linking is when you link to other pages on your website in your work, which is deemed cross-pollination and can help grow other pages indirectly. Backlinks are when another (hopefully) reputable site sources your work in their article and can kick some readers to your site by including a link back to your content in their work.
The topic of backlinks can be complicated, complex and even controversial at times, but here are the basics that have worked for us, and that we think you should keep in mind.
- Backlinks from reputable sites help signal to Google that your content is worthy of being sourced, and in theory leads to increased topical authority for your website.
- Having a healthy backlink profile is important for site growth.
- Avoid buying backlinks.
- This is where some of the controversy can come in. Some people may disagree, but overall we find the risk of purchasing backlinks to be too risky compared to the potential gain.
How to get good backlinks
So good backlinks are important, but how do we get them?
Suggested strategies:
- Create content that is worthy of being sourced and shared.
- Partnerships, outreach and collaboration.
- PR
Social Media
Using social media to drive traffic to your website should be a go to tool in your toolbox. Whether it’s creating your own content strategy, advertising on a site like Instagram or TikTok, or using an influencer to help you market your website, social media should be one of the main strategies you use to drive new traffic to your site.
Social media without a doubt has its positives and negatives when it comes to driving traffic. For instance, most social media platforms don’t LOVE when your content drives people off of their platform, so there is potential to hurt your overall reach. The key is making sure that you’re comfortable with making that trade off.
The barrier for entry is very low, so let’s talk about some of the social media strategies you can use.
Influencer Marketing
The first and most important step is finding influencer who aligns with your content. This step cannot be ignored! It doesn’t matter how popular an influencer is if they aren’t a good match for your brand.
For example, let’s say your website is trying to sell a skincare line, it would make sense to reach out to someone who’s following loves skincare. In an attempt to have them post about it on their social media because she has marketed her own skincare line and others before.
When doing this, make sure that you reach out to them and establish a budget and content strategy for partnerships so that each side knows what they need to do/accomplish. Great communication can make a lot of influencer/product partnerships run much smoother.
This way, you can potentially form a real relationship with that influencer, which could lead to non-monetary partnerships down the road. As the creator economy continues to grow stronger and stronger, this is an avenue plenty of sites have gone to grow their traffic. There are two main types of influencer partnerships: affiliated partnerships and link/promo code-based deals.
Link/Promo Code Deals
The first kind of partnership commonly used in influencer marketing is link/promo-code-based deals. These operate exactly as they sound, where an influencer will post a code or link of sorts on a social media post in order to get traffic driven to that product/website.
These kinds of deals are easy to track pretty automatically given that the social media platforms can track how many people click on the link or use the promo code.
Affiliate Partnerships
The second kind of influencer partnership is affiliate partnerships, and these work with that influencer partnering with your company/website/product to promote that product.
While these are collaborative arrangements that both sides can profit from, they can be harder to achieve and difficult to quantify. You might not be able to discern how much traffic that the influencer is driving to your product from their post and how much is organic, making it difficult to agree on a payment number.
Twitter (X)
One of the main social media platforms used to drive traffic to a website is Twitter, and the reason it has become a very popular platform is because the site’s original function was a short-character blog that you could use to post thoughts, opinions, and links. Niche industries like cryptocurrency and fantasy football have sprouted almost entire industries using Twitter as a word-of-mouth source given that the site’s ability to display links in a user-friendly format led to more click traffic.
The strategy of driving traffic from Twitter is pretty simple: create content that people want to engage with, and then make sure you are replying to those people that engage with your content in order to foster a community. Replying to people is imperative for growth and converting people who follow and trust your content into possible website visitors.
You can also use threads and Spaces to drive growth. Threads have become popular over the last couple years by people “threading” tweets together in one long continuous stream of posts, due to the character limit that Twitter has on their posts. Spaces are an audio innovation on the Twitter app that allow unlimited users to hang out basically in a chat room where they can vocally talk to one another, usually in a presentation atmosphere where there are designated speakers and listeners.
There are a number of different types of posts that have resonated on Twitter and gotten the algorithm to work for them.
These types of posts tend to be:
- Threads that solve a problem
- Authority posts that talk about what a person has done on a website, driving traffic to that site
- Personal posts that detail who a person is and why you should listen to them
Lastly, lead magnet posts can be a very effective Twitter posting strategy. Essentially, lead magnets are essentially posts where you offer something that your audience wants in order to get their contact information or their traffic on your website.
Examples of successful lead magnets posts are:
- Ebooks
- PDFs
- Offers
- Templates
- White Papers
- Resource guides
- Checklists
- Work books
- Case studies
- Webinars
- Cheat sheets
- Community access
The original social media giant (sorry Myspace), Facebook has become somewhat less important to the younger generations in recent years but still holds an impressive market share in the social media world.
Facebook’s prime may be in the rear view mirror, but it can still be an extremely effective tool for driving traffic.
Our go to strategy for Facebook content is pretty simple.
Use a graphic image to grab people’s attention (think of thumbnails on YouTube), then craft a compelling title that will hook the scroller in. You have to make sure that your content is satisfying enough with what you teased in that image and hook that they commit to being a repeat visitor to your website, and BAM, you have provided value and potentially earned yourself a new website visitor.
These are post formats that have done well for us on Facebook:
- Text-based images: Pictures that have lines of text on them. Could be memes, charts, or just regular graphics
- Listicles: “X things to avoid”, “Top 10 X of 2024”
- Comparison posts: “Benefits of X vs X”
- Money posts: “This person made X amount of money doing this, and you can too!”
- Industry secrets:
- Advice pieces: “How to do X”
Pinterest is a social network that allows users to search for creative and artistic inspiration like recipes, home and style innovations and renovations, or launching an art project of their own. It’s become very popular due to using more visual methods to serve its user base, rather than a written style that a lot of social networks have tended to use.
The same visual methods that help Pinterest stand out from its competition, are what leads to a particular type of content that tends to do well on the platform.
Some of the strategies used on Pinterest to increase website traffic include repurposing blog and video content for Pinterest, as well as making your topics and industries that you’re searching for specific.
To repurpose blog content on Pinterest, just create optimized pin graphics for your posts and you’re set. If you have product listings on your site, optimize your images for Pinterest and you’ll be pinning those to Pinterest.
We suggest using apps like Canva or Photoshop to make your graphic pins.
Repurposing video content can also be done by repurposing your video into a blog post with eye-catching graphics on the website. Add some short explanations to the page and optimize it for mailing list sign ups, subscribers and anything else you’re selling. Your graphic should tell the story and people should be able to understand your post in a few seconds. You’d then market this as a regular blog post on Pinterest while having the benefit of a new link on your website, something that works very well for the Pinterest algorithm.
TikTok
The hangout spot for Gen Zers everywhere has been TikTok, from dancing videos making people entertainment stars to people just straight up selling products and making money hand over fist. It’s become arguably the most trendy social media platform on the planet in the last few years, and it’s not hard to see why people are using it to boost website traffic.
People can record videos, live stream with their community, interact with that community by commenting, and of course, sell items. Of the four, selling things on TikTok Shop is a tremendous way to drive traffic to a website and might lead to the highest conversions.
These are our favorite TikTok formats:
- X topic explained
- If you’ve ever wondered about X…
- People don’t understand…
- I was surprised to learn X…
- Plan>Process>Payoff
- Cliffhangers
- Poking the problem
Instagram is, of course, the longstanding photo-sharing app that was really the first mainstream of its kind. It’s composed of the feed, where all photos and videos live, Reels, where users can post and comment on videos, Stories, posting what you’re doing in the moment, and collabs with other users.
The strategy to use with Instagram driving new website traffic is to use Instagram’s features and really, portray yourself as an interesting and authentic person, especially on Stories. Bits and pieces of your life can in turn make people interested in what you’re up to and create that sense of connection.
You should also be replying to comments on Instagram. Similar to other platforms, keeping up with your community in the comments section provides opportunity for both sides to get to know one another.
Reels are a very similar concept to TikTok in that the trend to shorter video content has seeped over towards Instagram from TikTok and both concepts focus on storytelling through video, whether it’s dance moves, or cooking recipes, or just talking about your day.
Live– you can use both IG live or TikTok or choose one.
LinkedIn has become the social media platform for the networkers and job hunters of the social world, as the main feature of the social media site is an all-encompassing job board that serves as a hub for recruiters, a place to build your resume, but also a place to make content that can help drive your web traffic.
The best ways to use LinkedIn for content are really just to use what’s already there. People have found posts go viral that are authentic, raw, and authoritative. There’s also a strong sense of community in your posts, as people have found the comments section to be a place for job seekers to hype each other up and leave truthful, thoughtful comments on posts.
Similar to Twitter, LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards content that people want to engage with. Whether it’s the tendencies of recruiters, or ways to get ahead if you are searchin for a job, if you are able to hook your audience quickly, they will comment on and engage with your post.
LinkedIn has become full of inauthentic content recently, with some people trying to game the algorithm into pushing their posts, so really lean in on being authentic on a platform like this one.
Some of the best LinkedIn content are LinkedIn newsletters, collaboration posts between people at the same company or people in the same lines of work, and deeper thoughts on articles. In today’s job market, LinkedIn can be a very safe space because a lot of job-seekers are feeling the same pressure right now.
Paid Ads
We’ve now gone through an exhaustive list of social media tools that you can use to increase website traffic, but what about other methods to get this done? There are old-school marketing tricks that can work too, and one of them is paid advertisements.
If you remember in the introduction, we talked about paid ads being a quick way to convert into more website traffic. They are low-risk and don’t take a while to set up.
Paid ads are a type of online advertising that companies or brands will pay for in order to promote their products or services. Basically, all of those ads you see in the lower corners of your screen or on the sides when you click on a website? Those are most likely paid ads.
There are a variety of paid ad types that you can purchase, but some of the most common ones are:
- Pay-per-click: Everytime a user clicks on their ad, the advertiser pays a fee
- Cost per 1,000 views: The advertiser is charged for every 1,000 their ad appears on a web page
- Social Media Advertising: Advertisers using paid media to promote their website on social platforms like Facebook/Pinterest/LinkedIn
- Search Engine Advertising: Advertisers can bid on keywords that have to do with their service or website to appear in Google search results
Video & Podcasts
You can always advertise your product or website on a written platform but remember, seeing someone’s face or hearing their voice in real time can help drive traffic and conversions as well. Videos and podcasts are a solid way to drive traffic, and they’re easy to start as well.
With tools like Spotify for Podcasters, starting up a podcast is not that hard of a thing to do, as all you really need is a set of headphones, a microphone that can sound clean, and a video camera if you’re planning to do a video version of your podcast, on YouTube or another platform. From there, it is relatively simple to get everything set up.
While you’re hosting your own podcast, you can also invite people on or have people invite you onto their podcasts as well. This is a way that you can both drive traffic to each other’s platform and cultivate new website traffic from a new source.
Word-of-mouth marketing from video content is a major tool that you can use. It is powerful to hear an endorsement come directly of the mouth of someone that you listen to consistently, and that in itself can often be enough to drive someone to click on your website.
Strategies we’ve had the most success with:
- Collaboration with other podcasters, you go on your show, for half and then finish up on the other show
- Interviews
- Live stream events
- Repurposing clips and segments from your shows.
Email Marketing & Newsletters
Newsletters have become one of the best new ways to create your own brand as a creator, as tons of companies have sprung up with awesome email software. Beehiiv leads the way in my opinion, as they have a terrific array of tools and ways to build your newsletter into a powerhouse.
As with a lot of written content, it is easy to get started with a newsletter. Simply start building your email list and start sending your content out to people. You should also be looking to collaborate with people that have an engaged newsletter audience and try draw your traffic to theirs and vice-versa.
You can feature paid ads in newsletters nowadays as a massive driver of revenue, but you also have the advantage of sending this right to an email recipient’s inbox whenever you schedule it. Some people really like to start their mornings reading a newsletter that they’re a fan of. I know I have two that I read every Tuesday when they come to my inbox.
Newsletter Strategies that have worked for us.
- Showing a portion of your article in your newsletter, and then driving a user to your website to get the rest.
- Some sort of around the industry, heard at the watercooler-esque concept where you aggregate your content and content from around your industry.
As we explain in our “How to Increase newsletter Click-Through-Rate” strategy guide, aggregation can both increase your website traffic by driving your newsletter subscribers to your site, while ALSO increasing the average CTR of your newsletter.
The best part? Aggregation is super easy to do effectively.
Here is a strategy that our founder Jordan has refined over the past few years:
- Step 1: Pick the content that you want to drive traffic to
- Step 2: Create a hook to grab reader’s attention
- Step 3: Reinforce your hook
Example:
“🙁 Website owners woke up to a VERY unpleasant surprise. Google is at it again.“
As long as you aren’t misleading your readers with clickbait hooks, we’ve found that this format works the best. Create curiosity with the section in bold, and then hammer that curiosity home with a “sign-off” that connects with your users. The key here is to actually be interesting. You need to link to content that will actually be well-received by your readers.
Instead of focusing on what content you have that NEEDS traffic driven to it, direct your attention to what will actually benefit your users.
Content Marketing & Distribution
There are ways that you can market your content just by yourself, as well. You can post your website or product on a site like Reddit, where you can go directly to where your industry or topic might be and find a group of people who are directly interested in your content and website.
Another option is blogger outreach, which is the process of strategically communicating and building relationships with industry influencers and editors to achieve a specific goal, including:
- Content marketing and SEO
- Landing guest posting opportunities
- Promoting new content
- Earning new backlinks
You can also use aggregators, which are websites or programs that collect related items or content and displays links to those web pages, all in one place. Feedly is an example of a website content aggregator.
Lastly, you can use good old-fashioned PR, or public relations, to get your website out there to improve your traffic. PR will amplify your brand narrative through strategic storytelling and push your content to targeted audiences, which drives organic clicks and can establish new relationships for you.
Updating & Repurposing your content
You should always be keeping your content fresh, no matter how long ago you wrote it. Keeping content fresh is a strong key to having people continue to understand that your content is deserving of a click from them, because if they see the date and it’s last been published five years prior, they are probably less likely to click on it.
Repurposing your content is a viable strategy, as well. Pushing a blog post into a new piece of video content with a short description could grab some new traffic that is more locked into watching short-form video content rather than a blog, or maybe someone wants to see that picture published on a social media platform as a meme rather than what you originally posted it as.
Don’t be afraid to double dip. If you find a format or concept that works amazingly for you, don’t be afraid to rehash and try again.
Other options to grow
Outside of all of these growth options for your website traffic, you can really get creative in ways to boost your online presence.
Becoming a thought leader in your chosen niche, collaborating with thought leaders, setting up contests and giveaways, and creating free tools are a couple other ways that you can get different in your approach to grow your website traffic. Using these methods gives you an out-of-the-box method to growing yourself that not everybody sees and uses, so it may give you a leg up on helping drive new vistors.
Final Thoughts
Growing your website traffic is a long game.
If you’re short on time, and NEED results instantly, you can use paid ads, but growing organically takes strategy and effort. However, it is very accomplishable and if you do it the right way, you can end up with a highly traffic website, with visitors coming from multiple different sources.
By you use these strategies, you can ensure your content will always be something that people can feel comfortable clicking on. By combining these techniques and continually refining your approach, you can build a strong foundation for sustainable website traffic growth.
