There’s lot of ways of getting website traffic without paying. In this article I’m going to share some of my favourite ways to get free traffic. Firstly, I use a strategy of getting traffic from the way I build websites. It’s known as niche website building. Although today the domain name of a website isn’t such a ranking factor as it used to be years ago, it still is a factor. So building keyword domains can help you rank for those terms, especially if there’s little competition for the keyword you use.
Take this website, for example. I built this site around the keywords “Affiliate Marketing Mentors“. If you do a Google search for that term, you should find my site somewhere near to top. Although it’s recently taken a dive and is on the second page. But, for a long time I was ranking number one and picking up some free traffic for the term “affiliate marketing mentors”.
Keyword domain names can and do work to bring in free traffic from the search engines.
Getting Website Traffic Without Paying – Long Tail Keywords
Another strategy I use in conjunction with the keyword domain names is long tail keywords. Using Google’s keyword planner, I find keywords which contain three or more terms within my niche.
Then I head to Google and do a simple search for that particular keyword, both within quotes and without. This gives me a couple of numbers which you’ll see when using a laptop (this doesn’t show on a mobile phone). Those number denote the number of competing pages on Google for those particular search terms. So a low number means less competition.
Using this information, I browse the keyword planner looking for long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. When I find a good one, I write content for it and use an SEO tool (Yoast SEO) to help me write it.
Long tail keywords give you the best opportunity to rank for your articles, especially if yours is a new website without much authority. Write many pieces of useful content and make them as high quality as you can. Over time, your domain authority should grow if you do this and some of your content will rank on Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Yahoo and the other search engines.
Getting Website Traffic Without Paying – Promotion Of Content
Now you have a bunch of content on your site it’s time to promote it! Don’t rely on Google ranking all your content – it definitely won’t! Some if it will get ranked if you concentrate on creating quality content and finding those long tail keywords with low competition.
But you should also promote your content via every means you can. That includes posting it on your social media profiles and sharing via your email list. You can also automate the process of sharing posts on social media. I use a plugin called Revive Old Posts which lets you do this. See also best free blog plugins for WordPress for some other plugins which help. Another one is to use a social media share button. This helps encourage visitors to share your content when they land on your website.
Anything you can automate is worth doing when it comes to promoting your content.
Getting Website Traffic Without Paying – Link Building
Link building is a big part of SEO (search engine optimisation) and so it’s worth taking the time to do, or paying someone else to do if for you!
Google uses your incoming links to determine how to rank your website in terms of authority. If you don’t have many links pointing to your website, Google will likely see it as a sign your website isn’t valued by other bloggers and online users.
If you make a good job of writing content for your site, you should start picking up some link naturally over time, as you post and share your articles. But you can also link build yourself through writing guest posts on other people’s blogs who are within the same niche as you. You can also post comments on their blog posts and many bloggers will let you link back to your blog when you do this.
Link building is a double whammy because you get traffic from those links directly and you should increase your domain authority with more links. Greater domain authority means your rankings increase and you get more traffic.
Getting Website Traffic Without Paying – Video
Yes video. It’s definitely worth uploading short videos and tagging them with titles which are less competitive. Use the same strategy as with the long tail keyword articles.
YouTube and TikTok are obvious places to upload videos to and you can get much faster results with video over time if you make a habit out of this. YouTube is less competitive than Google, for example and often videos will rank above written content, especially for keywords with fewer competing websites.
Posting a YouTube/TikTok video is another win because you can also build a back link at the same time while drawing in more traffic through your chosen keywords.
Types Of Traffic
It’s probably worth a mention that not all traffic is equal and the kind of traffic you want is that which leads to sales. Since most online traffic doesn’t lead to a sale, you will want to focus on the kind which does! That means getting to know your target audience so that you can create the kind of content which they are interested in. You can spend a huge amount of time and energy creating content which doesn’t lead to a sale. So align yourself with what your customers want and create content specifically for them!
For more on this topic checkout my post on the customer avatar worksheet pdf.
When you know who you are targeting with your content, you’ll waste less time creating content which isn’t relevant for your target audience and attract the right kind of visitors to your website.
Build An Email List
I mentioned the email list briefly before but it’s worth another mention. It’s one of the best and cheapest ways to drive traffic without paying for it. Collect subscribers from your website by offering some giveaway freebie. As your list grows you can send them to your newer content and back to your affiliate offers.
An email list puts you in charge of your traffic and although you need to build it first to take advantage of it, you can do this naturally with organic traffic over time. You just need to make sure it’s in place on your website with an attractive offer showcasing the benefits of your offer.
Summary
So there’s a few strategies you can use to get website traffic without paying. Here’s a quick recap:
- Build a niche website around a specific (uncompetitive) keyword in your niche
- Write long tail keyword targeted articles on your blog to attract your customer avatar (people who want what you have)
- Share and promote your content widely – use social media platforms (you can also automate some of this with plugins ; see best free blog plugins for WordPress)
- Build backlinks – backlinks can be built using guest posting or blog commenting. This has a two fold benefit in that it increases your authority and brings traffic directly from the blog/link you post.
- Upload videos to YouTube and or TikTok and use long tail keywords in your title. This also means you can build a back link each time.
- Rinse and repeat – keep going and make a daily habit out of this practice and your traffic will compound over time as your content and authority grows.