How to Get Traffic to a Website for Free: 7 Proven Strategies

Increasing website traffic is a fundamental goal for every business that has an online presence.

One of the most coveted forms of online traffic is organic traffic, aka free traffic without the need for paid advertising.

While paid advertising can be effective, there are numerous ways to boost your website traffic for free and organically. In this blog post, I’m covering how to get traffic to your website with 7 proven strategies.

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure page for details

1. Create quality content

I know this may seem obvious, but it’s so important! Content is the heart and soul of your website. Creating high-quality, valuable, and relevant content is essential to attracting and retaining traffic to your site.

Whether it’s blog posts, videos, infographics, or podcasts, make sure that your content addresses your target audience’s needs and interests.

If you have been creating content but haven’t gotten traction yet, here are three questions to ask yourself:

1. Have you done the market research to ensure that your audience is actually looking for the content you are creating?
2. Do you know your reader’s main pain point, and are you helping them get closer to solving it through your content?  

If you answered no to these questions, then it’s time to do some more market research in your field and get clearer on who you are speaking to and what they want help with.

3. Are you promoting your content after you create it? If not, keep reading for how to do this.

2. Leverage social media

If you are clear on your target audience and how to help them, but no one is coming to your site, it may simply be because they don’t know you exist!

If you recently created your website, it can take up to 6 months for your SEO to start showing results, so you have to promote your business in other ways.

Social media platforms are powerful tools for driving organic traffic and are a great place to start sharing your content and information about your business.

Creating shareable, helpful content including informative articles, infographics, and engaging videos that will help your target audience is a great way to boost traffic back to your site.

Pick one or two platforms that you know your audience is hanging out on and build up your presence. Link back to your website or freebie in your bio and within each piece of content where allowed, to boost your website traffic.

My two favorite ways to drive traffic to my website are via Pinterest and YouTube.  Both of these platforms are also search engines, which means that if you use the right keywords and link back to your site, your content will continue to work for you over time. I highly recommend starting with one of these.

Platforms like Instagram and TikTok can also be beneficial, but your organic reach (particularly with IG) may be very limited due to ever-changing algorithms. It can be a lot of effort for very little reach.

3. On-Page SEO Optimization

On-page SEO optimization is the process of fine-tuning your website to make it more search-engine-friendly which helps get traffic to a website.

Effective on-page SEO involves:

• Keyword Placement: Incorporate your target keywords naturally into your content, titles, headings, meta descriptions, and image alt tags.

• Correct Heading Tags: Each line of text on your website has a tag associated with it and this tag communicates to search engines like Google what your content is about. There are heading tags – H1 for titles, H2 for Headings, H3 for subheadings, all the way down to H6. There is also the <p> tag for paragraphs and <nav> tag for text containing navigation links. You can easily assign these in Showit as seen below. There is a hierarchy to them – only one H1 tag (Title) per page and then H2 headings are nested under the H1, followed by H2s, paragraph text, etc.

• Page Speed: Ensure that your website loads quickly. Slow-loading pages can deter visitors and affect your search rankings.

• Mobile Optimization: Make your website mobile-friendly, as Google values mobile-responsive designs.

A very unique feature of Showit is that there is a mobile site and a desktop side of the design that you can see at the same time and the two don’t just automatically communicate with each other.  You can change the size, position, and layout of items on mobile, and nothing will change on desktop.  You can also easily click the mobile phone or desktop icons on the side if you want something to show only mobile or only desktop. 

4. Collaborations

Guest blogging, being a guest on a podcast or YouTube channel, and other types of joint ventures can expand your reach and get traffic to your website for free.

Look for opportunities to write guest posts on authoritative websites in your niche, be a podcast guest, or collaborate with influencers in your industry. You can find some great collaboration groups on Facebook to start.

They will link to your freebie or website on their website or in the show notes of a podcast, Youtube interview, etc. in return. This not only gets you more traffic to your website but gives you a valuable backlink. (See #5)

5. Backlinks

Backlinks are simply links on one website that lead to a different website. They play a crucial role in the world of online marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and website ranking.

Backlinks not only drive direct traffic to your website, but they also have an impact on search engine rankings. Search engines like Google view backlinks as votes of confidence or trust from other websites.

When authoritative and reputable websites link to your content, it signals to search engines that your content is valuable and credible. As a result, your website is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords.

You can create some of your own backlinks as well by doing the following things:

• Post on Facebook, Twitter, etc, and include a link to your website
• Link to your website on Instagram stories
• Link to your content from Pinterest
• Have a YouTube channel or podcast? Link to your site in the show notes.
• If you are a guest on a podcast or on a blog, make sure to ask for a link back to your site.

6. Email marketing

Email marketing remains a highly effective method for driving traffic.

When you send an email to your list and include a link to your newest blog post, podcast, video, offer, etc., a percentage of people will click on the link and go check it out. That means that with a press of the send button, you can instantly get traffic to your site.  

This is just one of the many reasons why you want to be building an email list. If you do not have one yet, be sure to check out my following posts.

6 reasons why you need to be building an email list

How to Grow an Email List for Beginners: 7 Email List Building Steps

Then check out my free email mini-course and full Email Marketing Blueprint program below.

7. Monitor, Analyze, and Optimize

Regularly monitor your website’s performance using tools like Google Analytics. Analyze your traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion rates. Use these insights to refine your strategies and focus on what works best for your audience.

Conclusion: How to Get Traffic to a Website for Free

Boosting website traffic for free and organically is not an overnight process. It requires dedication, patience, and a commitment to providing value to your audience.

By consistently producing high-quality content, optimizing your website for SEO, leveraging social media, collaborating with others, creating backlinks, utilizing, email marketing, and monitoring traffic sources to see where you should put more focus, you can steadily increase your website’s traffic.

Stay committed to these strategies, adapt to changing trends, and watch your organic traffic grow over time.

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