How to Get Website Traffic for Free

Without website traffic, you have no hope of monetising your website.  It is the most important statistic you need.  Now, there is an argument that you don’t need a huge audience, but you definitely need the right audience.  That audience is those people who are going to interact with your content, going to be interested in what you have to say and be interested in any product recommendations you make.

So how do we go about getting website traffic for free?

Don’t Buy Traffic!

First off, before we get into getting free traffic to your website or blog, I would like to put a warning out there about buying traffic.  I don’t think you are considering this at the moment, but there may come a time where you do.  It is not going to help you in the slightest.  You will see a traffic spike, but they will not be the right audience for your blog.  It is not worth it.

Best Free Traffic is Through SEO

The best way to get traffic to your website is by creating high quality content that is search engine friendly.  We do this through making sure your website and your content is optimised for the search engines.  We do this through SEO or search engine optimisation.

What is Search Engine Optimisation? (SEO)

Let’s face it, if you want real traffic to your website you need to get your website and your content onto the first page of the search engines.

If your blog is appearing on the first page of Google for the search term you are targeting, you are going to get traffic to your website.

That is where you need to be to get traffic.

SEO or search engine optimisation is the practice of improving your rankings to get your blog to appear higher in the search results.

How do we do this, we need to ensure we are posting highly relevant content that answers the question the user is trying to get answered with a high-quality post that answers it for them.

For the example, you are looking for how to get website traffic for free.  If I promised you that in the title, but then went on about something completely different – that is not a way of getting website traffic.

Google and Bing have powerful algorithms that are checking the content you post and seeing where it fits into the rankings and whether it should be higher or lower in the rankings.

There are a few other factors to SEO than just the content you create.  These include:

Website Speed

One of the major things that can affect your rankings is your website loading speed.  If it takes ages for your website to load, people will give up and move to another website.  The search engines will see this, and this will lower your rankings.

Another thing is your images.  People are visual in nature, and images are important to your blog.  But if you do not optimise them properly, this can affect your load time which will affect your rankings.

Website speed can be effected by things like your web hosting.  Not all hosting is equal and is definitely something you should check out thoroughly before choosing a web host.  We use SiteRubix, which gives us a fantastic website speed.

Website Age

If your website is brand new, it will take time for the search engines to get around to the idea that you are creating content.  In my experience, it is only after 6 months of posting regular quality content that Google or Bing start to take real notice of your website.

The more regular you post content, the more likely you are to rank.  That rank can then keep climbing.

The thing I have found is, the reason they do this is because they have thousands of people starting blogs but most who are not taking it seriously give up after 3 months.  That is why I say 6 months of posting regular quality content tells Google that you are one of the serious ones and that they should seriously look at your content.

As I post content on my website, my ranking is dropping regularly.  This will depend on your niche, etc.  But typically, I have found 6 months is a good benchmark to use.

Are You Using an SEO Plugin?

Most bloggers are using WordPress, so at this point I am going to assume this is the case for you.  You are going to need an SEO plugin that does a good job of telling the search engines about your website and your content.  We use the All-in-One SEO plugin for WordPress, but I know others use Yoast.

In either case, they are great tools to tell the Search Engines you are there and that you are posting fresh content.  Using a combination of one of these plugins and then using Google Search Console will have a great impact on telling the Search Engines about your content. The more often you post quality content, the better your rankings will be.

You Need to Create Quality Content

Think about why you are typically searching on Google?  It is normally because you need an answer to a question.

The search engines are going to want to provide the best answer to that question.  That is the sole purpose and that is why they spend so much time and money on building algorithms that find the best answers to the question people are asking.

So, when we talk about quality content – it needs to be an in-depth post or video that clearly answers the question that you are targeting.

Check out your competition and see what they have written and see if you can come up with a more in-depth and complete answer and you will find that your rankings will improve.  The better the rankings, the better your traffic will be.

I personally try and target 1500 words in each post, but even if you are coming up with 1000 that is a great start.  You will find your writing will improve over time and then you will get to a point where you are easily writing 2,500 words.  Most of our posts end up in the 3,000-word bracket and that is because we always try and be thorough.  But if you can only manage 900 words at the moment, don’t just write words for the sake of it.

Make sure you are being highly relevant to the target audience you have identified.  If you start just writing words for the sake of it, they will just leave your website without reading it all.  Not a great sign for the search engines, this can really harm your rankings.

Key Tips:

• Be highly relevant
• Aim for 1500+ words
• Write in a conversational style
• Don’t just write words for the sake of it.

You Need Engagement

This is an important factor in getting your website ranking well enough to get traffic and is often an element people overlook.  People might find your post and that is great, but when they add comments to your post you get a double benefit.

For one thing, when someone adds a comment to your post and then you reply to that comment you are adding extra content to your post.

You could easily get a post that was originally 1500 words to be closer to 5,000 or even 10,000 words when you add in the comments and the search engines do take these comments into account.

The second benefit is that it tells Google that your content was helpful to the reader.

That is why it is a double benefit.

It can be really difficult to get comments though when you are first starting out with a blog. But a post without comments doesn’t instil confidence into people visiting that website.

We tend to use the fantastic Site Comments feature within Wealthy Affiliate.  It allows you to get high-quality comments onto your posts.  Then when you start getting organic comments as your blog grows, you will start to see that the search engines love the fact your website is getting comments and will reward you with rankings.

Are You Doing Keyword Research?

There is no point in writing any content or getting any comments if you are targeting the right keywords.

Every piece of content you are going to be posting to your website needs to start with keyword research.

If your blog is new or you are about to start a blog, the best strategy for keyword research is to target low competition keywords.  If you target a keyword with a lot of competition from authority websites, you will have no chance of ranking well enough to get some traffic to your website.

Using a keyword research tool like Jaaxy, you can start to highlight keywords that are not as competitive, and you have a better chance of ranking high with.

There are millions of keywords out there and you will find that there are still plenty of keywords that have not had a well-written post put against it.

Our advice is to target a long-tail keyword that gets a little bit of traffic against it and has a low number of competing websites against.

It might sound weird when we say target a keyword that doesn’t get much traffic.  But as you will be writing plenty of low competition posts, the strategy works because you will be getting small amounts of traffic at first that will lead to better rankings.

As your rankings increase, you can start targeting more competitive keywords that get more traffic.

But when first starting out, you are better off getting a small amount of traffic than no traffic at all.

With the right keyword research and a well-written post, even if you only get a trickle of traffic it can have a massive impact to both your rankings and your business.

That traffic will be coming to your website because they are looking to solve a problem.  You have written a high-quality post that helps them solve the problem.  That is what they are looking for.

That is more likely to get you engagement where they might leave you a comment, or actually follow a recommendation you have made if you are looking to make sales.

Either way, it can start the floodgates for traffic.

Think of these two examples, which would you prefer.

1. You target a high competition keyword but write a 2,000-word article that is high-quality but get no traffic and no engagement.
2. You target a low-competition keyword, write a 1,000-word article that is high-quality and gets you a little traffic.

You are much better off targeting these low-competition keywords for every post until you are more established.  I would rather get a little traffic, than no traffic at all.

That is the best strategy to getting traffic when you are starting out or struggling to get traffic.

If you want to learn more about keyword research, check out our guide on keywords and keyword research.

Are You Writing Content That Helps Solves a Problem?

Think about your content, if you are doing effective keyword research and are still not getting much traffic you need to start reviewing your content.

You have found a fantastic keyword to use, but have you given any consideration as to why someone would be looking for information about that keyword?

If we take the example, we have chosen for this post.  People are either struggling to get traffic to a current website or they are looking at building a website and wanting to know how to get website traffic for free.

If I didn’t help people with that subject, why would Google rank it?

Why would anyone want to read it?

There are a number of different post types, but you need to make sure you answer the question you are trying to answer.  Keep it relevant and make sure you consider the pain points people could have and make sure you write a post that helps people.

If people come away from your website thinking that it was a great guide and offered the help they needed, they are more likely to save your website to their bookmarks or read another of your posts.

Returning traffic will do wonders for your rankings, which in effect will increase your traffic.

Are You Still Struggling to Get Traffic?

These things take time, you will not see huge masses of traffic come in over-night if your website is still new.  But if you are targeting the right keywords, writing high-quality content and getting engagement (comments) to your website the day will come when traffic starts to come through to your website.

But if your website is still brand new, the biggest thing that you need to change is your expectations.

You need to gain the trust of the search engines; you need to gain the trust of anyone who comes to your website.  The search engines are not going to start ranking you on the first page until they realise that you are offering high-quality content that will help them give their users the best answers to their questions.

Once it happens, your rankings will shoot through the roof and that will lead to your getting traffic.

If your website is new, do not expect it to happen just yet.

If you have an existing website and have had it a while and your traffic doesn’t seem to be moving upwards.  It might be because you haven’t been doing one of the subjects we have covered above.  Be it:

• You are not doing keyword research properly
• Your content is lacking quality or is not relevant enough.
• Have you got an SEO plugin install?
• Are you getting an engagement (comments)?

It might be you just need a little patience, especially if you are targeting a highly competitive niche.  If we take the MMO or Affiliate Marketing niche, it could take a year to start getting the trust of the search engines.

If you follow the advice above in a less competitive niche, you could easily start getting traffic within 3-6 months.  But only if you are following the right strategy to get SEO traffic flowing.

Don’t Forget Social Media

Whilst this doesn’t sit within SEO, this is still a fantastic way of getting engagement and traffic to your content.  Are you posting your content to your social media channels?

Have you got social media channels?

Before we started, we had Facebook like most people do.  But I then needed to setup Pinterest and Instagram because there is a huge audience there and if it means they flow through to your blog it increases your engagement and your traffic which in turn tells the search engines people are interested in your blog and this can increase your traffic.

Whenever you write a new post, make sure you share it on social media!

Consider YouTube

If you are after traffic, then you do need to consider creating content for YouTube.  YouTube is owned by Google and is the second largest search engine online after Google.

People are looking for videos that help them with stuff, if you can provide the videos that help solve the issue it will lead to traffic.

It is a hard one sometimes, I know I need to get into YouTube, but it can seem daunting to have to record yourself.

But we all have smartphones and it could be simply you record a short video covering the key topics and leaving a link to your website in the comments.

If they like what they see in the video, they might follow the link and read your post.

This can have a great impact on your traffic and your rankings.

How to Get Website Traffic for Free

By now, hopefully you understand that to get website traffic for free you need to improve your rankings within the search engines.  Follow our advice and you will find that your rankings improve and then your traffic will flow.

95% of the clicks made through the search engines are from page one.  You need to be on page one of Google, Bing or YouTube to get the traffic you seek.

That is it!

Do all the hard work and get some low-competition keyword posts onto page one of Google and keep writing them and then you will notice your traffic will start to increase.

But you need to write content consistently following the tips we have included in this post.  Don’t stop for a few weeks, this will have a huge impact on your traffic.  If you are only able to write 2 posts a week, then keep to 2 posts a week.  Google like consistency.  I know I keep going on about Google, but two thirds of the traffic online will come from Google, so you need to target them.

Show them you are going to provide regular high-quality content and they will reward you.  It might not happen straightaway, but it will happen.

Hopefully now you have a good handle on how you can get website traffic for free.  If you still have any questions or want help with a specific point, please write them in the comments below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.