There are various ways on how to increase traffic to your website. If you want to increase visitors to your site, it is important to master the fundamental rules and tactics of the game. There are two major traffic sources; Organic (natural) and Artificial visits. Depending on your preference and choice, the methods may be free or costly as you are about to see. This article combines all the ways of getting traffic to your website. It is upon you to use your own discretion while selecting a method to get traffic from us in the tips.
1.Website Content
As stated by the world’s #1 search engine, Google “Content Is King”. This is the only the major reason why website visitors from search engines can visit a site for. Site owners should provide original, quality, and unique content for their visitors.
Duplicate and unauthorized copied material should be avoided at all costs. Google usually bans or ranks lowly website that violates this guideline. If you target to increase traffic to your website by getting visitors from search engines then content is your king. Below are some of the ways to leverage your website content in order to get more traffic:
- Write Articles
- Diversify your Content
- Translate Your Content
- Improve your Website Bounce Rate
2.Improve Search Engine Ranking
You can also drive traffic to your website if you improve your site search engine ranking, a process known as Search Engine Optimization.
3.Get More Backlinks to Your Website
Backlinks or inbound links are links from other site to yours. Improving the number of backlinks to your site will add up to three main things:
- Increase in Google Pagerank.
- Boost in web traffic.
- Quick indexing by search engines.
However as is the norm in Search Engine Optimization, to much of something can be dangerous. For more guidelines and tips on generating backlinks, see the article on how to get backlinks for free.
4.Advertise your Website
How can your even ignore this? Advertising your website is a perfect way to spread the word about your site’s presence and increase traffic. Though most advertising is not free, there are turn around on it. Meaning that you can advertise your website for free. Below are some ways of adverting your website for free:
- Business cards.
- Custom Clothes.
- Free Donation items.
- Your Car and all public items you may think of.
Important to note is the fact that paid advertising is much more effective than free forceful advertising. Reason being you get the chance to increase your target traffic by advertising on areas of your website’s niche. For example if your website is about personal finance then you get the chance to bid for advertising space on sites of your choice in your niche. This makes paid advertising the most effective of the methods. Though costly, it is worth it. Below are some top ad networks you could us to advertise your website.
- Google AdWords
- Bidvertiser
- Chitika
- Clicksor and much more.
5.Break a News Article
Breaking news stories is the power of blogging. All bloggers admit to this fact. Take a look at top news sites like the BBC, CNN , ESPN and the rest. They get most of their traffic from visitors who read their news articles. It cannot be different with your website. If your site is among the first in the whole world to break a news story, then be sure that the whole world will chrome your website to read about it.
Apart from search visits to your breaking news article, you also get the privilege of websites around the world linking to your site. This is one of the surest ways to get traffic to your site.
6.Add a Blog to your Static Site
How do you do that? Well ask the web designers. If your website is static, then you should consider adding a blog to it. Blogs improve the interactivity with your visitors. By adding a blog to your website you allow your website visitors to post and also read all your posts. A blog is also the ideal place to post your news stories. This is a recommended way to increase traffic to your website while still maintaining that professional touch.
7.Offer Incentives
You can also use incentives to get more internet traffic to your website. For example you could run an affiliate program on your website and reward people that refer their friends to the services you are offering How you use successfully this method to increase traffic will depend on the strategy applied by you. Be realistic in your approach and remember to consult an expert if need be.
8.Freebies and Contests
Offering free stuff on your website is a sure way to get web traffic. If you are not doing that, please try it and the results will amaze you. How about that? Below are some freebies you consider offering on your website:
- Free Ebooks.
- Free Software Apps
Apart from offering freebies, you can also generate traffic by hosting free contests on your site. By allowing your website visitors to freely participate in such contests you improve your web traffic. The contests should be backed with great gifts and prices to be won. This tactic can can never go wrong if implemented correctly since prizes and gifts are real are known to be real website traffic baits.
9.Use Social Media
Yes, the world largely spends its time on social networking sites while on the internet. This is a rich internet traffic mine, drill it. But how do you increase website traffic using social media?
Starting is quite simple. For starters, you can start by creating a social media account on at least one of the top five social networking sites that include Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn ….
Then create a customized account for your website on your favorite social media site. For Facebook lovers, the easiest thing could be to create a Facebook Fan Page. Then the rest of the work remaining is to build a loyal following. This can be different with other social networking sites but the ultimate goal should be building a huge loyal following on social media.
There are also lots of social media plugins that you can install on your website. There is a lot to social media management that perhaps may require you to hire the services of a social media ‘guru’. For some lazy quick tips, you can check the articles on how to increase Twitter Followers.
Ah! How exactly does social media increase visitors to a website? Well, assuming your site has a large following on social media this could be an instant internet traffic source. Each time you post an interesting content on your website, then you should share it with your followers. Imagine if you have 1 million followers, it supposedly means 1 million reads. That is great traffic. In whatever you do remember to keep a professional touch or loose out. Remember not everything is worth sharing.
10.Create a Website Community
Building a large website community is a sure way to increase traffic to your site. Building a large social media following is one of those tactics to build and large community. Below are other methods you could try out:
- Create a Forum on your website.
- Build a Mailing List.
- Create a Facebook Fan Page.
11.Increase your Website Speed
A survey conducted to establish the world’s 100 most annoying thngs showed that a slow internet connection was ranked eighth. And that equally translates to your website’s loading speed. So to improve and drive more traffic to your website it is worth it to increase your website’s loading speed.
12.Guest Posting and Blog Commenting
These two are a year round tactics. Guest posting is mainly a good way to get backlinks and also drive traffic to your site. And so is Blog commenting. For sites that use WordPress, Commentluv blogs are a better option. They allow you to post links that are dofollow.
13.Answer Questions Online
Answering questions that relate to your website can be a great way to drive traffic and get unique visits. This is because most people need answers to their queries. If your site has the correct answers to the solution to their problems then you have just recruited some loyal visitors to your website.
Remember to always post a link to the part of your or other website with the solutions. Their are recommended top questions and answers that allow you to do this and post relevant links without spamming. One of such sites si YahooAnswers. You can also see a list of other sites like Yahoo Answers.
14.Submit your Website
Try to submit your website to search engines and top web directories. Some search engines like Yahoo take time to index sites. You could try to submit your site with them and also to top web directories such as the Dmoz.
15.Responsive Design
A good design is good for your website readership. There are many views on how a good web design looks. Use your own discretion. The most important thing to note is that you should keep it clean and traditional. Black text, light backgrounds, clear navigation ….