How to Drive Traffic to Your Website? 20 Best Free and Paid Practices

Contrary to popular belief, ensuring the success of a website requires more than just a catchy domain name, visually appealing layout, and quality content. Even if you build the most captivating website and publish high-quality articles, they won’t do you any good if no one sees them.

Creating a website and its content is just the beginning. To make sure its success, it’s necessary to learn how to drive web traffic. After all, the more people visit your site, the faster it grows.

If you want to learn more about the various ways to drive more traffic to your website, this article is for you. We will explain the 20 best free and paid traffic generation methods for better ranking.

Video Tutorial

Watch this tutorial to find out how to generate website traffic, along with tips and tricks to stand out from competitors.

Organic Search Traffic vs Paid Traffic

There are two main types of website traffic – organic and paid. Organic web traffic refers to site visitors from search engines like Google or Bing.

On the other hand, paid traffic lands on your site through advertisements such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, promoted links, and other paid methods.

Research has proven that 53% of all website traffic is organic. This number has many site owners racing to improve their websites’ search engine optimization (SEO).

Organic traffic, also known as free website traffic, is a long-term investment that brings you the most relevant traffic. Getting a site to rank in search results takes time. You might not see significant results for months, especially if your site’s niche is crowded.

To drive more visitors to your website quickly, aim for paid traffic. You can set it up within minutes and receive more visitors on the same day.

Tons of advertisement services also offer various targeting options, letting users choose who sees their ads based on criteria such as location, age, and sex. However, be ready to spend significant money, especially in competitive markets.

If you want to know how your website performs, use a website traffic analytics tool like Similarweb to gain more insights into which strategies work best.

Whether concentrating on organic search or paid traffic, having a reliable web hosting provider is crucial for optimal website performance during the growth period. Hostinger offers managed web hosting, virtual private server (VPS), and cloud server hosting services to facilitate seamless scaling as your traffic increases.

20 Best Ways to Drive Website Traffic

Increasing website traffic is achievable with enough effort and the right methods. Let’s discuss organic and paid ways to drive traffic to your website.

1. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

Well-implemented SEO best practices will help your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and get more traffic. One way to get started is to research and create content based on popular keywords.

Through research, learn how many people search for specific keywords and how fierce the competition is. Determine which keywords to use to write SEO friendly content.

To rank high among search results, include long-tail keywords, as they are usually used by people looking for specific information. Long-tail keywords are specific search phrases with three or more less competitive words, making it easier for you to rank in Google search results. They attract a more targeted audience, leading to higher conversion rates.

There are many keyword research tools, the most popular being Google Keyword Planner. Find keyword ideas or check historical metrics such as average monthly search volume and competition.

After deciding which keywords to use, it’s time to optimize your website. The optimization process can be divided into off-site and on-site SEO.

Off-site SEO is anything you can do to boost website traffic and visibility without tweaking it. There are many ways to promote your website for free, such as social media marketing and guest blogging. Furthermore, remember technical SEO aspects, like increasing site loading speed.

On the other hand, on-site or on-page SEO involves optimizing different parts of your website. Producing quality content is one great way to optimize your website.

When creating website content, make sure to focus on on-page SEO first. After all, the website has to be great before you market it to others. Here are some SEO tips on which elements to modify to improve on-page SEO and ultimately generate traffic:

• Title tags. Create catchy titles with keywords. Keep them under 70 characters.
• Meta description. A web page description shown in Google search results should contain a target keyword for search engines and website visitors to understand the page’s content.
• Header tags. Break the content up into several sections using header tags for easy reading. There are six levels of headings, from H1 to H6.
• Image alt text. This text describes images on the website and helps search engine crawlers understand them. Screen-reading tools also use this information to make images’ context easily digestible.

To optimize your website for search engines, prioritize local SEO. This strategy helps drive targeted traffic from local search, increasing the chances of conversions and building stronger community ties. Small business owners can leverage local SEO to dominate their local market without spending money on paid advertisements like Google ads.

Consider building your website with Hostinger Website Builder to make it SEO-friendly from the start. The onboarding process gives you the option to generate a unique template tailored to your needs, making the platform one of the easiest AI website builders for beginners. Moreover, it offers free tools for SEO and can generate SEO-friendly content with the help of AI.

2. Start Email Marketing Campaigns

Although on-page SEO is a great way to attract potential customers, you need to make sure they don’t just visit once. Sending regular newsletters and promotions through email is a great way to engage with customers and share product knowledge.

Keeping in touch with people encourages them to revisit your site. Like regular customers of a coffee shop, they can eventually become loyal visitors to your website.

If you want to make an email marketing campaign, use email marketing services like MailChimp and Constant Contact. Get started with the free version before upgrading to premium plans as your site grows.

If you want to make an email marketing campaign, use email marketing services like MailChimp, Constant Contact, or other alternatives.

However, avoid bombarding subscribers with too many emails. Send weekly or bi-weekly emails containing marketing campaigns, special offers, useful information, or a roundup of site updates subscribers need to know.

Take a look at Hostinger’s newsletter, filled with valuable tutorials that empower recipients to build and enhance their websites:

The following are some email marketing best practices to increase website traffic:

• Make sure the emails are mobile-friendly. As around 46% of emails are opened on mobile devices, you’d want to ensure the user experience is consistent across all screen sizes.
• Create personalized emails. Include the subscriber’s name to address them directly, appear more friendly, and develop their trust.
• Entice people to read more. Use copywriting to emphasize appealing information in the email’s subject line and body. Provide clickable Read More links or buttons within the emails, leading people to your site.
• Use attractive visual elements. Ensure the emails use aesthetically pleasing themes and eye-catching color palettes, inviting people to read the content. However, ensure they don’t hurt the content’s readability.
• Take advantage of email analytics. Test out different email marketing strategies and track the performance to see which works best. Use the data to segment email subscribers, delivering targeted emails to the most receptive groups.

Consider using a business email address for your campaign instead of a personal one to appear more professional and official. Besides helping you build trust with costumes, a business email address has higher deliverability rates than free email services.

3. Post on Social Media Regularly

Social media sites are a powerful free tool to drive more traffic to your site. Accessible to anyone with an internet connection, they can boost brand exposure and serve as a traffic channel for your website.

Make sure your organic social media content is easy to share by embedding social sharing tools, but don’t sit and wait around for people to share your content. Instead, be proactive and reach out to potential customers.

Every time you upload new content, share it on social media sites. Repurpose your blog posts into various formats, like infographics and videos. It’s free and can significantly increase website traffic.

Here are some tips to promote blog posts on social media sites:

• Add visual elements. People are more likely to click on visually appealing blog posts, so ensure your content isn’t just a wall of text.
• Use hashtags. Relevant hashtags make posts easier to discover and attract people interested in your niche, as they use specific hashtags to find desired content.
• Pick the right platform. Different social media sites have different target audiences. Adults mostly use Facebook, while young adults and adolescents frequent Instagram and Twitter. Try various sites to see which one generates the most website traffic.
• Tag influencers in the industry. While grabbing the attention of influential people in your niche can be beneficial, only do this on relevant posts and don’t overdo it.
• Interact with followers. Keep your audience engaged by replying to comments people leave in response to your organic social media content. Find opportunities to include links that redirect users to your website, earning more traffic.

4. Write Quality Content

Content is the core of every site. Engaging content will keep visitors coming back and turn them into loyal audiences. Furthermore, they will be more inclined to share it with others.

Check out our tips on how to create content that can generate website traffic:

• Research keywords. Your content should be built around the main keywords. Think of them as topics to write about. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, or Semrush to pick relevant keywords with high search volume.
• Create strong headlines. These tend to grab people’s attention on SERPs, so the catchier the headlines, the better. They should provoke interest and curiosity, encouraging them to visit your website and read the whole copy.
• Avoid long sentences and big words. Most people skim over content to find the information they need, so simplicity and clarity are necessary.
• Write quality content. Your content should provide answers to problems or frequently asked questions. Put yourself in readers’ shoes and consider what they want to see. Avoid filler sentences for the sake of increasing the word count.
• Add images and videos. A wall of text will drive readers away, so break up content with visual elements to keep readers engaged.
• Use writing tools. Take advantage of spelling and grammar checkers like Grammarly to streamline content production.

When it comes to writing good website content, practice is important. Over time, you will learn how to write effectively and drive traffic to your website.

5. Make Your Site Mobile-friendly

The fact that mobile phones account for 56% of all web traffic should be enough to understand why a website has to be mobile-friendly. If visitors have a bad mobile experience on your site, they might never return, and you may lose a huge portion of potential traffic.

A mobile-friendly website should be responsive, which means it should automatically adjust the design based on the device’s screen size. Visitors can then browse through your website comfortably without having to scroll around. Try Google’s mobile-friendly test to see whether your website meets the standards.

To build a responsive website, you must hire a professional or use website-building platforms with responsive themes and templates. If you choose the latter, we recommend using WordPress, as many of its themes are mobile-friendly.

Having a responsive website is also crucial for great SEO. Since Google has implemented mobile-first indexing, its bots predominantly use the mobile version of websites for ranking and indexing. As a result, responsive websites are more likely to rank higher on SERPs.

6. Audit Outdated Content

Periodically publishing new content is a great way to drive more traffic to your website. The same effect can also be achieved by refining and improving existing content.

Search engines constantly crawl through websites to search for new content. Whenever you update existing content, search engine bots will recrawl the page to reassess and readjust its ranking in SERPs based on the modifications made.

To speed up results, updating old content boosts website traffic. If they already rank well on SERPs, an update keeps them relevant and increases their chances of ranking higher.

Use Google Analytics to identify popular blog post entries and optimize your content writing. Remember not to make unnecessary updates just for the sake of it. Aim for quality, not quantity.

Below are some updates you can make to an existing blog post:

• Remove typos and awkward sentences to create a better flow.
• Fix broken links and include quality backlinks to boost authority.
• Add new images, infographics, or videos.
• Improve the content’s accuracy by updating the information.

7. Implement an Affiliate Program

An affiliate marketing program is a partnership in which site owners pay people to send them referral traffic or sales.

Affiliates write articles to persuade readers to buy your products. As the merchant, you provide each affiliate marketer with a unique referral link or banner for their site. Marketers earn commissions for readers who visit your site through the link or banner. It differs from the referral program, which relies on word-of-mouth promotion.

Many businesses choose this online marketing strategy and even create affiliate marketing websites. It’s a cost-effective method for driving website traffic and boosting conversion rates.

Before choosing an affiliate, understand your target market. The affiliates or publishers must be appealing to your potential consumers. Ideally, opt for individuals who are already admired by your target demographic.

For instance, if your business operates in the IT industry, you can contact influential IT bloggers and propose an affiliate marketing agreement. By doing so, they can promote your products or services, creating a mutually beneficial partnership.

Here are some of the best affiliate marketing practices to bring more traffic to your website:

• Let potential affiliates find you easily. Create a landing page for your affiliate program. Explain the opportunity and include a sign-up button to encourage website visitors to join.
• Offer compelling yet reasonable commission fees. When researching industry rates, take into account your budget. If you run a small business, consider providing free products as an alternative to monetary compensation.
• Establish terms and conditions. Establish program rules and ensure affiliates are aware, preventing misunderstandings and fraud.
• Incentivize affiliates. Motivate affiliates by rewarding them with bonus gifts or elevating their commission rates based on the number of sales or a designated time frame. By ensuring their happiness, you’ll nurture long-lasting relationships with your affiliates.
• Create a newsletter for affiliates. Stay in touch with marketers by sending them regular emails about new products, services, or events. You can even showcase success stories as a selling point.

8. Perform External Link-building

Gather as many quality backlinks to your site as possible. You get these when other websites link to your site. Similarly, when you link to other sites on your site, they obtain backlinks from you.

Collecting external links is important for generating traffic to your site as it helps boost SEO efforts. The more backlinks you get, the more credible your site appears to search engine bots.

Here are some ways to gather backlinks for more website traffic:

• Reach out to journalists and reporters. If you are an industry expert, visit platforms like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) or Qwoted to connect with journalists seeking expert opinions. Offer them your knowledge, and you may even convince some publications to link back to your site, earning you referral traffic.
• Exchange backlinks. Connect with websites in the same industry and offer valuable content from your site in exchange for backlinks. This win-win arrangement drives traffic to your website and theirs, boosting visibility and engagement.
• Connect with featured brands. If you mention brands in your posts, reach out to them after publishing. Notify them that you featured their product, and they might provide a backlink to your website.
• Use Google Search Console to monitor backlinks. This free tool can help you track link growth for your website and identify which pages generate the most links.

9. Link Internally

Sometimes, webmasters prioritize backlinks while overlooking the importance of internal linking. However, both types of links play an equal role in driving traffic to your website.

Google uses internal and external links to determine the value of a page. When numerous links point to a page, Google deems that page important, resulting in higher rankings in search results.

When creating content, try to include relevant articles within your website. For example, if you write a blog post about starting a business, you can link back to an existing article about online business ideas.

Another benefit of internal linking is that it improves site navigation and user experience, encouraging visitors to stay on your website. It’s also a great way to share your content without overwhelming users with too much information and drive more traffic to other parts of your website.

Here are some tips to help you build a strong internal linking structure:

• Publish articles periodically. To include internal links in posts, you need various content to link to. Prioritize expanding your content library to enable more link placements within posts.
• Use natural anchor text. Incorporate the links into the content smoothly, using words already in the article. Avoid writing a sentence just for the sake of inserting an internal link.
• Only link to relevant content. Ensure internal links are relevant, helpful, and valuable to readers.
• Don’t overdo it. Internal links may be helpful, but inserting too many may make the articles look messy and hurt the user experience.

10. Speed up Your Site

Site speed refers to the time it takes for users to access and interact with a website. It is a crucial aspect of the page experience, which directly influences Google ranking factors, user experience, dwell time, and conversion rates.

Generally, the faster a site loads, the better its SEO is. Research conducted by Google shows that the bounce rate increases by 32% as page load time changes from one second to three. Over half of the visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes over three seconds to load.

A useful, free tool for improving website speed is Google PageSpeed Insights. It analyzes the content of a webpage, provides detailed reporting on its performance on both mobile and desktop devices, and offers suggestions on what to improve.

Here are some tips to speed up your website’s load time:

• Test site speed. Before improving it, find out the initial speed and what to fix. There are many website speed test tools that can give you those insights.
• Minify files. Use plugins like Autoptimize to remove unnecessary text, like code comments or whitespace, from your site’s HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files. Doing so reduces their sizes, resulting in lower bandwidth usage and faster page load time.
• Optimize images. Large images often slow down page load times. Before uploading an image, compress its file size by reducing its resolution. Use plugins like Smush to create decent-quality images with the smallest file size possible.
• Enable browser caching. Some page elements are temporarily stored in the cache on a user’s first visit to the site. Caching plugins like W3 Total Cache allow users’ browsers to load the page quicker on the next visit by retrieving the saved files instead of requesting them from the server.
• Remove unnecessary third-party integrations. Scripted page elements loaded from third-party sources, such as external commenting services or video players, may slow a page down. Only keep the ones that are integral to your site.
• Avoid redirects when possible. Forwarding visitors between pages increases load time. Redirects are useful for guiding visitors to the right page after deleting or moving a page but minimize their use.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN lets visitors access a site faster, regardless of their geographical location or the amount of traffic experienced by the server. This is because requests are sent to a global server network, not just one primary hosting server.

In addition to the aspects above, many factors of web hosting, such as RAM, hard drive size, and bandwidth, impact site speed. This is why choosing the right hosting provider is important.

Hostinger offers different types of hosting to suit various needs. Webmasters who want to maintain great site speed can go for one of Hostinger’s cloud hosting packages, which come with plenty of SSD storage, RAM, unlimited bandwidth, and free CDN.

11. Display Facebook Ads

Facebook advertising is another effective way of driving visitors to your website. In 2023, Facebook had 2.9 billion monthly active users, making it the most active social media platform. By advertising your website on Facebook, you can reach many potential customers and drive more website traffic.

There are two ways to advertise on the platform ‒ boosting existing posts or using its Ads Manager.

Users can turn any Facebook post into an ad using the Boost Post feature. However, the Ads Manager may be a better option if you wish to create dedicated marketing campaigns with more customizable options.

Based on average costs, Facebook Ads are a cheaper alternative to search engine ads. The average cost per click (CPC) across all industries is $1.72. You choose the daily budget and ad duration.

The key to running a successful Facebook Ads campaign is ensuring every dollar counts. Do so by defining your Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion goals when creating a campaign:

• Awareness. Reach new people and generate interest in your brand.
• Consideration. Capture visitors’ attention and encourage them to explore your website further.
• Conversion. Encourage site visitors to buy your products or services.

After defining your goals, create a marketing campaign to catch your audience’s attention. Here are some suggestions on what to do to generate traffic via Facebook advertising:

• Write an excellent description. The copy should be short, interesting, and relatable. Remember to include relevant keywords that appeal to local search intent.
• Provide appealing visual elements. Include pictures, infographics, or videos that grab users’ attention when scrolling through Facebook feed.
• Update ads once the campaign ends. Modify the ad’s visual elements and description to maintain its relatability and effectiveness.
• Create an informative landing page. You only have a few seconds to keep visitors from bouncing off your site, so make sure the landing page is aesthetically pleasing, enticing, and informative.

12. Create a YouTube Channel

YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform, with approximately 2.7 billion monthly active users. Such a large audience makes YouTube an excellent avenue for driving traffic to your website.

After creating a YouTube channel, post videos on various topics relevant to your industry. You can redirect viewers to your website, where they can find more information, an easy way to increase website traffic.

Here are some YouTube best practices to help drive traffic to your website:

• Use videos as teasers for site content. Avoid giving away all of your site content in YouTube videos. Instead, use them as teasers to showcase a condensed version of your long-form content and encourage viewers to visit your site for more details.
• Optimize videos for search engines. Use tools such as the Ahrefs YouTube Keyword Tool to perform keyword research. Create videos focused on popular long-tail keywords and work the words into video titles and descriptions.
• Write informative video descriptions. The video description should summarize the discussed content and include relevant links, such as those leading to your website and social media profiles. Including timestamps can enhance the viewing experience, while adding hashtags helps increase visibility.
• Include a signature call-to-action. For instance, you can remind viewers to subscribe to your channel and visit your website for more information. This reminder can be placed at the beginning or end of every video.
• Feature cards on the end screen. YouTube cards are clickable elements usually displayed at a video’s end-screen. They are helpful for showcasing links, playlists, or other videos and channels within the video. Moreover, they are easier to click than the links mentioned in the description.
• Interact with commenters. Building a strong community and nurturing loyalty relies heavily on engagement. Show your audience their opinion matters by liking, pinning, and responding to comments.

Check out Hostinger Academy if you’re looking for inspiration for your YouTube channel.

13. Advertise on Instagram

Instagram is another popular social media site for digital marketing. It is best suited for those targeting young audiences, as over half of its users are under 35. As Facebook owns this social platform, Instagram Ads is similar to Facebook Ads.

There are two ways to advertise on Instagram ‒ via the multi-platform Facebook Ads Manager or by boosting existing posts. Although the latter is easier, the Ads Manager provides more features and customization options.

To achieve your goals, utilize various targeting options such as age, gender, language, and country available through the manager. Additionally, you can adjust your campaign budget, schedule, and placements.

Creating visually appealing campaigns is essential on Instagram, as it is a visual platform. There are many types of Instagram ads, including image, video, story, and carousel ads. Conduct split testing to know which type best fits your branding needs.

Here are some Instagram Ads best practices to drive traffic to your website:

• Optimize ads for mobile devices. As most Instagram users access the platform on their phones, optimizing ads for mobile viewing is crucial. Film videos in portrait format, use vibrant colors and graphics to grab attention, and limit the amount of text.
• Prepare ads for consumption with no sound. Not everyone watches Instagram ads with sound, so focus on visually-driven content that users can digest without. Use captions for voiceovers if necessary.
• Keep ads short and straightforward. Getting straight to the key message grabs people’s attention before they scroll away.

14. Try Out Influencer Marketing

Social media has transformed how people find what they need. Nowadays, they trust recommendations from their favorite influencers. Utilize this to your advantage by partnering with influencers who can promote your brand to their audience for a commission.

If affiliate marketing rewards individuals for driving sales or traffic via commission, influencer marketing leverages social media personalities to boost brand exposure. The former is performance-based, while the latter focuses on credibility and reach.

Unlike affiliates, influencers usually receive a fixed amount of commission regardless of sales or traffic. However, compensation is not limited to money. In some cases, merchants offer free products instead of or in addition to a fee. As long as all terms are agreed upon beforehand, there should be no issues.

Here are some tips to help establish your influencer marketing network and gain more website traffic:

• Select influencers based on their platform. Identify influencers who are popular on platforms utilized by your target audience. For instance, if your audience mainly engages on Instagram, collaborating with an Instagram influencer is more beneficial than a YouTuber.
• Choose respected influencers in your niche. Choose influencers who are industry experts and have well-received content on the platform. Look for someone with a positive public image to promote your products or services.
• Be open-minded. Having clear guidelines but providing influencers with creative freedom to promote your brand is important. After all, they know best how to effectively communicate with their followers.

15. Display QR Codes

One of the best ways to drive traffic to a specific page is by advertising it with a QR code, a two-dimensional barcode that users can scan using their smartphone camera.

The QR code is a blend of online and offline marketing. Advertisers strategically place it in public spaces, such as promotional posters or billboards, to maximize their visibility. You can also put your QR code on physical products and printed publications.

Users can scan the code with their mobile devices and get instantly redirected to your webpage. Doing so eliminates the need to manually type your site’s domain in their browser.

Besides driving users to specific pages, the QR code is also useful for providing business details, contact info, promotional messages, locations, and discounts.

Many QR code generators can help turn your URLs into scannable codes. However, like a call-to-action button, your QR code needs eye-catching visuals and enticing copy to encourage scanning.

Consider the following factors before generating a QR code:

• Target audience. Ensure that your target market knows how to scan a QR code. If most of your audience doesn’t use mobile devices, setting up a QR code would be ineffective.
• Responsive site design. The QR code should lead to a mobile-optimized page since it will be mainly scanned using phones.
• Placement. While scanning a QR code on a mobile device is possible, it’s much easier to click on a link when a user is already online. The QR code aims to bridge the gap between offline and online experiences, making it more suitable for print media and packaging.
• Size. The practical minimum QR code size is 2 x 2cm or 0.8 x 0.8 inches. Setting up your QR code in the right dimension ensures it’s scannable.

16. Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is ideal for targeting skilled professionals globally. It’s one of the best platforms to drive traffic to business-focused websites.

Once you’ve signed up, complete your LinkedIn profile. Include all the necessary information and keywords relevant to your niche to boost credibility and visibility. Remember to provide a link to your website and personalize your profile while maintaining a professional tone.

Like other social media platforms, being active on LinkedIn is key. Create valuable and insightful posts. Optimize your content by incorporating natural anchor text for links to your site.

Additionally, join relevant groups and interact with other members. Building networks and engagement helps increase website traffic for free and attracts potential customers and collaborations.

Another way to drive traffic to your site on LinkedIn is by running ad campaigns. Using the Campaign Manager, you can set up four types of campaigns ‒ sponsored content, sponsored messaging, dynamic ads, and text ads.

Choose from three categories of objectives:

• Awareness. Increase your brand’s visibility.
• Consideration. Boost engagement level, drive website traffic, and gain video views.
• Conversion. Improve website conversions and generate quality leads.

You can also use LinkedIn’s targeting tools to reach audiences based on demographics, company, job experience, education, interests, and traits.

Remember to set the campaign budget and schedule. Track your ongoing campaign’s click-through rate (CTR) for future campaign optimizations.

17. Publish Guest Posts

Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, is an effective method for boosting referral traffic. It helps you reach a broad audience of readers with similar interests within your niche.

Submitting a guest post to reputable sites helps establish your authority and credibility in the industry. In return, the website you create content for usually allows backlinks to yours in the guest post, giving you a chance to increase website traffic.

Here’s how to increase traffic to your website with guest posts:

• Identify your target audience. Figure out your target demographic and which relevant websites they visit. Offer guest blogging to increase the visibility of your blog posts to the right people.
• Build relationships. Be active in communities or attend events related to your site’s niche to make industry friends. Expand your network to offer guest posting services to more relevant sites.
• Write valuable content. Ensure your guest post idea aligns with the targeted audience’s interests. Incorporate relevant short and long-tail keywords to increase the post’s visibility in search engines, earning you and the website more exposure.

18. Conduct Webinars

A webinar is an online event where hosts and panelists discuss and share knowledge on a specific topic, streaming live to a virtual audience. Promote your webinar through multiple channels, engage social media followers, and encourage them to generate buzz about the event.

Hosting a webinar is one way to increase traffic to your website for free. This strategy is also ideal for improving brand awareness and social media presence.

The interactive nature of webinars allows you to establish trust directly with your audience. For instance, you can host a webinar featuring a live Q&A session, where the audience can submit questions and actively participate in the discussion.

A high-quality webinar can boost brand authority and credibility. People will be more likely to visit and engage with your site if it offers valuable info and features industry experts.

After the webinar ends, use the session recording to generate free website traffic. Share the videos on your site or repurpose them into different types of content, including short and long-form copies, to market your site.

Hostinger often hosts webinars with IT experts on topics like WordPress SEO essentials and using social media to grow your business. Browse our recorded webinars for inspiration.

Take the following factors into account when preparing a webinar:

• Topic. Come up with topics that would be useful and relevant to your audience’s interests and needs.
• Format. Choose how you want the webinar conducted. Popular formats include Q&A sessions, speaker presentations, panel discussions, product demos, and interviews.
• Speakers. Select panelists for the webinar, such as industry experts, influencers, or experts from your team. Remember that high-profile speakers can boost event publicity.
• Tools and materials. When conducting interviews, do your research, gather data, and draft the questions. Make sure you have the right tools like a camera, microphone, stable internet, and reliable video conferencing platform.
• Promotion. Prepare webinar materials to promote the event, including automated reminder emails, social media posts, and website pop-ups. Use a business email address when reaching out to potential speakers and requesting confirmation from attendees.

19. Join Online Communities

Online communities comprise people with shared interests gathered on social media or niche websites. Members exchange stories, ask questions, and discuss virtually any imaginable topic.

Participating in online communities within your industry may help boost organic traffic to your website. Those you meet are already interested in your niche and, therefore, will likely visit your site.

The key to promoting your site in online communities is to do it after establishing a strong relationship and trust with fellow community members. Join discussions, ask for advice, answer people’s questions, and help solve other members’ problems.

Promoting your brand immediately after becoming a member will make the interaction seem inorganic. A strong relationship makes the community more receptive to your business and open to visiting your website.

You can find various online communities on popular platforms like LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Reddit, and Quora. Alternatively, use Google to find niche communities and forums.

Find an online community that fits your niche. For example, Stack Overflow is a programming forum, while Warrior Forum caters to people interested in internet marketing.

Before sharing content, assess the community to ensure it’s the right place to promote your site. Research if similar content has been discussed and observe the engagement and reception.

After promoting your content, track and measure the volume of traffic to your site using Google Analytics. Identify communities that provide the most value and engagement to your website.

20. Publish Content on Medium

You can bring more traffic to your site by publishing relevant blog content on Medium, a popular blogging platform, and inserting links to your site in the posts.

The platform covers a wide range of topics, increasing the chance of finding your target audience there. Numerous businesses use Medium to publish content and increase brand awareness among potential customers.

Another benefit of using Medium is that you can make money blogging by joining the Partner Program. Write compelling blog posts on the platform and earn commission based on the total read time. The longer people spend reading your article, the more you’ll make.

Here are some helpful tips on driving traffic to your website via Medium:

• Republish site content on Medium. Besides publishing new content on Medium, use its import feature to republish content from your site. Remember to optimize your posts with short and long-tail keywords for better SEO.
• Submit blog content to Medium publications. These shared spaces, managed by editorial teams, host articles from various authors about specific topics. When your submission is accepted and published, your blog post reaches the publication’s extensive audience.
• Build relationships with other Medium writers. Follow influential authors in your industry and engage with their content. Leave thoughtful comments on their articles and, with permission, mention them and their work in yours.
• Take advantage of social media. Cross-post your Medium articles to social media platforms for a wider reach. Additionally, engage with fellow Medium creators on social media to build rapport.
• Track performance. Monitor the number of people coming to your site from Medium and analyze the performance of each post. Use this data to identify the type of content you should either discontinue or continue publishing on the platform to gain more traffic.

Conclusion

If you are a webmaster, learning how to drive traffic to your website is a must. While there are different types of website traffic, you should focus on two ‒ organic traffic, which comes from search engines, and paid traffic, generated by advertisements.

We’ve shared the top free and paid methods to drive traffic to your website. If you’re unsure where to start, we recommend the following strategies:

• Optimize your website’s SEO. Help search engines crawl your site by promoting it and modifying its content and elements. The higher your site’s position in the search results, the more organic traffic it will receive.
• Stay active on social media. Cross-post content on social media sites and engage with followers by responding to their comments. Make it easy for them to access your site by including its link in your profile and content.
• Hire affiliate marketers. Commission people to promote your products and encourage their audience to make purchases through their affiliate links.
• Work with influencers. Contact influential people on social media who are popular within your industry and ask them to promote your products to their followers in exchange for a commission.
• Set up paid advertisements. Facebook Ads and Google Ads offer instant visibility and targeted traffic to your site. Tailor campaigns to your audience and budget for fast results.

We hope this article has given you insights on how to get traffic to your website. Since there are multiple ways to increase website traffic, make sure to test and find out which strategy fits your needs best. Good luck!