There are plenty of free methods out there to get traffic to your website, but most of them require you to spend time each day on the computer, which can quickly become an added task you don’t have time for. The good news is there are still several ways to go about getting free traffic without doing any work yourself. Here are some of the best and most effective ways to get free traffic in 2023.
Become an SEO expert
If you have time, it’s never a bad idea to be versed in SEO and other digital marketing strategies. The web is changing rapidly, and if you want your content (and your business) to survive you need to understand how things like search engines and social media can help bring visitors your way.
Content marketing
Let’s be real: 90% of content marketing is garbage. We can all agree on that, right? I mean, even if you’re a fan of some specific brand or business and would really like them to succeed, there’s still about a 10% chance that something about their content marketing strategy will annoy you. Or worse yet, feel contrived or insincere. Most often than not it falls into one of these categories
Social media
Use social media. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram are a few of my favourite sources for generating traffic. Since they provide your content on a large-scale platform with easy sharing capabilities, they can be great if you’re looking for immediate feedback and engagement from your target audience. Not only that but you can run successful ad campaigns through each social network.
Podcasting
If you’re not familiar with them, podcasts are essentially audio or video recordings that run on a schedule—like a radio show you can subscribe to via RSS. Podcasts used to be hard to come by, but now there are hundreds of thousands of free (and paid) options available for anyone interested in creating their own. You could even go so far as to create your own podcast about podcasting and get some extra listeners by targeting existing podcasters with your expertise.
Guest blogging
The principle of guest blogging is straightforward: You write a piece of content for someone else’s website and then that content gets shared on their social media accounts. (This is why it’s important for you to know who your audience is!) The guest blogger may also receive backlinks from those social shares, which could help drive traffic back to his or her own site.
Forums
Whether you’re interested in your industry or not, it can be helpful to participate in online forums. Being active and offering your own advice, either through threads or starting new topics (while linking back to your website), can get you found by new customers and viewers. By putting a lot of effort into answering questions on forums, you’ll also gain exposure and credibility.
Email newsletters
You should first use email newsletters as a free way to market your products. This can be done in a variety of ways. For instance, if you have an e-commerce business, you could promote new products or special deals through newsletter marketing. Or, if you’re writing a physical book that has a target audience, you could create an email list with all potential customers who would be interested in purchasing your book and send out periodic emails inviting them to buy it.
Social bookmarking
Sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit and more are great for getting free traffic. With social bookmarking sites, you get free traffic by voting on articles (up or down), sharing your own links and submitting your own news. The social bookmarking cycle helps people find new content by allowing them to vote on what they think is worthy of making it to the front page so that other people can see it.