How to Boost Website Traffic for Free

SEO Strategy

Aug 29

Written By Emily

If you’re seriously tired of writing valuable, interesting content and getting zero website traffic, this post is for you.

It’s not easy to build free organic traffic, but with the right strategies, it’s completely doable (and for free).

In this post, we’ll look at my favourite strategies for increasing website traffic even if you’re starting at zero monthly visitors.

Why Boost Website Traffic?

Building website traffic takes months and a lot of effort. So, why bother at all?

Having a buzzing website is like owning the trendiest store in a shopping mall. People come in and out all day, and sales become almost effortless.

Rather than standing outside trying to convince people to come in to look around, you can spend your time talking to the customers already inside, loving what you sell.

That’s what website traffic is — interested customers walking right into your store and looking around.

You can’t run a successful business without a steady stream of customers coming into your store. So, let’s work on your organic traffic!

Free Website Traffic vs Paid Traffic: What’s Better?

Ok, so if website traffic is so great, why not just pay for it?

I never recommend paid ads to small service business owners for a couple of reasons:

Unless you know what you’re doing, you’ll waste thousands of dollars trying to figure out how to run ads successfully.
You need a large, long-term budget to get good results from paid ads. I’m talking thousands a month.

If you’re anything like I was when I started my service business, you don’t have the money to spend on Google ads. You need free strategies to build your business.

Enter free website traffic.

Yes, it takes longer, and you’ll need to invest time in content creation, but organic traffic is free and a much more reliable long-term strategy than paying for ads.

Bottom line: If you have a small service business and are looking for ways to grow it, work on organic traffic before investing in paid traffic.

Free Website Traffic Checker

If you have no idea how much website traffic you’re getting, let’s start with a baseline.

Set up a free account with Google Analytics and add your website. Your account will be activated in a couple of days, and you’ll start getting real-time insights into your traffic.

How to Drive Traffic to a Small Service Website

Here’s the million-dollar question: how do you build organic website traffic when you’re starting at zero?

Here are the tried-and-tested strategies I use to help my clients grow their organic traffic fast.

1) Publish Key-Word Optimised Blogs Every Week

Think of your website as sitting in a teeny corner of the internet. The more content you write, the bigger your corner of the internet becomes.

The most prominent websites in the business niche (Forbes, Business Insider, HubSpot, etc.) all have thousands of articles for potential readers to find.

Start publishing new blogs every single week, and your website will consistently grow.

Don’t Forget: Each blog needs to be optimised with a keyword your potential readers are searching for. If your blogs aren’t keyword-optimised, they won’t show up in searches.

2) Index Each Blog with Google Search Console

Google doesn’t know your website exists unless it’s indexed. But did you know you can index each individual blog you post?

It can take a while for Google to crawl new blogs on a small website. So, whenever you post a new blog, submit it for indexing with Google to get it categorised and generating website traffic.

You do this by:

Going to the Google search console
Paste the URL of your new blog into the “inspection” bar at the top

That’s it!

Use google search console to boost website traffic

After a minute or two, you’ll get a confirmation box letting you know your page has been submitted for indexing.

3) Improve Technical SEO

Google prioritises websites with great technical SEO. But what exactly is great technical SEO? Here are a few quick website optimisation tips:

Make sure your page speed is quicker than 2 seconds.
Remove all broken links and images.
Ensure pages are crawlable using internal links.
Invest in secure HTTPS certification.
Create a clear site navigation.

If you want to do a deep dive into your SEO, the SEO Playbook has a complete step-by-step tutorial on optimising all the important aspects of your site’s SEO for free!

4) Drive Traffic with Pinterest

One of my favourite organic traffic generators is Pinterest. With over 500 million active users, finding potential clients on the platform is easy.

Don’t think of Pinterest as a social media platform. It’s a search engine with pictures instead of links.

I use Tailwind to add 20-30 daily pins and generate around 10K views. Of course, that doesn’t all translate into website views, but Pinterest is still one of my top traffic sources.

5) Build a Keyword Strategy

The cornerstone of any organic website traffic strategy is keywords. If you can find the right keywords to target, you’ll build traffic much faster.

Popular keywords have millions of monthly searches but are far too competitive to rank for.

Here are the keyword research tools I use for my blog posts:

Use Ahrefs Keyword Generator to create a rough list of keyword ideas.
Head over to Uber Suggest to find low-competition keywords to target specifically.
Google Search Console shows you which keywords you’re already ranking for.

Bundle related keywords into clusters and add them to high-value blog posts to boost SEO.

If you’re wondering where to put your keywords to optimise your blog posts, you can get a complete checklist in the SEO Playbook.

6) Focus on Local SEO

As a copywriter, I work with clients all over the world. But it’s tough to optimise your traffic for everywhere.

Whether you want to work with local clients or not, you’ll build traffic quicker if you work on your local SEO.

So, what does that look like?

Use location-specific keywords: Copywriting services in Cardiff, content marketing in New York, etc.
Create local content: Round-ups of local services, commentary on local business events, etc.
Add locations to your blogs: You can geotag your location in each post.
Get local backlinks: Find local businesses you can partner with and cross-promote to build a local link strategy.

7) Find Backlink Opportunities

This is the fastest and most effective way to build website traffic, so I saved it for last!

The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more Google trusts your site and the more traffic you’ll get.

You’ve got two strategies for getting backlinks (both highly effective):

Getting featured in publications
Writing guest posts for other websites

Getting Featured

I use three different platforms for finding feature opportunities:

All three platforms are filled with top-tier journalists looking for experts to feature in their articles.

I spend 20 minutes every morning looking through the platforms for relevant pitch requests and reaching out to any journalists who fit my brand.

After your pitch has been accepted, it can take a couple of months for an article to be published, but it’s much less work than guest posting.

Here’s a recent quote feature I snagged in an article on Hostinger as an example. All I had to do was submit a quote, which was added to an article all about pricing a product.

That link helps build the credibility of my website, which means I rank on Google!

Guest Blogging

Your other option is submitting guest blogs on other websites. These take longer since you’ll have to write an entire article, not just a quote. But they do help you build connections in your industry.

Here’s a recent email I got from the senior editor of a publication I wrote an expert quote for recently:

building website traffic using industry connections

It’s tough finding guest blog opportunities in quality publications, so I created a round-up list of the best business websites actively looking for guest blogs.

I’ve included the domain authority of each website, links to submission guidelines, and email pitch templates to make it super easy to get accepted.

Grab the Backlink Website List here!

What to Avoid When Driving Traffic to Your Website

things to avoid when driving traffic to website

Unfortunately, there’s no fast-track way of getting to 50K daily visitors. But there are some scammy services that have you believing otherwise!

Here are a couple of pitfalls to avoid when working on your website traffic.

Paid Ads

If you’ve got the budget to hire a Google ad expert, that’s fantastic. With the right strategy, ads can be an effective way to generate warm organic traffic.

But if you find an ad service that claims wild results for budget prices, it’s too good to be true.

You’ll pay at least $1000 a month for an effective ad campaign, and even that won’t get you explosive results.

Unless you have a decent budget to dedicate to ads and you’re completely confident in your landing page copy, don’t invest in paid ads to boost website traffic.

Backlink Schemes

Google has some pretty strict rules on backlinks, but the basics are:

You can’t pay for backlinks
You can’t exchange any goods or services for backlinks
You can’t take part in backlink schemes or farms

Don’t get drawn in by backlink farms offering thousands of links for a few hundred bucks. They’re against Google’s policies and will get you blacklisted.

You never pay for links on journal request sites like Connectively, so stick with those to stay on Google’s good side!

AI Content

Last but not least, AI-generated blogs are a no-no. It’s tempting to use ChatGBT to create blogs to save time.

But AI content is bland, generic, and usually full of errors.

Since its last update, Google has been cracking down on AI-generated content. It has already delisted half of all websites containing AI content.

Yes, it takes longer to write your own content, but it’ll be creative, unique, and interesting. Readers are looking for that, and Google favours it for SERPs.

If you’re still considering using AI to write blogs, read this post on AI content generation first!

Building Website Traffic: The Verdict

TL:DR: If you want to build website traffic in three months or less, do these things:

Write high-quality blogs on niche-specific topics weekly.
Get high-quality backlinks using journalist request platforms and guest posting.
Build a consistent platform on Pinterest.
Optimise your technical SEO.
Use a local keyword strategy.

Not sure what to blog about? Here are 26+ high-converting blog content ideas to get you started!

FAQs

Google Analytics is the best tool for tracking website traffic. You'll get data on keyword rankings, website traffic sources, bounce rate, and more.
You need about 2K daily visitors to make $10K a year from Google ads. For small business owners, that's a great starting goal for website traffic.
Google has the most website traffic, with over 175 billion monthly visitors. YouTube comes in second with 113 billion monthly visitors.