Whether you have a new or underperforming website, one thing is clear: you need to grow your traffic. There’s just one problem. With around 200 million active websites in the world, how do you make yours stand out above the rest?
It may seem like the odds aren’t in your favor, but the good news is most website owners don’t have a clue when it comes to getting more traffic. By reading this article, you’ve already positioned yourself to come out ahead.
With a few simple practices, you can drastically grow your website traffic and enjoy the added benefits, such as ad revenue. Here’s how to make your website popular without spending a dime.
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1. Run a Blog
If you want visitors to access your site (and come back for more), it’s all about blogging. After all, what else could your website offer to draw in a crowd? Visitors won’t exactly go wild for product updates our customer testimonials.
No matter which industry you reside in, there is room for a high-quality blog. If your website has an e-commerce store or offers a service, it makes sense to create blog content that relates to your product. This is an opportunity to create valuable information not found anywhere else.
Alternatively, you could include other types of written content such as product reviews. If your visitors consider you an authority, then they’ll be curious about your opinion of new products. Product review blogs also allow owners to take advantage of affiliate marketing.
2. Update Outdated Blog Posts
Already running a blog? Great. You can always make it better.
One of the easiest ways of getting more visitors to your website is to renovate old blog posts. Now, when we’re talking old, we’re talking really old. These are blog posts that are no longer relevant or accurate due to changes in the industry.
First, update any outdated information within the textual components of the blog. It’s also a good idea to include new images to freshen things up. Once you’ve completed the facelift, publish the changes to your website.
You should notice an increase in page views stemming from the updated blog. Why does this strategy work? Because old, valuable blog posts are your traffic leaders with a collection of backlinks and shares.
From time to time, take inventory of your high-performing blog posts. You’ll note that most should be several months if not years old. Updating the information on these blog posts will land you more traffic than a new one — and in less time.
3. Negotiate Guest Posts
By now, you get the picture: blog content matters. But there is one other strategy to consider, and that is guest blogging.
Rather than posting a blog on your own website, you may stand to gain more by publishing one elsewhere. Everyone benefits. The website owner gets a free, high-quality blog post with no effort, and you enjoy free backlinks that lead to your website.
Of course, landing a guest post isn’t easy. But it can be done, even without a robust social network.
The secret is to find websites similar to your own, preferably with better domain authority, and reach out to the owner. A simple, informative email or Twitter DM may be all it takes to find a new home for your recent article.
4. Create a Healthy Keyword Profile
Organic traffic depends on an intelligent keyword strategy. What are keywords? They are brief terms or phrases internet users may type into a search engine.
If the keyword appears multiple times on a blog article, then Google will rank that article higher up on the search engine results page. The first three results command about 60% of all click-throughs. If your content isn’t even on the first page, you’ll be lucky if you get organic traffic in any measurable volume.
To locate keywords, check out Google’s Keyword Planner. Input search terms relevant to your target audience. From here, you’ll see the search volume and competition related to each term.
Ideally, you’ll select keywords with high volume and low competition. Pepper these keywords in your blog content, throughout titles, and within on-page metadata. This practice will beef up your SEO and thus your organic traffic.
5. Improve Website Performance
Utilizing keywords is the foundation of search engine optimization. But it’s far from the only factor. Your website’s properties and functionality play an important role in determining its overall ranking.
For one thing, poor performance leads to long loading times. If it takes more than about three seconds to load your website, your visitors are 32% more likely to bounce. Thankfully, making a website faster is simple.
First, consider upgrading from a shared web host to dedicated hosting. This will give you superior website performance and improve loading times across the board. But if you don’t see much web traffic, a server upgrade won’t do the trick.
Instead, it’s your website itself that’s the problem. Your web pages are likely bloated with too much data.
This often occurs from oversized images. Rather than removing them completely, downsize them instead. By using the right strategy, you can retain image quality and cut a significant portion of webpage data.
6. Go Mobile
Want to know how to make your website popular without focusing on blogs?
Look beyond the performance of your desktop website. Many users access the internet with the help of their mobile devices. But if you do not have a mobile version of your website, you can’t accommodate these users.
If your website uses WordPress, there are plenty of plug-ins available to create a functional mobile version of your website. Simple websites may benefit from the use of a responsive WordPress theme, which will automatically resize windows to fit a wide variety of viewing screens.
Taking the time to accommodate mobile users will bring more traffic to your website. This will also improve your SEO, as search engines prioritize mobile functionality.
7. Incorporate an Email Newsletter
We’ve covered many ways to grow your website traffic. But how do you keep the same visitors coming back for more? Consider an email newsletter.
Email marketing has some of the highest ROI in the business. Why is it so successful? Because it turns website visitors into leads.
Once you have their email information, you can reach out and keep them informed of recent blog posts or new products.
Not every website visitor will take the time to manually check for new updates. But the occasional email blast can give your traffic a nice boost when the regulars come pouring in.
8. Cross-post on Social Media
Social media is an easy way to expand your website’s outreach. You don’t have to worry about trying to create the next viral hit. However, when you post a new blog article, why not share it with the world?
In some ways, social media channels behave like email marketing. You can update your followers of new website updates.
But the most effective website owners will take things a step further and create a conversation with their fans. While difficult, you can foster a community and a brand image through social media, creating essential website awareness.
9. Encourage Content Sharing
It’s not enough to write high-quality blog posts and expect your visitors to share them across social media. It’s missing a prompt or incentive, something known as a share trigger.
Share triggers come in many different shapes and sizes. At a base level, people want to share information that makes them look good. By linking to your high-quality blog article, they’re shouting to all their followers, “look at what I found!”
Others are more altruistic. They may want to share your article because it feels like they are helping you or the information can help those around them.
If your article lacks a share trigger, you may want to go back to the drawing board. As long as the blog post contains an interesting tidbit, consider creating a small infographic with the information. Short visuals are more likely to earn shares than large articles.
10. Syndicate Blog Posts on Aggregate Websites
The best part about creating blog content? You can duplicate it across other websites for extra traffic.
Reddit, Medium, and Linkedin are all excellent places to host your blog content. These websites will even highlight your blog if it’s relatively popular. Be warned, users on these sites can spot spam a mile away.
Make a real effort to provide relevant information to communities on these websites. Becoming part of the conversation in the comments section can also inform viewers that you’re sharing information for the greater good — and not for additional web traffic.
11. Reach Out to Influencers
Catching the attention of influencers can improve your domain authority with backlinks and create an influx of new traffic. If your website does not sell a product or service, you may be wondering how you get an influencer’s attention.
First, you should know that there are influencers in your industry. These are the digital authorities or celebrities relevant to your website’s content.
Directly reaching out to these influencers is a practice in futility. You, as well as every other website owner in existence, has reached out to them to try and snag some extra traffic.
Instead, create content that naturally draws their attention. If your target influencer runs a personal finance blog, then publishing an informative, primary source infographic may prompt them to use it in an upcoming article.
12. Improve Your CTR on the SERPs
After several months of guest blogging, influencer links, and great keywords, your website should snag a high ranking in the search engine results pages. But even if you were near the top, you may not be getting as many click-throughs as you deserve.
What’s up with that? Odds are, your metadata is lacking. Metadata is the information that appears on search engine results pages, including the hyperlink and brief description of its content.
Give the meta description some love. Within this, you should include your keywords and create an enthralling title. What’s an enthralling title?
That depends on your target audience. Let’s say you control the keyword for “shoe reviews.” Make sure your metadata screams that that’s what your web page is all about.
13. Analyze the Analytics
Putting any of the above strategies in action doesn’t guarantee more web traffic. These tips work — really work — but they depend on your execution. For that reason, you should always keep a close eye on your Google Analytics account.
Watching the Analytics will give you invaluable insight. You may discover that certain blog topics and calls to action receive more engagement than others. Going forward, you can adjust your blog strategy to continuously write blog articles that score plenty of shares and organic traffic.
Even more importantly, Analytics data tells you where for visitors are coming from. You can measure the success of your backlink and social media efforts, as well as discover new places to reach out to.
How to Make Your Website Popular — Right Now
The sad truth is you’re not going to quintuple your current website traffic by next week. But if you stay vigilant and practice these strategies over the course of several months, you’ll reap the rewards.
Since you want to know how to make your website popular, you likely have plans to monetize it. I’ve written the book, literally, on how to get rich from affiliate marketing. Download my free ebook today and put your new traffic to good use.
