Crafting well-written and composed content comes down to your resolve and skill. However, many wonder how to increase website traffic to complement their exquisite content. Driving more traffic to the website is the devil’s business and a challenge that puts many to the test. Oftentimes, you’ll find yourself producing tons of content but with seemingly no audience. Why does this happen? How to drive traffic to your website and get much-needed recognition? In today’s article, we’ll cover these questions through many helpful tips.
If you’re struggling with this, chances are you’re doing something wrong. With our tried-and-tested solutions, we aim to ensure you’re increasing your online popularity. Let’s explore how to boost website traffic and enjoy its benefits.
How to Increase Website Traffic? 24 Tips From Our Experts
As you can fathom, generating more traffic comes down to producing quality content with pitch-perfect search engine optimization. However, there’s a lot more into play here, so let us explain to you in-depth how to get more traffic by working smart.
1. Focus on Long-Form Content
There’s no website traffic increase without quality content, which is why we started our tips with this one. Long-form content tends to rank higher and drive more traffic. According to research from BuzzSumo and Moz, long-form content receives more backlinks and shares compared to shorter blog posts of under 1,000 words.
They published a chart that shows that posts with 3,000+ words have 200+ percent more shares compared to shorter posts. Believe it or not, we experienced this first-hand. Our long-form content indeed attracts more traffic and is generally more popular.
Just to ensure you don’t get us wrong, don’t make shorter, more concise topics dragged out. The goal is to properly optimize and cover the topic without keyword stuffing and “forcing” meaningless content.
2. Update Old Posts and Pages
Out-of-date content can drag you down and prevent you from getting more website traffic. This content is irrelevant and doesn’t reflect the actual information. A solid strategy is to update outdated pages with new information and include some more.
We do this frequently with our articles. As you see, we also write about VPNs that tend to update their features, server numbers, and jurisdictions. To ensure we’re up-to-date, we go through these articles periodically and update the required information.
We also add 200-500 words to top up these articles and include fresh content. After that, we ensure that Google recognizes that the article is updated by setting its date of publishing to the day we applied these changes.
3. Include LSI Keywords
It’s vital to understand Google’s many algorithms to know how to increase website traffic. Its Hummingbird algorithm doesn’t recognize only keywords but also topics. To better describe the topic you’re working on, you have to include LSI keywords.
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and it’s a term for keywords that are semantically related to the main keywords in a specific post. Let’s say you’re writing a blog post about healthy food. LSI keywords would be fruit, vegetables, diet, and so forth.
Including them tells Google what you’re writing about and closely describes the subject. It makes Google go “Aha, so the article IS about healthy food!” If you’re not sure what LSI keywords are for your topic, use Semrush and its SEO Content Template Tool.
As you can see, this tool came up with 20 or so LSI keywords for the topic we wanted to cover. Find out more about this feature in our Semrush review.
Find LSI Keywords With Semrush
4. Transform Your Blog Posts
What if you could transform your written blog post into a video, ebook, or any other format? Well, what’s stopping you?! Analyze your website and cherry-pick the most popular articles and blog posts, then convert them to a different format – preferably a video.
Nowadays, people prefer watching over reading, which you can capitalize on. To drive traffic to your website – or a specific page – convert the page to a video and include it in your post. Make sure the video is publicly available to anyone as well.
This way, if someone stumbles upon your video on YouTube, he/she can find out more about you by checking your site and finding more valuable information.
5. Create Interest-Spiking Headlines
It doesn’t matter if the blog post is interesting and insightful if the headline is unattractive. For this reason, to increase website traffic, we think it’s essential to come up with a headline that will attract views and strike the perfect balance between being “clickbaity” and genuine.
Your headlines shouldn’t be too long, yet, they should precisely describe what the post is about. If you’re unsure how to make a good headline, you can use Semrush and its AI Writer which will advise a few options based on the given keywords.
6. Include Eye-Catching Visuals
Imagine a huge wall of text without images, tables, or visuals, in general. You’d be bored to hell just looking at it, let alone reading it. However, if you focus on creating illustrations and visualization, it will perfectly complement what you’re trying to tell.
If you’re talking about VPNs for gaming, include some screenshots of good-looking games that you’re playing with a VPN. Or, if you’re discussing various statistics, include tables with numbers to help your readers suck out the most vital data promptly.
This is beneficial even from an SEO standpoint. Google will use your images in search results, which will help you get website traffic and drive more visitors to your website.
7. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices
Have you heard of the Mobile-First Index? Essentially, this is Google’s algorithm that will rank your website based on how mobile-friendly it is. Given the word “first” in its name, it implies that the mobile version will be analyzed first, and then the desktop version.
You should, therefore, ensure that the website is mobile-friendly. This can be checked in Google Search Console, where you’ll find the option that will show you if the website is properly optimized for mobile devices. GSC will also display recommendations to improve the website.
Alternatively, you can use Semrush and audit your website with the Site Audit tool. It will inform you of how optimized your website is for mobile devices, and again, advise you on how to improve other aspects of the mobile version of your site.
Check for Site Issues With Semrush
8. Create a YouTube Channel for Your Site
One of the most effective ways to increase website traffic is to create a YouTube channel. Inspect some of the highest-ranking sites in your niche and you’ll see that most, if not ALL of them have ACTIVE YouTube channels.
For your info, YouTube is slightly less popular than Google and the latter is the most popular website in the world. That said, you want to be active on YouTube and constantly publish valuable content that you’ll link to your website.
Try to include YouTube videos in related blog posts as well, to drive traffic to the website through YouTube. If you’re uncomfortable in front of a camera, you can ask your friend to read your script and record videos for you for a fee.
9. Focus on Social Media Posting
Social Media presence is vital to drive more traffic to the website and get more visitors. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are still extremely popular. Create your profile on each and start posting insightful content to link to your website.
Focus on providing valuable data and statistics with half-finished bulleted lists whose continuation is on your website. This will give people more incentive to click on the link and read the blog post until the end. Social Media tracking is also important.
Again, Semrush offers a comprehensive set of tools to track your social media activity and even post for you. You can use it to schedule posts and track engagement across multiple social media sites.
10. Get Quality Backlinks
This is easier said than done but getting quality backlinks will increase website traffic IMMENSELY! Focus on providing class-leading information and data that can often be referenced by other sites. This will naturally make these sites link to you.
We talked about backlinks and how important they are not long ago. They’re one of the most powerful tools to drive traffic to a website, especially if the backlinks come from websites with a high authority score.
In Semrush, you’ll find the Link-Building tool. It allows you to reach website owners and request a guest post or backlink. However, ensure your content is exquisite because no one will link to your site if it looks and feels like a half-baked product.
Get Quality Backlinks With Semrush
11. Be Present on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is another platform you can incorporate into your SEO strategy. Increase your presence on this site by posting frequently – be it textual or video posts. Also, don’t forget to add relevant hashtags to help people discover you more easily.
12. Include “Share” Triggers
Giving the option to readers to directly share your post or a part of it is nifty for many reasons. The “Share” trigger that appears when you select a part of the text means it can be shared to multiple social media channels without hassle.
If you find a sentence that you can relate to, it’s easy to click on Share and have it published on your social media profile. This will happen if you publish an article that resonates with people and aligns with their opinions on the subject matter.
Either way, including a “Share” trigger is simple and costs nothing but it can drive traffic to the website directly through social media outlets.
13. Enrich Your Content With Polls and Surveys
Polls and surveys are often irresistible and quite fun. Let’s return to our healthy food example from above. In a post about it, you can include a poll about readers’ favorite healthy foods and give the option to see the results.
People will instinctively click on their choice just to see these results! Surveys are also great if they consist of a few short questions, and of course, results, to see how a reader compares to other people. We think this interactive content can increase website traffic.
It’s enticing and allows the reader to do something besides pure reading and scrolling.
14. Appear on Podcasts
Okay, if you’re an introvert, you’re not gonna like this one. However, appearing on podcasts can dramatically boost your prominence and skyrocket your website traffic. Plus, podcasts are extremely popular, which can be seen by many influencers starting their separate podcast channels and boosting their views and conversions.
You don’t have to start one but appear on other people’s podcasts. If you properly present yourself and explain what you do, people will be more inclined to visit your site and see what it’s about.
If you have a YouTube channel to complement it, just imagine how much website traffic you’ll get with your appearance!
15. Answer Frequently Asked Questions
Thoroughly covering the topic means answering every question that users can come up with. If you’re looking for free SEO tools, you want to know how good they are, whether they’re useful for you, what they offer, whether are there paid plans, and so on.
However, you can’t know which questions users ask without a bit of help from questions analyzers. Semrush, for example, offers the Keyword Magic Tool that displays questions relevant to the keyword you provided.
It also offers the Keyword Manager tool where you get keyword clusters and a mind map that clearly outlines questions often asked by users. We also recommend using QuestionDB, which is free and helps you discover more questions you can tackle.
How does this increase website traffic? Well, the better you cover the topic, the higher the chances are of ranking higher in SERPs. By extension, you’ll receive more traffic, especially if you make it to Google’s featured snippet.
16. Promote Your Site on Forums
Forums aren’t as popular as they used to be in the 2000s. However, they’re still prevalent and represent a stellar option to drive traffic to your site. You can start by answering people’s questions and open new topics with original content.
From here, you can link to your website or blog where forum users can gather more information. By being helpful and focusing on the value you provide to others, you can attract more visitors to your site – simple.
17. Find and Include Long-Tail Keywords
Instead of focusing on broad keywords, try including some long-tail keywords. These keywords consist of at least 4-5 words, and as a result, they’re more specific. A broad keyword is “SEO tool” but a long-tail phrase is “SEO tool for ranking higher on Google.”
Do you see the difference? Long-tail keywords usually have lower competition and they’re easier to rank for, yet, they can drive more traffic to your site and have a higher chance of conversion! Put yourself in the mind of an average internet user.
An average user will start his search broadly only to narrow it to find a specific answer or product. Long-tail keywords can be detected with Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool by filtering the search results. Set the word count to be at least 4 and there you go.
Detect Long-Tail Keywords With Semrush
18. Organize Giveaways Contests
How to drive more traffic to your website by giving something for free? Well, we all love free stuff, even if it’s the stuff we don’t need. But it’s free. So, we need it. You all know about social media giveaways and how they make a certain page explode afterward.
The key is to entice people to participate in the contest by offering a free product but to get it, they need to provide their email addresses. By the way, you can use it later on for various email promotions. After that, entice people to share the contest with their friends.
You can be creative here and set up the giveaway the way you want. For instance, if you invite 4 more friends, you get another entry, and thus, a higher chance to win. This is a clever tactic to increase website traffic and receive a burst of visitors in a short period.
19. Use Guest Posts
Guest posts are a surefire way of boosting your website traffic. As their name implies, guest posts are when one website publishes an article on another website in the same niche. The goal is to promote your site on another high-ranking website and drive more traffic.
A mistake many make is to put their writer bio somewhere at the end of the article, hoping to see results. This makes the section unnoticeable and is likely to be overlooked by the reader. Instead, you can it stand out in the middle of the blog post.
We prefer using the method of additional resources, where we’ll put one or two links to our articles that further delve into the related subject. To be precise, we’ll write a guest post and THEN include these helpful additional resources somewhere noticeable.
When users click on the link, they open another one of our articles and see that we’re the authors behind it. From here, they can check our author profile, discover our website, and see what we’re offering.
20. Improve Your Website Performance
Poor website performance and long loading times will increase the bounce rate. This will reduce website traffic and make your visitors despite your website. You can start by analyzing your performance with the site audit function from SE Ranking or Semrush.
Check if there are any issues with your pages, image sizes, and plugins. You can also use GSC to check for Core Web Vitals and see how your website performs. Remember that faster-loading sites are ALWAYS better and are highly likely to attract more visitors.
Besides, Google will rank your site based on its performance. If it’s unoptimized and performs like a snail, your ranking will drop, reducing your chances of increasing website traffic. With that in mind, take special care of the site structure and optimization.
Improve Page Loading With Semrush
21. Use Internal Links
Are you missing out on internal links? No wonder you ask yourself how to drive traffic to your website. Internal links are a huge thing for SEO and they help establish your website and increase web traffic. Be sure to include at least a couple of internal links per blog post.
Don’t overdo it because spamming is always bad. If you have a 1,000-word post, don’t spam 20-30 links. Make sure they’re included naturally, pointing to some of the highest-ranking pages of your site. This will increase website traffic in numerous ways.
First, it’ll allow the visitor to gather more information by visiting another page. Second, the visitor will perceive your site as highly authoritative and established. Start adding internal links now and boost traffic with this simple trick.
22. Cover Evergreen Topics
Covering evergreen topics is great for a temporary boost in traffic. However, doing so likely won’t produce long-term traffic increases. The silver lining is that you can go back and update your evergreen articles, as explained in Step 2.
This will keep the information fresh and accurate and have a better chance of ranking higher. We’re fond of covering evergreen topics because they slowly pile up traffic and let you appear in the top 10 or 20 SERPs for as long as the topic is evergreen.
You can spark things up with a few internal links and potential visitors will get more out of these posts, even if they become obsolete after a while.
23. Appear on Business Listings
Putting your website out there on business listings is smart but many times, not enough. You’ll need to focus on optimizing your listing, allowing your visitors to quickly fetch the information they need about your site.
The best thing you can do is start with Google Business. Create your profile and fill out all information text boxes. Add your address, phone number, photos, business category, and so on. You can also get a few friends and family members to review your business.
Apart from Google, using Facebook business listings is also great. Ensure your business appears on many popular business listings with top-notch and actual information about it. This will surely increase website traffic and make you more trustworthy.
24. Invest in Advertising
We left advertising for last, as it’s not free and requires a bit or a lot of investment. You can use Google Ads to start a campaign and drive more traffic to your website. Google will let you work with your budget proficiently and get the most out of it.
Look at this as a slight shortcut compared to a traditional “SEO” way with keyword optimization, link building, and so forth. Paying for ads and implementing an ad campaign can be extremely effective and the more you invest, the more you’re going to get.
For advertising, you can implement Semrush and its PPC research functions. They’ll help you get more commercial keywords thanks to the keyword intent feature. Simply find commercial keywords that are more likely to lead to a conversion.
Implement them in conjunction with the PPC campaign and you’ll see your website traffic increase by the day.
Conduct PPC Research With Semrush
Conclusion
So, how to drive traffic to your website? As you’ve learned, there are quite a few ways but the conclusion is that nothing beats hard work. It’s vital to produce quality, frequently updated content that you’ll be proud of. Then, you can implement other tactics.
These include obtaining relevant backlinks, PPC advertising, optimizing your website performance, establishing a social media presence, and so forth. Increasing website traffic won’t happen overnight and it requires a bit of smart (and hard) work.
However, with our expert tips generously presented, you know where to go from here. Don’t be afraid to implement tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to gain additional leverage over the competition and stay ahead of them. Many times, they’re paramount.
With functions like site audits, AI writing, and keyword research, garnering more attention and quality traffic is infinitely simpler.
