The heart and soul of blogging or for that matter any online business is a visitor to your website or traffic to your website, and every new blogger wants to know How to Get Free traffic to your Blog.
As a blogger or an e-entrepreneur, your success in your online venture depends upon the number of visitors coming to your blog or website.
So if, you dream of an online success you simply cannot ignore the volume of visitors coming to your blog or website. More the number of visitors to your blog, the better for your online business.
So, hereunder I have compiled a list presentation showcasing 15 Best Ways to Get Free Traffic to your Blog.
Well, when you begin or take up to blogging, there is n number of activities that you have to take care.
Whether it is website hosting, website design, and development, blogging platform selection and maintenance, research, topic selection, traffic generation, competitor analysis, content writing, etc.
In the midst of all these activities, your traffic generation and maximization efforts may suffer or lag behind. Moreover, it is not always possible for every blogger to resort to paid methods for traffic generation.
In this context, it becomes utmost necessary for you (as a blogger) to be aware of free traffic generation methods so that you can follow and improve upon the free traffic count to your blog or website.
Hereunder, the methods we have presented are highly popular and powerful for generating free traffic for your blog.
I hope that these 15 Best Ways to Get Free Traffic to Your Blog will prove to be highly beneficial to you and your blog or website.
Table of Contents
How to Get Free traffic to your Blog?
So, let’s have a look at ways of generating free traffic for your blog.
1. Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
Search engines prove to be the #1 source of traffic for most established blogs. Search traffic is immensely powerful. In fact, close to 80% of traffic to an authority blog can come from search engines. After all, Google is the biggest website in the world.
So, it’s important that you begin to take search traffic seriously. Moreover, you should not ignore SEO. You should take efforts to optimize your blog and rank well for relevant keywords in Google and other search engines.
So, you should not overlook Keyword Research if you want to get free traffic to your site. Using right keywords, you can easily connect with users who are actively searching for you.
As a general rule, you should optimize each of your blog post for one distinct keyword. Using the keyword naturally throughout the post will do the job for you.
It is a well-established fact that Search Engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo play a vital role in driving free traffic to blogs.
Most of the successful bloggers make effective and efficient use of this medium for generating free traffic for their blogs. So, as a Blogger you should make every possible effort to tap this very powerful source of free traffic for your blog.
However, driving free traffic from Search Engine is not as easy as it may seem to you.
I particularly make this point emphasize that take advantage of this medium you have to take some efforts on your part.
These efforts come in the form of following Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques.
There are various SEO Techniques (like On-Page Optimization) which if followed ensure that your blog or posts are ranked high in Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and thus you get a high volume of clicks or traffic to your blog.
You can even go through this Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
Plus, you can improve your On-Page SEO with this very helpful blog post that will help you to optimize your page for On-Page SEO.
2. Share Posts on Social Media
Social Media Networks (like Facebook and Twitter) can be another major source of free traffic for your blog.
Today millions of users are hooked on social media sites, and so you can take advantage of this powerful medium to bring scores of free traffic to your blog.
Some of the highly popular social media sites with bloggers include sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, etc.
You just have to post your blog link on these social networks. When some user visits your site through a link posted on social network, it is treated as free traffic coming from social media sites.
You can even include a tracking token to the links that you post on the social media sites so that you can make a better analysis of your online marketing campaign.
To get a good amount of traffic from Social media, you need to get a good amount of followers on popular social sites.
The biggest plus with Social Media is that it is free (in general) to participate in.
Here we share some of the proven strategies for getting more clicks from social media platforms.
These include:
Share your content multiple times >> You must share your blog posts on every platform that you are active on. You can use Hashtags on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
You should make a point to share your best content multiple times on each platform. Preferably you should select different times of the day and share your posts spread apart by weeks or months.
Change each update >> When you go on to share your blog posts on the same platform, for example, when you share your post on Facebook one week later, you should keep in mind to change the social media update. You can use different quotes, or appeal to emphasize that you’re offering a solution to get more clicks.
Watch for new social features >> You should make sure that you are active on the essential social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or even Twitter. Instagram stories and Twitter moments are two examples.
You should leverage new features while they are still exciting for promoting your blog. This can give you better results. For example, you can feature on your profile a list of users who share your posts.
3. Do Guest Posting for other Blogs
Guest Posting or what is more, popularly known as Guest Blogging is another very powerful resource for driving free traffic to your blog.
Although Guest Posting is a widely acclaimed and competent source for generating free traffic to your blog, still it is not aggressively adopted by many bloggers as a free traffic generating resource for their blog(s).
The reason being that it takes a good amount of effort for producing quality articles, which you can post on other blogs.
In fact, guest posting is one of the most efficient ways for increasing traffic to your blog. The best thing about guest posting is that you don’t have to pay for it.
It provides the opportunity to showcase your expertise to an interested audience. Moreover, you can also get a backlink from another high authority site thereby getting an SEO boost.
However, there are a few things that need to be considering as you take up to guest posting. First and foremost, you need to choose a blog that shares the exact audience members.
Then guest posting should give you the exposure. It should allow you to place at least one link in the guest post. So, make sure to get one link back to your site thereby getting free traffic on your blog.
With guest posting, it is also important to choose a site with an engaged readership. So, you should get your content on a website which has a high web authority. It will enable you to get more traffic, and the in-content link will have more weight.
In this context, the prime thing that you should be concerned about is the selection of quality blogs in your niche for Guest posting that themselves generate a good amount of traffic.
Once you get approval as a Guest Blogger, your posts get published in their blogs. You can include one or two backlinks such as from the author bio section or from within the guest post.
So, you get quality backlinks and relevant traffic to your blogs.
Guest posting is useful for generating traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization and it builds your branding.
4. Get Going with Email Marketing
Among the multiple sources for generating free traffic to your blogs, Email Marketing holds an important place. If you want to generate highly targeted, relevant and free traffic to your blog, you can certainly take up to Email Marketing.
It primarily involves building an email list and this you can achieve by offering free signups for your visitors.
You can even offer a free e-book to your visitors so that they are motivated and eager to join your email list. Once you build upon your email list, you can pursue email marketing.
You can send them an email with links to your latest blog posts. Users click on these links and arrive at your blogs. Email Marketing helps to build a fruitful and long-lasting relationship with your visitors. You not only get new visitors but can also certainly retain your visitors.
5. Take advantage of Video Marketing
Although Content is still considered as a king, however, videos are getting hugely popular with a vast majority of internet surfing population.
As a blogger, you can take advantage of this scenario and adopt Video Marketing for driving free traffic to your blog.
In fact, Video content is highly dynamic and engaging.
Embedding it in your blog can go on to make your blog posts more dynamic, too.
For video marketing, you can use sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
In this context, utilizing a YouTube integration can help to perform better in user searches. In fact, videos do sometimes get priority in Google.
So, video content can help you to rank better in Google searches. As users go on to watch your video, they can even click on the blog post linked in your YouTube description thereby sending more traffic your way.
For this, you need to develop a video relevant to your blog’s niche and upload it to YouTube.
In the description section, you can include a link or two pointing to your site.
So, when users watch videos posted by you, they also get links to your site. Once they click on these links, they arrive at your site or blog. Thus, you happen to get scores of free traffic to your blog.
Videos are also useful for brand building, and people start recognizing you and can come directly to your website or blog.
6. Forum Marketing
The biggest bottleneck in getting free traffic to your blog is to find where exactly your target audience hang around.
Forums are such places where people go to find answers for a topic.
Forum marketing is a great way for engaging in conversations and answer questions, linking to your content whenever possible.
In fact, Forum Posting or Forum Marketing has gained huge popularity with bloggers as far as getting free traffic is concerned.
For this, you need to build relationships with members of your target audiences and also with professional peers.
In fact, many industries offer some forums that you can engage in. For example, you can join the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors), and get access to their extremely valuable discussion forums.
You can even join the question and answer sites such as Yahoo Answers or Quora to establish credibility and nurture relationships for sending more traffic to your site.
So, you should select popular or widely acclaimed Forum sites and begin sharing your views, opinions, and expertise on topics relevant to your niche.
You can answer questions and participate in discussions. Forums have a large audience base where people post questions and come to seek solutions.
You can drive this (free) traffic to your blog if you happen to participate in these forums actively. In your efforts on Forum Marketing, do not forget to use your Forum Marketing Signature.
As you may know, your Forum Marketing Signature indicates your identity and carries a link to your site or blog post. So when you do Forum Posting, other people become aware of you and your work and visit your website or blog.
So, you get the dual benefit of backlinks and as well as free traffic to your blog.
7. Blog Commenting
Blog Commenting is another powerful medium for driving free traffic to your blog. It has much similarity with Forum Marketing other than the fact that the platform for commenting is a blog.
Blog Commenting has been taken up by bloggers in a big way as there are numerous distinct benefits with respect to driving free traffic to your blogs is concerned.
When you take to blog commenting and that too quality blog commenting the biggest benefit you derive is that you build up your brand value.
Your quality comments are given due weight and value by fellow commenter’s, bloggers and audience which go on to build your brand value. You can even use Gravatar to show your photograph along with your comments.
This further strengthens your brand value. Regular commenting on blogs further helps you to build your relationship with other bloggers.
You are seen as an expert who has authority on the subject in whom you are commenting. Then you can even enter your site’s URL or your blog post URL along with your comment. This further helps to bring in free traffic to your blog.
8. RSS Aggregators
RSS Aggregators are another powerful medium for sending loads of free traffic to your site or blog. RSS Aggregators are websites which collect or aggregates blog posts.
You need to list your website or blog in an RSS Aggregator, and those sites show your latest blog post on their website. So once your blog posts links are there in RSS Aggregators, you can expect to get flooded with traffic from these sites.
The biggest advantage of using an RSS Aggregator is the fact that they enjoy a much larger readership base than your website and so when you use RSS Aggregators, you get an opportunity to access their readership base.
However, it is not easy to get accepted by RSS Aggregators especially when your website or blog is new.
9. Q&A Traffic
Q&A sites are another powerful medium for driving free traffic to your blog. The traffic you get from Q&A sites is referred as Q&A Traffic.
Basically, through Q&A sites you can ask questions and can get answers from members who have registered on these sites.
Yahoo Answers come as a perfect example of a Q&A site. To get started on a Q&A site you need to create your account. You can ask questions as well as answer them.
However, you need to answer some questions before you ask one. Q&A site is an excellent medium for building your brand value. When you answer questions related to your niche, people get to know you as an expert in your field.
You also get an opportunity to place a link to your site in the ‘references’ section. Thus, people learn more about your work when they visit your site or blog. So you get a boost in your overall traffic when you use Q&A sites.
10. Document Sharing Sites
Apart from the methods described above, Document Sharing Sites are another very powerful source for driving free traffic to your blog.
One of the biggest reasons why Document Sharing Sites are getting widespread popularity is the fact that you do not have to create any fresh content to leverage them. In fact, Document sharing sites are used to host PDF files or documents.
You simply need to upload PDF documents, which can be downloaded by other people. Besides this, you can even attach a link to your site from within the PDF document. Thus using Document Sharing Sites you can easily drive free traffic to your blog.
The best example of Document Sharing site is SlideShare where you can share document and people can read it and can come to your site by clicking the link on the document.
11. Twitter Traffic
It might be hard to imagine that Twitter can be an excellent source for significant traffic to your blog or site. However, the fact remains that Twitter can become a principal source of traffic when used regularly and with the passage of time.
You can use automation tools for feeding links to your Twitter account. One such popular tool (WordPress Plugin) is Tweet Old Post. It can tweet the title and URL of your blog post to your account. It helps to generate hundreds of new visitors every month.
12. Contest Marketing
One of the quickest ways of generating free traffic to your blog is to run a contest. It is one of the best ways for generating hundreds of inbound links, as bloggers go on to share relevant contests with their readers.
You can offer a very large prize instead of offering numerous smaller ones. In fact, big prizes create big results.
You can go for a simple newsletter subscription for the visitors to enter the contest.
It allows you to have their contact information should they win and you can even keep them informed about any new content that you publish.
The contest can be run for a few months.
13. Website Adjustments
Tweaking your site a little can make a big difference to your blog traffic over time.
For instance, effective cross-linking can help Google to index your content and will enable readers to see relevant content on your site.
You can add a related post, recent post or popular post section on your site or blog this will help your site visitors to find more relevant content on your site.
The changes make way for better and enhanced visitor experience thereby keeping them on your site for a longer period. So, it’s a good thing to make blog design adjustments.
14. Writing Great Content
Writing great content is one of the best ways to build traffic to your blog. Producing great content can be in the form of blog posts, video or audio (or a combination of the three).
People are always looking for quality content which can solve their problems or help them to learn new thing.
Writing good researched and in-depth article can help your visitors, and they will love to come to your site again and again.
So, you need to come up with great content consistently. In fact, great content propels visitors to share your posts through social media and links to their sites and blogs. The social sharing has more weight than any purchased ad could ever offer to you.
15. Trackbacks
WordPress along with many other blogging platforms offer a feature known as trackbacks.
So, what are trackbacks?
When you mention another blog on your site, the blog will get a notification that they have been mentioned. It creates a link back to readers which they can follow.
It proves an effective way for sharing great content and for getting contextual link backs.
Trackbacks help you to gain links and traffic to your website.
These 15 Ways of Generating Free Traffic for Blog are not the only way of generating free traffic on your blog but prove most popular ways of generating traffic.
Please do share which traffic generation method you use and don’t forget to share this post with your friends.
