How to increase website traffic? 100 Ways to Increase Website Traffic

1. Add a blog to your website. If your website is static (Tristan: for example a company website or an online store), consider adding a blog and updating the content regularly. This will not only attract returning customers, but also gain more traffic from search engines. You need blogging software, WordPress of course. (Free and easy to use)

2. Leave a message on other people’s blogs. Make a habit of visiting blogs in your niche target market and leaving comments. Comments allow you to leave a link, and some visitors may click through to your website. Check out all the blogs in your niche by visiting Alltop.

3. Submit reader contributions. Most blogs welcome reader contributions. Bloggers allow you to contribute to them, and usually the articles will retain the author's signature and point to your website. It's as simple as sending the article to the blogger and seeing if he will publish it as a reader submission.

4. Sponsor a blogging contest. A popular practice in the blogosphere is to hold blogging contests. You can sponsor a competition, offer prizes or bonuses, and bloggers will leave a link to your website on the competition page.

5. Participate in blog carnivals. A blog carnival is an online event where bloggers get together to write about a certain topic. The organizers of the carnival usually write a summary article at the end, which will provide article links to each participant, and participants usually link to each other's article pages. You can organize a carnival with your friends, or find one taking place on BlogCarnival.com.

6. Build a network of relationships. There is a saying that goes, "It is better to know the right people than to have the right abilities." This also applies to website promotion. After you get to know bloggers and webmasters and make friends with them, they will be happy to put a link to your website and bring traffic. But before doing that you might want to link to their website first, or connect via e-mail.

Subscribe to edit

7. Publish RSS feeds. Publish an RSS feed to make it easier for readers to subscribe to your blog via an RSS reader. This way, they will automatically be notified whenever the blog is updated. This is a great way to ensure that they read updated articles and encourage them to visit the website regularly.

8. Use Feedburner. If you want to manage RSS conveniently, you should register a Feedburner account. This service is completely free and has many useful features, such as statistics on subscriber information, various customization options, and more. Feedburner can also make blog output content compatible with most browsers and RSS readers, so as not to lose subscribers due to technical reasons.

9. Provide email subscription. Many netizens do not use RSS yet, so it is very necessary to provide email subscription. Fortunately, it is very easy to achieve using Feedburner. Simply activate the "Publicize" feature in Feedburner and copy-paste the subscription link onto your website.

10. Create an email newsletter. By further optimizing email subscriptions, you can create an email newsletter, which allows you to effectively control the content pushed to subscribers' mailboxes. For example, define an automatic push rule to send specific content to the subscriber's mailbox at a specific time. You need an email marketing software to achieve this function, such as Aweber. (Tristan: This is a paid solution)

Content is king

11. Breaking the latest news. If your website is the first news source to break the news, there will be many websites talking about this incident linking to you, and your traffic will naturally increase.

12. Write a controversial article. If you can successfully write a controversial article, people will naturally link to your article when they are arguing, whether they agree with your point of view or, in most cases, disagree. The result, of course, is that traffic can be greatly increased.

13. Write a “Top 10” list. People who surf the Internet like the "Top Ten XX" list, which is concise and easy to understand, while containing effective information. (For example, top ten xx resources, top ten tips, etc.)

14. Write a “Top 100” list. If the “Top 10” list brings a lot of traffic, then the “Top 100” list must be more useful. This article is an example. Because this type of article can aggregate and summarize valuable things, people will naturally mark the article in their bookmarks and share it.

15. Write a “general tutorial” on how to do something. People love to learn new things, especially techniques that can solve their problems. Make sure your tutorials are as thorough as possible and visitors will flock to them.

16. Publish an interview. The effect will be better if the interviewee has a blog or website. He will provide a link to the interview article, and his visitors will click on it.

17. Use festivals or regular events as topics. Writing content related to festivals or regular events can also increase traffic. For example, festivals and events such as Christmas, elections, Olympics, World Cup, etc.

Link Baiting

18. Create a test. People love to do tests (Tristan: I mean the kind of game-like tests here), and if you can come up with an interesting test, visitors will not only be happy to do it themselves, but will also share it with their friends, which will increase traffic. Go to ProProfs.com to easily create your test.

19. Write a ranking list. For example, publishing a list of “50 Hottest Female Entrepreneurs” can leverage people’s curiosity to bring in a lot of traffic.

20. Write a website ranking. Similar to the previous strategy, write a ranking of sites, such as “The 25 Best Weight Loss Blogs.” The webmasters of the mentioned websites will definitely be willing to give a link to this article (Tristan: If you can get in touch with them and tell them about this ranking, the effect will be better and the traffic will be greater).

21. Post a funny picture. At the end of a busy day, people may just want to have some fun and relax. Posting a funny picture can satisfy everyone's wishes and increase traffic at the same time. Where to find pictures? Check out the Pics section on Reddit.

22. Create an infographic. If you’re creative and enjoy doing research, you can try creating an infographic, which is also a great way to attract links and traffic from others. Click here for a tutorial to help you create one.

Free Strategy

23. Publish an e-book. This is one of the most effective ways to gain traffic. Write an attractive e-book and put it on your website; send an email notification to bloggers and webmasters in your niche market with a direct download link. The more useful the information in the book is, the more people will share and comment on it, and the more traffic will be generated.

24. Create a free CSS template. CSS templates are very popular on the Internet. If you submit your template to a CSS directory, there will always be many people who will use it. Putting a link to your website in the footer is sure to get you some traffic.

25. Write a free WordPress theme. You can also convert the CSS template directly into a WordPress theme (or create a new theme from scratch). WordPress has millions of users, and there will always be many people downloading your theme after submitting it to the directory (including the official theme directory).

26. Make a cheat sheet. Cheat sheets are all the rage online, and you’ll definitely see a significant increase in visitors if you create one. For some examples, check out this article that lists over 30 web development cheat sheets.

27. Provide resources for web design. The web design community is one of the most active on the web, and providing them with resources is a great way to increase traffic. For example, provide icon sets, fonts, textures, Photoshop brushes and other similar resources.

Organize competitions

28. Start an RT (forward) contest. Start an event where people need to forward the competition page to get a chance to win a random prize. The prize can be cash, products, or services provided by the sponsor. Depending on the size of the prize, you can see how many viral reposts it gets after a while.

29. Start a message contest. Another form of sweepstakes besides retweeting is for people to enter the contest by leaving a comment on the contest article. Because RSS readers and email subscribers will leave messages on the website, it will undoubtedly increase the number of visits and also inspire them to post more comments on the article pages.

30. Hold a review writing contest. If you want to improve your website's Google ranking, you can try to hold a writing contest. Participants need to write an article related to the theme of the contest to have a chance to be judged. The external links obtained in this way not only bring PR weight, but also new visitors. However, it should be noted that the prize needs to be attractive enough to encourage entrants to write articles related to the topic.

31. Hold a voting contest. All you need to do is vote on the winners in the contest. For example, if you have a fitness website, you can invite readers to submit what they think are the best fitness tips, and then let readers vote to determine the winner. Doing so will allow participants to link to the voting page and then invite their friends to visit and vote.

32. Traffic competition. If traffic is what you want, why not tie the contest criteria directly to it? In a contest, ask entrants to drive traffic directly to a specific page on your website, whether it's the contest page (to achieve a viral effect) or a resource page (such as a page offering an e-book). After setting a time limit (such as 2 weeks, 1 month or something else), you can decide who the winner is by simply looking at the website's traffic analytics to see which website brings the most visitors.

multimedia

33. First experience with the video. You may have heard that video is now a fundamental part of the internet, but if you haven’t tried using it for promotion yet, now’s the time to start. You can try it out simply by recording a speech in front of the camera (of course, the content of the speech should attract the visitors rather than being general).

34. Record screen demonstrations. When operating a computer, recording the screen and making an attractive video is a very effective method. For example, you can use this method to teach someone how to perform a certain computer operation or how to complete a task online. You can use this free software CamStudio to record screen presentations.

35.Submit your video to major websites. Once you have your video ready, submit it for distribution on as many sites as possible, not just YouTube. Luckily there is a website that can save you a lot of time, TubeMogul.com, which automates the submission process for you.

36. Create a podcast. The main reason this method may be a good source of traffic is that there is very little competition in the podcast space. That said, with a little work, your podcast can quickly become a leader in your niche. All you need to do is start recording with a USB microphone.

37. Release interview audio. We already know that interviewing experts is a great way to get traffic. In addition to text interviews, you can also publish interview audio. Skype makes it easy to record audio, too; just find an app that can record Skype conversations. The free version of PowerGramo can do that.

Social Bookmarking Sites

38. Find someone to support your article. If your friends are using Stumble Upon, ask them to help boost your best posts. This will be like a snowball, as more and more people push it, more people will see it, and other people may like it, thus bringing in a lot of traffic.

39. Try to get on the Digg homepage. It is certainly difficult to get on the front page of Digg, but it is worth a try. Once you succeed, you will be greeted with thousands of visits. First, become an active user of Digg, add as many friends as possible and observe what kind of articles are most popular on it. After completing the first two steps, ask a friend to submit one of your best articles and mobilize your network of friends to support it.

40. Submit your article to Reddit. If your efforts on Digg fail, try again on Reddit. The principle is similar to Digg, but Reddit is smaller in scale and has a friendly community. Maybe your article will be more popular there. Reddit is a good place to post funny, technology, and political articles.

41. Let visitors share articles using Delicious. Post some tutorials and “how to” articles, which will get a lot of traffic on Delicious. Add a Delicious sharing button at the end of the article, and then encourage your friends to help save it to Delicious as soon as possible. If you can get enough shares in a short period of time, it may be recommended to the homepage of Delicious.

42. Add social sharing bookmarks to your website. If you want to be shared and collected more, add more sharing bookmarks to the website. Use this tool to automatically generate a bookmark sharing icon, and then paste the code into the website.

43. Try social bookmarking sites in your niche. The four bookmark sharing sites mentioned above are the largest ones on the Internet, but there are also many small-scale sharing sites. Bookmark sharing sites that focus on a niche market can still bring you a lot of traffic. Here is a list of 83 niche bookmarking sites. Join a site related to your niche and see how much traffic you can bring.

Social Network

44. Create profile pages on as many social networks as possible. When you create a profile page on a social network, you can usually add your website address. This is not only an opportunity to build external links, but also brings in traffic (one is because of visitors who see the profile page, and the other is the link juice that the links on the page bring to the website). Mashable has a list of over 350 social networks, take advantage of it.

45. Use Facebook. If you want to get traffic on social networks, you have to show up on Facebook. At the very least, create an account and build relationships with as many people as possible. This will make it possible to gain traffic when you add the article with the link on Facebook.

46. ​​Create a Facebook fan page. Another way to get the most out of Facebook is to create a fan page. A fan page is dedicated to your website and visitors can become fans, leave comments, and more. Here is a tutorial to help you create your first fan page.

47. Add a Facebook “Like” button to your website. Facebook recently launched the "Like" button, which, when embedded in a website, allows users to share comments through their Facebook account. Adding this button is just a matter of copying and pasting a few snippets of code, which can be found on this page.

48. Use Twitter. Another social network that you must use is Twitter. You can create an account for yourself or directly for a website. The content you publish can be links to recent blog updates or all relevant content on the Internet.

49. Add a Tweetmeme button to your website. Adding a Tweetmeme button allows visitors to share your article with just one click, which can increase traffic from Twitter.

50. Explore niche social networks. You may not get as much traffic from niche social networks as you do from Facebook or Twitter, but you should still try because the traffic from them will be more targeted and specific. Here is a list of 233 social networking sites divided by niche.

Website Optimization

51. Customize your 404 error page. Whether you like it or not, there will always be visitors who are taken to a 404 error page on your website. Maybe the URL was misspelled, maybe it was linked to a page that doesn't exist on the website, or some other reason. If you use the default 404 page, visitors will immediately go to other websites. But if you optimize the 404 page and add useful links, you may be able to direct them to other pages of the website, which can be regarded as increasing traffic.

52. Web pages link to each other. This method increases traffic in two ways. First, it makes it more convenient for visitors to view the website, increasing the number of visits to each page. At the same time, it can also improve the website search ranking because the link juice will be more widely distributed to the entire website.

53. Highlight your most popular content. When people visit a website, they want to know which ones are the most popular. Highlight your most popular content and recommend it to your readers, which can help you get more page views from each visitor. The easiest way to do this is to add “Popular Posts” to your sidebar.

54. Test your website in different browsers. If your website doesn’t display properly in your visitor’s browser, they will abandon your visit without hesitation. That's why it's important to make sure your website displays properly in most browsers. The online service Browsershots.org can help you detect this, and it's completely free.

55. Speed ​​up the website. Many studies have confirmed that most Internet users can only tolerate a few seconds of web page loading time. If the page fails to display, most people will immediately turn to other websites. More importantly, search engines are now beginning to consider loading speed as a factor affecting rankings. The faster the loading, the higher the ranking. The first step to speed up is to reduce unnecessary elements on the web page and reduce the size of images. Using the Firebug extension for Firefox can provide more details on analyzing loading speed.

56. Provide cache page services. An effective way to reduce loading time is to provide cached page services. At the same time, it can also reduce the load on the web server and make the website respond faster. WordPress users can use the WP Super Cache plugin to achieve this.

57. Find a good hosting plan. No matter how well you optimize your website, if your hosting plan is mediocre to begin with, your web pages will still load slowly. So stay away from free or cheap hosting. Investing $10 per month in high-quality hosting is a must.

Search Engine Optimization

58. Create original content. If you want to get traffic from search engines, you should focus all your time on one thing: working hard to add original content. This is what Google and the company value most. The more original content and the more frequent the updates, the better the results.

59. Build backlinks. The second most important thing to do to improve search rankings and gain organic traffic is to build backlinks. You need to have as many websites as possible link to your website. The higher the authority and relevance of the link, the better the effect. For example, if you have a tech blog, getting a link from TechCrunch or other authoritative tech blogs will do wonders for SEO.

60. Conduct keyword research. Search engines work around keywords, and knowing what keywords people use allows you to tailor your content to match them. For example, the keyword "funny pictures" has 15 times more searches than "funny images," so it would be more helpful to use "funny pictures" in your title. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to check the search volume for any keyword.

61. Optimize web page titles. The web page title refers to the title part of the web page, which is located between the tags at the head of the HTML code and appears in the title bar at the top of the browser when accessing the web page. This is a very important on-page SEO factor. You should make sure that each page on your website has a unique page title and that your keywords appear in it. WordPress users can install the All in One SEO Pack plugin to achieve this automatically.

62. Create an HTML sitemap. An HTML sitemap is a web page that links to all other pages (and ideally is also linked to by all other pages). HTML sitemaps help search engines crawl and index your website, improving your search rankings.

63. Use pictures. Most webmasters forget that Google has a very popular "image search", which means that using images in your web pages can also increase traffic from search engines. Make sure to optimize your image names with relevant keywords, and remember to always use ALT and TITLE attributes in your images. Thousands of copyright-free images can be found on the website sxc.hu.

64. Translate website content. Depending on the subject of your website, translating it into other languages ​​may multiply your traffic in search engines. To achieve this goal, a plugin is also needed that enables search engines to index translated web pages. WordPress users can use this Global Translator.

mobile device

65. Create a mobile-friendly version of your site. As more and more people use mobile devices to access websites, it will become important to have a mobile version that adapts to these new platforms. If you use WordPress, you can add a WPTouch plug-in to automatically generate a mobile version of the website.

66. Create an iPhone app for your website. The iPhone is considered the most popular smartphone and despite controversy, most of its users rely heavily on its apps to manage their content. If you can create an iPhone app to display the website content, you can not only attract new readers, but also make it more convenient for existing readers to read on their iPhones. There is an open source project that can help you create it for free.

67. Create an Android app for your website. Google's mobile operating system, Android, is expanding rapidly in the smartphone space, so it makes sense to create an app for it, too. However, this requires some programming knowledge.

Online Forum

68. Join online forums and put a website link in your signature. No matter what the topic of your website is, there are always many related forums to join. Most will allow you to put a link in your signature, which can also send visitors to your website. If you need to find online forums, you can use Big-Boards.com, which has a database of thousands of forums divided into categories.

69. Link to your articles in your posts. In addition to putting a link in your signature, you can also insert a link to your article when you post. For example, if you have written an article that would be very useful to other forum members, you can create a thread to let them know and request feedback. However, you have to ensure the relevance of the article, otherwise you will be marked as a spammer.

70. Join the Craigslist forum. When you browse Craigslist, you'll find that there is a "Forum" section for each city. Feel free to post articles there and add links to your website, as long as they are relevant to the discussion.

71. Consider adding a forum to your website. Once your site reaches a critical mass of users (say, 5,000 or more unique daily visitors), you can consider adding a forum to your site. This will give visitors a platform to ask questions and share content, while also increasing traffic. You can use phpBB, a reliable and free forum software.

Content Aggregation

72. Create "lenses" on Squidoo. Each "lens" on Squidoo is an overview page about a topic. Creating lenses is free, you can put any content in it, and remember to insert the website link as well.

73. Create a "hub" on HubPages. A website very similar to Squidoo is called "HubPages". You can create "hubs" about specific topics and of course put website links in them. However, you need to read the site guidelines to make sure your hubs can be published.

74. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers. Take some time to look through the questions on Yahoo Answers and answer any questions you come across that are related to the topic of your site. You can provide a link to a website as a reference in your answer, or directly provide a link to a specific article on your website that can answer this question.

75. Answer questions on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Answers is another question-and-answer platform where you can answer other users' questions and provide a link to a website or article. Remember to keep the topic relevant and provide an engaging business answer around the profession.

Traditional methods

76. Submit your site to web directories. The amount of traffic you can get from this method depends on the quality of the web directories that index your site. But if you can submit it to hundreds of directories, you can also get considerable traffic. Here is a list of several hundred web directories sorted by PR.

77. Submit your blog to blog directories. If you have a blog, you can also submit it to the blog directory (that is, those directories that only include blogs). This article lists 50 directories to get you started.

78. Submit content to article directories. Marketing through articles is a very common and effective way to increase traffic. All you need to do is submit your article to article directories. Almost all article directories allow you to insert a link to your website, which can increase traffic. This list contains 50 of the most popular article directory sites.

79. Exchange links. The practice of exchanging links has been around since the dawn of the web, and it has endured because it is so useful. It should be noted that you should only exchange links with websites that have original content and are useful to your visitors (otherwise you may be penalized by Google).

80. Take advantage of ad exchanges. Another similar approach is to use ad exchanges. You use unused ad space to promote your partners' websites, and they do the same. Advertising can take any form, from banner ads to promotional messages in email newsletters.

81. Distribute press releases. Writing a press release and distributing it around can also generate some traffic, especially if it's about new news in your field. You can either pay a company like PRWeb to do it for you, or you can submit your press release manually (here are 50 sites to submit to).

82. Add a website link to your email signature. Email is still the most widely used method of communication, so you can use it to let your contacts know about your website.

Payment Methods

83. Google AdWords. PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising is the most effective way to purchase traffic for a website, and Google AdWords is the largest online platform. Creating an account is free, and then you have to bid on the keywords you want. Depending on the niche you identify, it may be possible to buy clicks at a very low price.

84. Facebook ads. The best advertising platform to replace Google AdWords is Facebook. You can pay per click or per 1,000 impressions, and you can also set a specific target audience for your ads to ensure that visitors will be interested in your content.

85. Advertisement from StumbleUpon. If your website performs well on social media, you can try advertising on StumbleUpon. Your website (or a specific page) will be shown to StumbleUpon users for $0.05 per impression. If many users actively vote for the content you provide, you can also get some free traffic.

86.Sponsored links from Reddit. Another social bookmarking site where you can buy ads is Reddit. The sponsored link you create will appear as featured content on the homepage, and Reddit users will be able to vote it up or down.

87. Purchase banner ads directly. Virtually all webmasters are willing to sell banner ads. If you can find a website that is very relevant to your own website, you can contact the webmaster directly to inquire about the price of banner advertising. The ROI can be high because visitors are likely to stay on your site and become loyal readers.

88. Purchase banner ads from third-party advertising platforms. There are advertising platforms online that can help you buy banner ads for a monthly fee. BuySellAds.com is an advertising platform that has many websites to place advertisements.

89. Purchase paid reviews. Sometimes paid commenting is very useful for driving traffic because your website will be directly displayed in the article (that is, the link will be directly displayed to readers of other websites). You can buy paid reviews by contacting the webmaster directly or through professional websites such as SponsoredReviews.com (make sure the sponsored link has the nofollow attribute, otherwise it may be penalized by Google).

Offline promotion methods

90. Tell your friends and family about your website. These people will definitely be interested in your website and click over, and if the content is updated frequently, they are likely to continue to check it out.

91. Tell your colleagues about your website. This is another group of people who will be interested in your website and visit it frequently. It will be even better if your website is related to your work.

92. Add your website address to your business card. If you often give out business cards, you might consider putting a link to your website on them. Business partners might be interested after all.

93. Print your website address on a T-shirt. It's easy and cheap to buy custom T-shirts now, and wearing a T-shirt with your website printed on it will be a great way to spread the word about your website.

94. Make stickers with website addresses on them and place them around the house. For a guerrilla-style promotion, you can make some stickers with the website address and place them around. You can stick it on cars, windows, and computers.

95. Advertise in your local newspaper. Depending on the niche of your website, advertising in a local newspaper could be a good investment. For example, if you have a blog about local news events, advertising in the local newspaper will bring you some new readers.

Unconventional methods

96. Come up with a creative April Fools' Day prank. The Internet is also very active on April 1st, and many companies and webmasters will come up with interesting pranks. If you can come up with a creative prank, others may give you a link, which will bring traffic. You can look at TechCrunch's summary of creative pranks in 2010 for inspiration.

97. Set your website as the homepage on any computer you use. If you can keep going, it will bring in a lot of traffic. For example, if you have used a computer at school, work, library, etc., you can set its homepage to your website.

98. Navigate to your website in a computer store. This method can bring a lot of traffic, and it is definitely an interesting method. Whenever you walk into a store that has computers on display, fire up a browser and open your web page so that people walking by can see it.

99. Put your website on the sale list. Even if you don't plan to sell your site, you can still put it up for a try. Interested buyers will visit your website, and that’s how you get traffic. If you can get it on some large transaction sites, such as Flippa.com, you may get thousands of visitors (and maybe some good offers!).

100. Pretend to be hacked. Every time a website or blog gets hacked, it causes quite a stir in the community of bloggers and webmasters. If you can fake a hack (like putting a weird message on your homepage), you can get a lot of backlinks and a surge in traffic. However, people might get angry if they find out it was a prank.