We’re all familiar with the conundrum: building your website is just the beginning. All the effort put into setting it up will go to waste if nobody sees it.
At the same time, the world of website promotion can be intimidating and confusing, not to mention expensive. Not everybody has the financial budget to sink into paid advertising campaigns and event sponsorships.
Before we get into it: why listen to me?
I work for Ahrefs, which is an SEO toolset. Driving traffic is our bread and butter–in fact, we’re our own case study!
This is what our blog’s organic traffic growth looks like for the past ~2 years:
Now, let’s talk!
#1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, is the process of getting your website ranked highly on search engines like Google.
This strategy is listed first here because it brings consistent, passive traffic to your website. I’m not even being biased here when I say that it’s the best website promotion tactic in terms of scalable, long‐term results.
This is what your traffic looks like when employing SEO:
(our blog’s organic traffic growth in isolation for the past ~3 years.)
And this is what it looks like using other methods.
(traffic generation after publishing a guest post)
In the land of SEO, this is commonly known as a “spike of hope”–which rapidly degenerates into a “flatline of nope”.
The breakdown: you see a nice boost in traffic when the post is first published and promoted, but this referral traffic soon fades… leaving you scrambling for the time and resources needed to maintain this strategy.
So, how do you “do SEO”?
Some quick tips:
Step 1: Write content around a topic with organic search traffic potential
Keyword research is essential to your SEO success: you do this to make sure that there’s a market for the content you’re about to produce. When your content ranks for tons of popular search terms, that’s when your traffic begins to soar.
Since there are too many variables involved in performing keyword research (everybody’s goals, resources, timeframes, competitive landscapes, etc differ), there’s no one‐size‐fits‐all method to this.
Instead, here’s a reliable keyword research framework that you can adjust to your needs. You might also be interested in learning how to find the easiest keywords to rank for.
Step 2: Optimise your content
Whether you’re creating brand new content or working with existing posts, you’ll need to optimise them to rank in Google. This involves lots of research, copywriting work and multiple other factors. Interested in learning more? Head on over to this post on actionable steps you can take to attract more organic search traffic.
Step 3: Build links
A backlink is simply a link back (hence the name!) to your website from another page. It’s seen as an indicator of how important, or useful, your content is by search engines. In other words, having a high number of quality backlinks is a big influential factor in ranking highly on search engines.
Once you have great content, it’s time to begin building backlinks to it. There are plenty of ways to get going–for starters, take your pick from newbie‐friendly skills and tactics or learn some methods to loot your competitors’ backlinks.
#2. Create a Free Resource
This strategy is all about creating valuable, unique content–ideally centered around your brand or product–then offering free access to it.
Whether it’s a printable PDF guide or a tutorial series on YouTube, focus on adding value for your audience and you’ll start seeing the magic of word‐of‐mouth advertising at work.
Note that quality is key! Unoriginal, low‐quality content does not gain traction, no matter how free it is.
Some tips for success:
Step 1: Figure out what content to create
Your content needs to be relevant to your niche, or it’s unlikely that you’ll see much quality traffic from it.
Step 2: Make it easy to share
Cutting out the extra steps required to send your content across to a friend can make all the difference. So: do yourself a favour and make your resource as shareable as possible.
One way to do this is by repurposing your content into bite‐sized chunks–for example, producing a simple infographic that sums up key information and creates talking points for your audience.
Another traffic tip: use Click‐To‐Tweet links to increase shareability and get more eyeballs on your content.
This allows you to customize the exact message your audience will be tweeting out, all while making the actual process of sharing next to effortless. A win‐win situation!
#3. Respond to Comments and Engage in Conversation
This tactic is all about going back to the basics. Sometimes, the best way to build a relationship with people and interest them in your website is the simplest: strike up a conversation.
Stay on top of what’s being said in your niche and about your brand, then strategically slide yourself into the discussion where possible.
(a comment breadcrumb that links to a screenshot of statistics from Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.)
Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Set up “Mentions” Alerts
It’s difficult to join a conversation you don’t know is happening. Thankfully, the solution to this has been packaged nicely in the form of tools like Google Alerts, Talkwalker and our very own Ahrefs Alerts.
Step 2: Jump in where you can add value
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, don’t be a spammer. Only speak up when you have something valuable to contribute to the conversation; whether it’s knowledge and advice, or at the very least a link to another source that will be of help.
There you have it: some interesting ways to get more free (and relevant!) traffic to your website. Head on over to this article if you’d like more ideas and tips.
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