8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

idealmike Level X³

January 17, 2017, 6:35 am

Write the reason you're deleting this FAQ

8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

When it comes to driving traffic to your website, doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) truly reign supreme from everything else. And they are things you should be doing every day to always improve your ranking positions in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

But as a small or new website, you may not have the budget to do these things on a large scale, so you have to do them yourself in ways you know how. Talking of DIY, here's 8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website which will guaranteed work and be a heck of a lot cheaper!

1. Author Informative and Interesting Blogs

Your blog is probably the best way to drive traffic to your site. Through your blog posts you'll be able to target long tail keywords within the content and drive traffic to the other parts of your site. You could blog about your sites products and how they are useful to people and why they should buy them. But more than that, a blog is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

2. Commenting on Other Peoples Blogs

Commenting on blogs is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your own site or blog. I'm not talking about just putting one liner comments like "great post". But actual thoughtful and meaningful comments that are valuable to the blog post itself. So much so that the blog owner falls over him/her self to publish your comment. This is a great way to make connections with bloggers in your niche and although the link you leave might be no-follow, it can still get clicks by people reading that blog post and your comment on it. You can also pick up links from related sites doing this which will further improve and solidify your rankings in the SERPs!

3. Participate in Discussion Forums

Participating in forums in your niche is another great way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Again, I'm not talking about just leaving 2 word replies like "great post", but actually leaving meaningful and valuable comments and replies to peoples threads and being helpful to people. It takes time but the more you post, the more people will come to trust and respect you. And since most forums allow you to have a signature link, each post you create will create a link to your site and that can get people clicking on it through to your site.

4. Participate in Tweetchats

Have you discovered and taken part in a Tweetchat yet? Tweetchats are basically group driven conversations on Twitter who are talking and tweeting about a particular subject or niche topic. Tweetchats can get very very big! Sometimes they can have up to 500+ participants in them and by engaging and participating in them, you can find opportunities to plug your blog or business and content through them. To find Tweetchats, just search Twitter for scheduled based Twitter chats and find one that matches the type of niche or content your blog is about.

5. Use Social Bookmarking Services

Social bookmarking sites can provide an insane amount of traffic to your blog. But only really so much through the really biggest social bookmarking sites. Not every social bookmarking site is equal and some have more users than others. But since they are free to use and you can use #hashtags and tags on them, they can be effective at reaching people that are using them to search for the things your site has or blog is blogging about. I wont spend too much time on this and telling you about the benefits they can bring. But you should make sure you have accounts on all the top social bookmarking sites and always bookmark your new blog posts to them each time you publish one.

6. Support a Good Cause

Another great way to drive traffic to your site is to support a good cause! Usually you can find a local cause in your community which you can support on your blog by making a blog post about it. People and businesses in general usually have a good view on blogs that support local causes and events. And blogs that do usually find they get a lot more shares on social media by people who also support that cause and want to share it on to their friends, family and colleagues. This can be a great way to attract a lot of attention on your blog and show your philanthropic side.

7. Engage in Local Events

Supporting a good and noble cause is one thing, but engaging in local events that are taking place in your local area, town or city is another! By blogging about local events on your blog, you can pick up visitors that are searching for it and also show that you have a community side to your blog which people really appreciate. If possible, try to cover local events going on in your area by blogging about them, stating interesting facts about the event, speakers and highlights of the day. Whether for up and coming events or events that have recently taken place.

8. Answer Questions & Be Helpful

If you truly want to establish yourself as an expert in your niche and win peoples trust in your brand or blog, then answering peoples questions online and being helpful to them is one of the best ways to do that. Using sites like Yahoo! Answers and Quora, even LinkedIn and Formspring, you can answer peoples questions that you are knowledgeable in. Other than getting a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping someone, you'll also be able to leave your blog URL or a link to a blog post you've written that has covered what they want to know about in more detail.

Conclusion

While not exhaustive, these are some of the most popular and best ways to drive free traffic to your website, blog or even online ecommerce store. And since all these ways are proven and reliable and FREE, there is no reason not to do them if that's what you're looking for!

Do you use all of these methods to drive traffic to your blog?

Do you have any questions about any of the methods mentioned here?

What other free methods of driving traffic to your site/blog do you use?

Comments

Please login or sign up to leave a comment

Join

Cristian

Blog commenting was one of my favorite ways of driving traffic back to my blog. I had a big list of blogger I would follow daily and comment on their post with good content. This works very well especially if you comment first, everyone that reads the comment section will read your comment first and if your comment if high quality you can be sure your blog gets some clicks.
Blog commenting can also build a lot of authority and over time with that authority you will get good ranks and more organic traffic.

9 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

hitmeasap

Thank you very much Mike, I appreciate the effort and your time to put this list together. I know it takes time and this will definitely help people along their journey, and that's what matters here. Thank you!

9 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

pauljumbo

great post i will start using tweetchat

9 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

cmoneyspinner

1. Author Informative and Interesting Blogs

I try!

2. Commenting on Other Peoples Blogs

I try but sometimes bloggers don't seem to know that comments are “bouncing”. I have gotten to the point that when I leave a comment and it “evaporates” I don't come back.

3. Participate in Discussion Forums

Participating in forums is a new activity for me. A friend encouraged to sign up and I'm glad she did.

4. Participate in Tweetchats

Sorry. Me no speak Tweetchat. Might learn in the future.

5. Use Social Bookmarking Services

Social bookmarking sites puts me in a funky fog. Tried Delicious. They say Pinterest falls in this category. If so, then a pinner! I have 50+ boards with over 1000 followers. What has helped me on is creating and/or joining group boards.

6. Support a Good Cause

Oh? Never thought to do this. Most of my charity is via the church.

7. Engage in Local Events

Private matters at home prevent me from doing this.

8. Answer Questions & Be Helpful

You might be right about this. I say “might” because I haven't done a lot of it. But I signed up for Quora and I guess people like my answers because I get eMails suggesting more questions for me to respond to. Also, my followers are increasing. Signed up for this community ages ago. Just recently (past few months) my activity started picking up. I'll keep at it, since it looks like I'm on a roll!

Had to leave comments. You said the magic word in your title. FREE.

9 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

jackchun

For 1, I only have some subdomain free sites such as blogger, wealthy affiliate and ucoz.

For 2, in blogger, I have commented for the other blogs. But I cannot get good results. Maybe I have only a few friends there.

For 3, I mainly participate in discussion forums like forum coin, emoneyspace and bitcointalk etc and using the forum signature as the back links. However, the results is not good, only getting a few visitors to my blog.

For the other methods, I will give it a try. But could i know what are the top social bookmarking sites?

Thanks very much!

9 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

vinaya

I have never been a part of question and answer site like Quora or Yahoo answers. However, I see the importance of these sites not only for finding information but also using the sites to generate backlinks to your main site.
many people like to reciprocate, therefore, blog commenting can be a good way to get backlinks (in most cases these are nofollow links) and traffic. sharing on social media will generate social signals that will improve your ranking as well as traffic.

8 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

Corzhens

My take on getting traffic is to be dynamic. With the social media, your account should be active and that means you are interacting regularly with the posts of other people. When you join a forum and you post a discussion or a comment, that’s also interacting that may attract the members of the community. With blogs, my suggestion is to post comment on very popular blogs and your comment should be something that can be noticed. Think of the many readers of the blog that can see your comment.

8 years ago

Are you sure you want to delete this post?

SEOClerks

8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Comments

Please login or sign up to leave a comment

Cristian

hitmeasap

pauljumbo

cmoneyspinner

jackchun

vinaya

Corzhens

Invalid SQL

Expensive SQL

Suspicious SQL

Match	Count	SQL	Script
SELECT * FROM `questions` as q JOIN categories_faq as c ON q.catid=c.CATID WHERE (q.status=1 OR (q.status=2 AND userid='') ) AND q.quesid='21156'	1	SELECT q.*, c.seo as CatSEO, c.name as CatName, c.parentid FROM `questions` as q JOIN categories_faq as c ON q.catid=c.CATID WHERE (q.status=1 OR (q.status=2 AND userid='') ) AND q.quesid='21156'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/viewfaq.php 496 () ()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='272'	1	SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='272'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/includes/member.php 445 GetAllUserDetails() ()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID=272	1	SELECT googleplus_profile FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID=272	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 16914 GetGooglePlusProfileFromId() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faq as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=21156 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faq as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=21156 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM answers a, seoclerks.members b WHERE a.quesid='21156' AND a.userid=b.USERID and b.status='1' AND a.status=1 ORDER BY a.combined_votes DESC, a.date_answered asc	1	SELECT a.answer, a.USERID, a.upvotes, a.downvotes, a.ansid, a.parentid, a.combined_votes, a.date_answered, b.username, b.userlevel, b.profilepicture FROM answers a, seoclerks.members b WHERE a.quesid='21156' AND a.userid=b.USERID and b.status='1' AND a.status=1 ORDER BY a.combined_votes DESC, a.date_answered asc	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/viewfaq.php 1245 () ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=114271 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=114271 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=114281 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=114281 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=114358 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=114358 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=119961 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=119961 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=119971 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=119971 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=148566 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=148566 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
SELECT * FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=149998 LIMIT 5	1	SELECT m.username FROM ratings_faqanswers as r, seoclerks.members as m WHERE r.USERID=m.USERID AND r.upvote=1 AND r.PID=149998 LIMIT 5	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 17159 GetVoters() ()
UPDATE questions SET total_views = total_views + 1 WHERE quesid='21156'	1	UPDATE questions SET total_views = total_views + 1 WHERE quesid='21156'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/include/functions/main.php 1765 update_Faqviewcount() ()
SELECT * FROM questions WHERE quesid!='21156' AND status='1' AND (question like '%8 Free Proven Ways Drive Traffic Website%' OR question like '%Free%' OR question like '%Proven%' OR question like '%Ways%' OR question like '%Drive%' OR question like '%Traffic%' OR question like '%Website%') -- ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 15	1	SELECT quesid, question, seo, userid FROM questions WHERE quesid!='21156' AND status='1' AND (question like '%8 Free Proven Ways Drive Traffic Website%' OR question like '%Free%' OR question like '%Proven%' OR question like '%Ways%' OR question like '%Drive%' OR question like '%Traffic%' OR question like '%Website%') -- ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 15	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() ()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='9' limit 1	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='9' limit 1	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_get_member_profilepicture()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='337' limit 1	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='337' limit 1	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_get_member_profilepicture()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='147' limit 1	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='147' limit 1	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_get_member_profilepicture()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='1607' limit 1	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='1607' limit 1	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_get_member_profilepicture()
SELECT * FROM members_ledger WHERE script='/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/viewfaq.php' AND querystring LIKE '%id=21156%' AND added>=UNIX_TIMESTAMP(NOW())-1200 GROUP BY USERID	1	SELECT USERID, username FROM members_ledger WHERE script='/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/viewfaq.php' AND querystring LIKE '%id=21156%' AND added>=UNIX_TIMESTAMP(NOW())-1200 GROUP BY USERID	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() ()
SELECT * FROM categories	1	SELECT * FROM categories	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() parseRedundantQueriesCache()
select * from categories_software order by name asc	1	select * from categories_software order by name asc	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_GetSoftwareCategories()
select * from categories_wanttobuy order by name asc	1	select * from categories_wanttobuy order by name asc	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_get_wantcategories()
select * from categories_wanttotrade order by name asc	1	select * from categories_wanttotrade order by name asc	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_get_tradecategories()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='134.png'	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='134.png'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() getUserProfileImage()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='6160.png'	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='6160.png'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() getUserProfileImage()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='539955.png'	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='539955.png'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() getUserProfileImage()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='596028.jpg'	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='596028.jpg'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() getUserProfileImage()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='585810.jpg'	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='585810.jpg'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() getUserProfileImage()
SELECT * FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='600657.jpg'	1	SELECT profilepicture FROM seoclerks.members WHERE USERID='600657.jpg'	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() getUserProfileImage()
select * from categories_faq order by name asc	1	select * from categories_faq order by name asc	/opt/clerks-staging/docroot/libraries/adodb5/adodb.inc.php 1899 CacheExecute() insert_GetFaqCategories()