How to Increase High-Quality Website Traffic for Free in 2022? The Ultimate Playbook

With the ever-increasing competition for web traffic, it’s becoming harder to drive high-quality traffic to your site.

Most of the new-age companies focus only on increasing the quantity of traffic to their website.

But not many people realize how important it is to get high-quality traffic.

The success or failure of your business depends directly on your ability to attract high-intent visitors.

With the help of this article, you will learn how to increase high converting website traffic for free.

It’s time to get high quality traffic for free, with no strings attached!

1. Create Search Engine Optimized Content

Many people are searching on the internet for information.

There are different types of content including blogs, videos, infographics, case studies, eBooks and much more.

But only creating content won`t help.

You need to make sure that your content is available in front of the user when they are looking for it.

This can be achieved only through making search engine optimized content.

Let us look at the steps involved in creating SEO friendly content:

a. Identifying a Niche

“When you try to be everything to Everyone, You Accomplish Being Nothing to Anyone”

Bonnie Gillespie

The above quote is apt when you are building your content strategy.

You should drill down on your niche as much as possible, such that your content speaks to that one person in your niche.

Let us understand with an example:

“Health and fitness” is not a niche. It is an umbrella under which there are multiple niches.

Let us drill down

Now you see the difference.

The last step of this drill-down activity is your niche.

Now you are talking to an IT Professional in the age group 25-32 who is undergoing stress due to work pressure and prolonged screen time and looking at solutions to cope up with it.

Now your content will be much more focused and will have a much greater impact.

b. Shortlist Target Keywords

The use of Keyword Research Tools to create a shortlist of relevant keywords when creating SEO-optimized content has long been an industry standard.

Below are some of the best practices that you should follow while doing keyword research:

• Focus more on long tail keywords

• If you are a new website, shortlist keywords with low search volumes and low keyword difficulty. This will help your website to rank quickly\

• Avoid targeting generic keywords like “health and fitness”. Go after niche as discussed in point 1.

• Use free tools like Ahrefs Keyword Generator and Ubersuggest for keyword research in initial stages

• Shortlist at least 10 keywords in order to ensure that your article is picked up by the search engines.

• Make sure you use keywords strategically placed throughout your content while using terms that are specific to your business or niche.

• You should also include Meta tags on every page of your site to further optimize your content

• Strictly avoid keyword stuffing

Ultimately, the goal is to strike the perfect balance of the above factors while doing keyword research so that you rank high quickly and effectively on search engine results pages (SERPs).

c. Optimize for all Focus channels

Your consumers are everywhere and have unlimited access to content on all channels.

This means that the competition for their attention is fiercer than ever before.

You can`t get away saying that “Hey I am optimizing my content for Google but not focusing on YouTube”

Ignoring any of the channels which is relevant for your business could have a huge negative impact on your business in the long term.

Below are some of the tactics that you can use to rank higher:

For Google, Bing etc.

• Add Meta title for all pages

• Add meta description with relevant keywords

• Add tags with appropriate category

• Add structured snippets like FAQs, Quotes etc. wherever required

• Use alt text for images to rank for relevant keywords

For YouTube

• Create title with target keywords

• Add appropriate channel and video description for YouTube

• Add relevant channels tags and video tags for YouTube. Use free chrome extension vid.iq for the same.

• Use High res captivating thumbnails

For Social Media

• Use at most 30 relevant hash tags

• Try to align caption with the landing page

Optimizing your content for all channels is essential in order to maximize the presence and visibility of your content.

2. Build High Quality Backlinks

“A study of SEO experts by the Web Marketing Company suggests that creation of high-quality backlinks on relevant channels is one of the most cost-effective strategies to increase traffic that produces long term results.”

Let us quickly understand what is a backlink?

In simple terms, backlinks are links created when one website links to a page on another website.

It acts as a direction pole to guide your audience to their desired outcome.

Your rankings and traffic on SERP depend upon the quantity and quality of your backlinks.

Higher the quality of your backlinks, the higher the authority of your website.

Below are some of the best and most widely used tactics for building high-quality backlinks:

a. Writing Guest Post/ Blogs

This is one of the most resource-intensive yet successful techniques for getting links from high authority sites.

Good quality blogs with relevant content can easily get you backlinks and boost your rankings.

You can find out websites accepting guest posts/ blogs through the below searches in Google:

“Keyword” + “guest post”

“Keyword” + “write for us”

“Keyword” + “guest article”

“Keyword” + “guest post opportunities”

“Keyword” + “this is a guest post by”

“Keyword” + “contributing writer”

“Keyword” + “want to write for”

“Keyword” + “submit blog post”

“Keyword” + “contribute to our site”

b. Leaving Meaningful Comments on Sites

There is a lot of content out there waiting for feedback, appreciation and thoughtful comments from the audience.

And the good news is it could help you in getting backlinks and boosting your traffic as well.

Leave a thoughtful comment along with your website and you can get earn a backlink once the comment is approved.

You can find websites accepting comments through below Google search terms:

“keyword” + “leave a reply”

inurl:”keyword” + “leave a reply”

intitle:”keyword” + “leave a reply”

“keyword” + “your email will not be published”

“keyword” + “add a new comment”

“keyword” + “please login to post comments”

“keyword” + “Powered by Word press”

c. Grab Broken Links

This is one of the most underrated link-building strategies.

You can look for high-authority websites in your niche and find out their broken links.

If the anchor text is relevant to your blog, you can write to the website owner and ask them to link to your blog.

This is a win-win situation for both you as

• he will have better experience for his users

• you will get a juicy high quality backlink

You can use the free tools Ahrefs Broken Link Checker or Ubersuggest to find broken links.

The image above is an awesome opportunity to earn a backlink from a high authority site if you are into the Yoga niche.

d. Create Citations on High Authority Websites

Creating your citations with a uniform NAP (Name, Address and Phone No.) can help you get high-quality traffic.

This tactic is very helpful in the local optimization of content.

Below is a list of a few websites to create citation:

https://www.indiamart.com/

https://www.justdial.com/

https://www.indianyellowpages.com/

https://tinipages.com/

https://www.tradeindia.com/

https://www.indiacom.com/

https://www.bharatibiz.com/

https://www.sulekha.com/

https://www.spoke.com/

https://www.cybo.com/

e. Interact on Quora and Post Links

Websites like Quora can provide good quality traffic at zero cost.

You can provide answers to people in your niche and drop links to your content in the middle of these answer.

It can help you in two ways:

• It will build authority in your niche

• It will provide good quality traffic to your site

Which of the above approaches is right for your site?

You got to take a call as per your website goals and strategies.

3. Leverage Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a form of marketing where businesses and organizations use social media platforms to connect with their audiences, promote their products and services, and share content.

Most businesses use social media as a medium to promote their products directly.

But social media can be an effective channel to get high-quality traffic to your content.

Below are the ways you can drive traffic through social media

a. Complete Your Profile

You should fill in as many details as possible about your profile.

Link to your site in the profile section can provide you with a backlink as well as referral traffic.

b. Promote your Blogs

A lot of your time and energy is spent writing a blog.

But your efforts can go to waste if the content doesn`t reach the appropriate audience.

You can avoid this by sharing your blogs on social media.

It has been found that brands that create an average of 15 blog posts per month and share them on social media can earn an average of 1200 new leads per month.

Below are some tips to get the most out of your blogs:

• Breaking down your article in snippets

• Using high quality images

• A/B testing with the headline

c. Make your Content Easy to Share

There is nothing better than seeing your content getting shared across social media.

Always allow and encourage (if possible incentivize) your existing site visitors to share.

The below example shows how a number of social shares look like:

You can include plugins like Click to Tweet buttons to allow readers to instantly share snippets.

There are plugins like Blog2Social or SEMrush Social Media Poster that can help viewers to share your content with the click of a button.

d. Focus More on Visual Content

Here is an interesting statistic; visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social media as compared to other forms of content.

Also, tweets with images received 150% more retweets than others.

The above stats are enough to showcase the importance of visual elements like infographics, GIFs, videos, animations etc.

Make sure to include links to your website in every visual you share to drive traffic

Let us look at some examples:

The above tips can generate good quality traffic to your website with high brand recall as these are the audience who knows you and follow you and have high chances of conversion.

To know more about this, read a detailed article on content marketing

4. Focus on Email Marketing

 Email marketing is one of the most underrated but essential components of any business’s online marketing strategy.

Below are some statistics that highlight the importance of Email Marketing:

• Average open rate is 21%

• ROI generated by email marketing is 4200% ($42 earned for every $1 spent)

• 40% of marketers consider email marketing as most powerful tool in their content marketing strategy

• Right mails at the right time can influence the buying decision of 50.7% of customers

This clearly showcases the email supremacy in driving high-quality traffic to your website.

Outlined below are a few tips and tactics to use email marketing strategy to drive high-quality traffic to your website:

a. Encourage People to Subscribe to your Newsletter

The subscribers’ list is one of the biggest assets that any digital marketer can have.

You need to use all possible channels to collect email ids of interested potential customers.

You should always install intent-based popups with solid lead magnet offers to encourage people to subscribe.

b. Set Clear Expectations with the Subscribers

You should always communicate transparently to your subscribers what they are getting into.

This step is very essential to gain the trust of subscribers and make them visit your website.

c. Make the Emails Scannable and Easy to Read

People are too busy to read text-heavy emails.

Make sure that your emails are easily scannable with appropriate images, infographics, text and gifs.

d. Set up Automated Sequence of emails as per the stage of customer.

You should set up an automated sequence of emails with content that provides relevant information to the subscribers as per their needs and ultimately leads to sales.

This arrangement is known as Drip marketing and is done through tools like Active Campaign and Convertkit.

e. Use Short Video Mails

Sending targeted short videos with appropriate hook messages is currently very popular.

You can send a customized short video mailer to the user and then guide them to appropriate YouTube videos.

This strategy is very popular in increasing YouTube traffic and subscribers.

f. Optimize Landing Pages

Make sure that the information on your landing page aligns with the mail.

This step is very crucial as consistency on the message across mail and landing page boost confidence and trust among subscribers thereby making them visit again.

A well-planned and thought-out email marketing strategy could drive crazy numbers for your website traffic.

To understand this in-depth, read my article on email marketing.

 

5.  Collect and Leverage Customer Reviews

A popular trend in the digital marketing world is leveraging customer reviews for driving traffic to a website.

With the rise of sites like Yelp and Trip Advisor, customers are more inclined to trust other customers before trusting the business itself.

In order to take advantage of this phenomenon, businesses need to collect testimonials/ reviews from customers.

Below are some of the ways in which customer testimonials can generate huge traffic that trust you:

a. Post reviews on Website

Post customer testimonials on the homepage as well as relevant pages of your website with the social share option.

This leads to sharing among peers thereby leading to increased traffic.

Pro Tip: Include as many use cases as possible in the testimonial videos and use good quality videos.

b. Post Reviews on Social Media

Social Media can create virality for your product if it appeals to the masses.

Make it a habit to post timely testimonies with some good captions.

c. Paid ads for Use Case Testimonials

Running ads with customer testimonials for retargeting the customers can lead to much better conversion and higher acceptance among the audience.

There are much higher chances of customers visiting your website with engaging use case videos and testimonies.

d. Sending Reviews through Emails

Emails are one of the best ways to send across reviews and testimonials for your subscriber list as it builds a lot of trust and credibility.

This helps in increasing click-through rates.

e. Get Published on Review Sites

You can be in front of your customers right at their decision stage by posting reviews and testimonies about your products on review sites like HomeAdvisor, AngiesList etc.

These sites can send traffic with high purchase intent to your website.

But, then it is not a piece of cake to collect reviews from customers.

We would like to share a few tips to collect feedbacks that gives the maximum output:

• Ask for feedback from your customers after they have received their orders

• Always reward your customers when they give testimonies.

• Try and collect video testimonies

• Unpacking videos are mostly liked by audiences.

• Make it extremely easy for customers to provide reviews.

• Ask for reviews on whichever platform that is possible (Amazon, Website, YouTube)

It is imperative to make sure that your company engages with customers on all of your platforms, especially online.

Your website needs to be responsive and customers reviews need to be monitored to make sure that you are effectively addressing issues.

Conclusion

Hence, it is important to develop an approach that focuses on both the quantity and quality of visitors.

Eventually, you will get a mix of the above strategies that will drive optimal results for you.

The call to action is for marketers, web designers, and SEO specialists to concentrate on quality over quantity and work on ways to increase the number of visitors that view your site and become customers.