How to Increase Website Traffic for Free

Are you Harry Potter?

When asked how to increase website traffic, can you shake your wand and rustle up 500,000 new visitors to your site every month? No, neither can we. And we spent a fortune on our Harry Potter outfits. But we will find the con artist who sold them to us—believe it.

Anyway, here at EasyHosting, we are wizards at explaining complex topics in nice, simple, plain English. And when it comes to explaining how to increase website traffic for free, you’ll notice we’ve spared no expense. Get ready to hear all about website traffic, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), buyer persona, email marketing, and a raft of terms that other muggles (humans) have struggled to explain.

And when it comes to other guides like ours, we don’t want to be arrogant, but we have to say they’re not very good. Our deep dive is properly structured so that you end up with a complete workflow for success. In other words, you can use our guide to put great ideas in your content without having to read the blog backwards.

Sorry to boast. But please be reassured that at EasyHosting, we do practice humility, and we have an embarrassing photo lined up to prove it. In the meantime, get ready to become a black belt in SEO strategy, content creation, Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC), and—most importantly—how to increase website traffic.

Let’s do this:

• What Are Search Engines?
• Website Traffic
• How to Increase Organic Traffic with Search Engine Optimization
• SEO Step-by-Step
• Keyword Research
• Long-Tail Keywords
• How to Increase Website Traffic with Relevant Traffic
• Content Creation
• Two Things That Will Stop People Looking At Your Website
• Other Ways to Increase Website Traffic Organically
• How to Increase Website Traffic for the Non-technically Minded
• How to Increase Website Traffic Quickly

Blog Highlights

• What search engines are: Okay, so we use Google search all day long, but there’s still a lot to learn. In fact, everyone can learn more about search engines. And doing so will give you an edge over your competition.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): When was the last time someone walked you through all the aspects of SEO, even technical SEO? If your answer is NEVER, get ready to be happy, as we also spill the beans on SEO tools we love and how to drive traffic like Lewis Hamilton. So, start your engine.
• How to increase website traffic quickly: If you don’t have the hours to put into technical SEO and relevant searches, we show you the shortcuts to success, including paid ads—all so that you can get more traffic without having to attend Hogwarts.

What Are Search Engines?

Search engines are the lifeblood of eCommerce websites because they increase traffic and sales by providing internet searchers with the websites they’re looking for. Think of them as a bright lantern in an overwhelming and sometimes spooky forest.

What’s really frightening is that the internet now has nearly 2 billion websites. If you have 1 website, how on Earth can you stand out? Well, there is some good news. The internet is a meritocracy. Yes, the best websites attract more traffic by hosting entertaining and relevant content while catering their sites to users who are searching for particular topics.

So, how do search engines sift through 2 billion websites to find what searchers are looking for? They act like librarians, that’s how. Detailed records are kept of every website and its content, all so that searchers can be served in often less than a second. Right now, there are more than 8.5 billion Google searches per day. With such a huge user base, understanding search engines is compulsory.

Here are 3 components involved in a search engine result:

• Crawlers: Not the type of crawlers that you find in a haunted castle. Crawlers are software programs that search engines use to look through content uploaded to the internet. All of the information, be it blogs or new pages, is recorded and placed in a huge database.
• Indexing: After the creepy crawlers have done their job and put their information in the database, the material will need to be indexed. For the next step, the search engine checks the material for relevance and words used. And the search engine compares the words against other website pages. The search engine also checks what position certain words appear on pages. This process is how a search engine decides how to organize content in its index.
• Ranking: Just like a game of Quidditch, search engines like Google have a goal they want to achieve. Their goal is to supply searchers with relevant results for the search terms they have used. A lot of the search engine’s work uses algorithms. To decide which pages in its search engine index match the searcher’s intent. When the search engine supplies results, it does so in a long list. The list has the most relevant pages appearing first. This process ensures searchers get what they want quickly.

Do You Have the Time to Tell Us What an Algorithm Is?

Because you’re special, EasyHosting will make time.

Simply put, an algorithm is a list of instructions (in steps) that are given to computers to achieve something or to answer a question. In your own life, you may have problems that need resolving with a sequence of actions.

For example, let’s say you have a lot of dirty dishes and cups that need cleaning. Here are the steps you could take:

1. Immediately leave the house.
2. Walk to McDonald’s.
3. Drink several cappuccinos and think about the dirty dishes and cups.
4. Eat a few apple pies and have another cappuccino.
5. Go home and pay someone else to clean the dishes and cups for you.

You can see by reading the above list that muggles are just as smart as any algorithm in the world. But, on a serious note, be aware that search engines keep secrets. They often tell you that they use metrics to check how useful a website is. These metrics will be:

• How many of your webpages the searcher looks at.
• How much time the searcher spends on a webpage on your site.
• How many of your webpage links are clicked by visitors.

Metrics—such as the above—are made public. However, search companies keep many other factors a secret. So, what could the secrets be? We’re not sure, but we can only suggest you do everything to the best of your ability, be it English grammar or the overall size of your website. To drive quality traffic, you have to provide quality that is better than other credible sites.

Website Traffic

Website traffic is a collection of site visitors that you hope will spot you in search results and visit your site. You want your website to be generating traffic, and we’re going to show you the steps to drive traffic to you. But—first of all—before you increase traffic, is there a way to categorize it?

There is, and its Latin name is organicum negotiationis.

Sorry, we just realized we’re not in a Harry Potter movie, so here’s the Latin in English: organic traffic.

What Is Organic Traffic?

In plain English, organic traffic to your website is a result of visitors who have come to your site naturally. By naturally, we don’t mean naked. We mean searchers who found you by using their favourite search engines such as Bing, Google, and Yahoo. They naturally entered their search terms, and your website naturally appeared on the list without you paying any money for it to appear.

Are There Any Benefits for Me if I Attract Organic Traffic?

Oh, yes, there certainly are. Before you can say expelliarmus, you’ll have more visitors and paying customers than you can shake a broomstick at. Organic traffic is not only highly desirable but often more effective than paid ads. There are so many benefits to organic traffic, but here are 3 of our personal favourites:

1. Organic traffic is affordable: No need to buy ads, clicks, television commercials, or even hire Tom Cruise to make a movie about your website.
2. Organic traffic generates sales leads that pay off: The people who want to come to a website like yours to buy products and services have landed on your site. Because it supplies exactly the products and services they are looking for.
3. Organic traffic is authentic: Customers search for businesses just like yours. When they find it, they are highly engaged and will quickly develop brand loyalty. This action means repeat business for you.

Sure, it would be really cool to have Tom Cruise doing dangerous stunts to help drive traffic to your website. But it’s safer and also a heck of a lot cheaper to employ organic traffic.

How to Increase Organic Traffic with Search Engine Optimization

You can increase organic traffic with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by knowing the difference between:

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Technical SEO

We’ve already told you how good organic traffic is. And SEO is frankly brilliant at getting your website more organic traffic. To be honest—organic traffic is just like a chocolate milkshake. Meaning you can never get enough of it.

Okay, You’ve Convinced Me. But What Is SEO?

SEO is the process of making your website super attractive to searchers. We don’t mean putting your website on Tinder and hoping someone will swipe right. We mean tweaking the website until it becomes attractive.

The tweaks—we’re going to be discussing—will increase traffic to your website by helping you attract a target audience and, therefore, search engines. Some of the factors we’ll be discussing include:

• Keyword research
• Long-tail keywords
• A strong meta description
• Making sure to fix broken links

If you have no experience with any of the above, don’t worry. EasyHosting is a patient and highly successful teacher. A teacher who is known all over the world and has coached millions of celebrities—sorry, we’re exaggerating a little bit. But please trust us. We are good at helping people. Honest.

First up, let’s explain how you can use SEO to increase website traffic. And we’ll begin by talking about on-page SEO techniques.

On-page SEO

If you’ve set up a page for content on your website, it’s likely you’ve opted for writing blog posts. All content that attracts and engages an audience is worthy of your time. However, for the moment, we’re going to stick to SEO and cover content later in our guide.

For a brief explanation of on-page SEO, we’d like you to imagine that you’ve published a newsworthy blog on a page somewhere on your website. Of course, you want to drive traffic to see the blog. But you also want them to visit so that they can buy goods and services from your website. One of the best SEO tools you can use is something known as a keyword.

A keyword describes a product or topic a searcher is looking for. If they have an interest in movies, they may be searching for keywords such as newly released Blu-Ray movies. Keywords such as these indicate strong search intent with the likelihood of the searcher buying something. If you were to aim at acquiring visitors with these keywords, you would face strong competition from the likes of Amazon.

However, there are on-page SEO tactics you can use to get more visitors to your article. These include the following:

1. The title tag (AKA meta title): This is the H1 or main heading of your blog. If you were to use the keywords above, you could have a main heading, such as Newly Released Blu-Ray Movies You Must Have In Your Collection! Having the keywords as close to the start of the heading as possible will attract the attention of searchers and also search engines.
2. Well-structured headings: As well as an H1 (main heading), the content in your blog should be well-structured and contain other smaller headings. You can use subheadings such as H2s, H3s, and H4s to organize the flow of your document. Also, try to place those glorious keywords into your subheadings to attract more on-page SEO attention. Flaunt those keywords and get searchers swiping right!
3. Place your keywords in the first 100 words of your blog: This technique attracts more attention and more traffic to your site. Google’s search engine results often show a selection of text from the beginning of your blog. If a searcher spots their keywords in the main text, then they will be more likely to click.
4. Internal links: If a writer researches their topic well, they should show strong evidence of this by linking to their source material. Internal links are great for attracting more traffic. They help to convince searchers that the content connects to other relevant material that is already on your site.
5. Meta description: This is the text that Google displays under a search result. The meta description is a quick summary (no more than 160 characters) of what a piece of content or webpage is all about and who it’s for. We’ll go into more detail on this topic later.
6. Image file names: If you’re adept at uploading images to website publishing programs such as WordPress, you can place your keywords into your image file names. For instance, we could use our keywords above to save an image as: a-shelf-full-of-newly-released-blu-ray-movies.JPG.
7. Image optimization: On-page SEO is also about making the User Experience (UX) as smooth as possible. With that in mind, it’s important to point out that large files take a long time to load. To keep visitors active, make your image file sizes smaller so that they load more quickly and don’t keep visitors waiting. To get your image files reduced for free, visit tinify.
8. Alt text: In a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, you can add alt text to describe your images. Alt text is for people who are blind or have visual impairment. As well as describing an image, you can also work your keywords into the alt text. An example would be A shelf full of newly released Blu-Ray movies.
9. Broken links: For visitors to your website, broken links can be disappointing and damage your website’s UX. Improve on-page SEO by checking links in your website content to make sure they work. If you have a website with a lot of webpages, you can use software such as Spotibo to check all the links on your site are working. We’ve more to say about this, which we’ll do later.
10. URL: A CMS—such as WordPress—allows you to alter the slug line. The slug line is the last piece of text in the webpage’s address bar, which is also known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Again, on-page SEO can involve the use of keywords in your URL. If your main website address is davesbluraycornershop.com, you could amend the URL for a single webpage using the keywords we mentioned in your slug line to create: davesbluraycornershop.com/newly-released-blu-ray-movies

All of the 10 suggestions above are on-page SEO that will help to drive traffic to your website. Your next mission—should you choose to accept it—involves learning all about off-page SEO. But first a quick word about how intimidating SEO can sometimes appear.

Try Not to Be Scared of SEO

Before we move on, EasyHosting wants to let you know that understanding—and using—SEO can take a little while. If you’re new to the idea of SEO, then please keep your expectations realistic and factor enough time into your plan for using it.

Here at EasyHosting, we’ve learned to understand and love SEO as a great way to drive traffic to a website. Like Olympic athletes, we’ve trained ourselves—for many years—to understand and use SEO.

We promise you that no member of EasyHosting’s elite staff would be foolish enough to:

1. Travel down to London.
2. Queue up at King’s Cross Station.
3. Stand in front of platform 9 and three quarters.
4. Have someone give them a wand.
5. Think a magic spell would help them fully understand SEO in just one day.

Sorry.

Anyway, let’s get on with the blog, shall we?

Off-page SEO

As well as working on your website with on-page SEO, you can work away from your website to increase traffic to your website. Sounds confusing? Not really. It’s all about getting other websites on the internet to help your site. How is this done? Here’s a list of just 3 off-page SEO processes we’d like to share with you:

1. Backlinks: With on-page SEO, we learned how important internal links are. With off-page SEO, you will be looking to increase traffic by having other websites link back to your website. Also known as a link exchange, this process involves contacting websites with content similar to yours. If the other website has a blog, you could’ve seen a particular blog that could lead traffic to your website. If the other blog mentions using a service or product you supply, you could ask the other website to link back to your site in exchange for you linking to theirs.
2. Guest posting: If you have a collection of blogs on your website, getting a fresh opinion through a guest post is ideal for off-page SEO. By asking another website owner to write a guest blog, you get new insights into your subject matter and a link-building opportunity. As an example, if you sell haircare products you could ask a hairdressing business to write a blog on haircare. The blog can contain links for both of your businesses, benefiting everyone involved.
3. Social promotion: This off-page SEO practice involves using social media to publicize your website, thereby driving traffic to your website. We’ll be discussing social media—in depth—later in our blog.

Technical SEO

If you think of Harry Potter as being on-page SEO, then Dumbledore is Technical SEO—the headmaster who’s seen it all and knows all the wizarding tricks. However, please don’t be frightened off. There are still elements of technical SEO you can use to your advantage without using up a decade of your life.

Let’s look at 3 technical SEO tips you’ll find interesting:

1. Page speed: Time can fly like a broomstick, so the last thing we all want to do is wait all day for 1 webpage to load. However, there are small changes we can make to work magic:
   A. First of all, we recommend you adjust your images: If this sounds a little complex for you, then you can place fewer images on a webpage. With fewer images, there will be less data to download, which will make pages load much faster for your visitor. For those who want lots of images but smaller file sizes, please head over to tinify to shrink your images and download them in a smaller file size, which will mean your webpages load faster.
   B. Get a good web host: Sure, we understand you signed up for bad web hosting after taking the wrong potion, but there’s always an antidote and a good offer, too. A great web host will offer you LiteSpeed internet that will attract more visitors than ever before. As a brilliant example, HostPapa offers great deals and discounts all the time on its super-fast Web Hosting. Why wait? Visit HostPapa today.
   C. Grab a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Website SEO doesn’t get much cooler than being able to use a CDN. Basically, a CDN speeds up your page load times. How? It lets visitors connect to a server that is closer to where they are located. Confused? Don’t be. In a nutshell: Imagine Ron Weasley visits your online bakery looking for cauldron cakes, and Ron is in Canada.

If you are based in the UK, Ron won’t have to connect with your server in the UK. Because a Content Delivery Network (CDN) will direct Ron to another server in Toronto, which is obviously a lot closer to him. This also helps your page speed, as with fewer users pinging your site, your page load times are not slowed down due to the extra traffic.

2. Site structure: Imagine a room full of bottled potions, wands scattered here and there, and too many pointy hats. You can see the structure of the room would be a mess and take you a long time to find what you’re looking for. This same theory applies to websites. If you find yourself uploading lots of blogs, knowledge base articles, and photos to your website—it won’t be long until you have a cluttered site.

By properly organizing your website, visitors will find what they’re looking for quickly, and search engines can index your site easily. All of this magic makes for faster loading pages and happy searchers. You can keep your burgeoning site in order by using 3 steps, which are (1) categories and tags, (2) good internal links, and (3) well-organized and coherent navigation.

3. Sitemaps: A sitemap provides a detailed map of your website’s content so that search engines can quickly (1) crawl, (2) index, and (3) rank your site. You do remember that we discussed creepy crawlers when we talked about what a search engine is? A sitemap can be used to help search engines in different ways such as putting content, images, and video in an order they can easily understand. Interested in technical SEO? Good. Several excellent blogs on the internet explain sitemaps in more detail for the technically minded who want to look into this further.

Just like the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz, technical SEO has an awful lot of steps that you can bring into play. If you’d like to look into the topic more deeply, find a good guide that explains the basics and best practices of technical SEO.

Three SEO Tools We Love That Will Show You How to Increase Website Traffic

1. Ahrefs: Based in Singapore, Ahrefs has become one of the most famous expert companies in the field of SEO. Suppose you’ve found keywords you want to target. In that case, Ahrefs can tell you how many people search the internet for those particular keywords, plus how difficult it will be for you to rank your site on Google for those keywords. Ahrefs is a paid service, but they’ve introduced a free version of their tool called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Also, if you’d like free video tutorials on Ahrefs and SEO, there’s also AhrefsTV, too. Here at EasyHosting, we’re looking forward to Ahrefs: The Movie. We hope they can afford Tom Cruise!
2. Semrush: Located in the U.S., Semrush has garnered an excellent reputation for its all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility. To you and me, that means they have an SEO tool that does (1) advanced keyword research, (2) Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign assistance, and (3) social media management resources. They don’t have a movie out yet starring Brad Pitt, but they do offer free courses. Once completed, the courses come with a free certificate that you can put on your Tinder profile. Not that we would do that, but please email us if it works.
3. Google Analytics: If you’ve used the above two tools and are satisfied they are sending more traffic to your website, you should check your figures. Google Analytics can help you measure how many of your webpages a visitor looks at, the average dwell time (how long a visitor stays on your site), how many of your webpage links are clicked, and your bounce rate. By bounce rate, we don’t mean handing out bad cheques but the number of people who land on your site but soon leave. Google Analytics has a steep learning curve, but if you stick to the basics of traffic size, location, and other simpler statistics—it’s really not as scary as a Dementor.

SEO Step-by-Step

We’ve talked the talk, now we have to show you how to walk the walk. However, we’re going to keep things simple. So, in a series of steps we’re going to take you through an example of how to use SEO to direct traffic to your webpages.

SEO Strategy

So, we’ve let you in on the secrets of on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. Which one should we demonstrate? To make things easy, we’re going to use an approach from on-page SEO. The items we’ll talk about are keywords and how they can be used to drive organic traffic to your website.

Keyword Research

Imagine you have an online bakery business that wants a surge in customers. For keyword research, you can look at what goods are the bestsellers and what new inventive items customers are searching for. To begin, look at lots of baked goods websites and what recipes are currently in fashion.

For example, you notice that cauldron cakes are in high demand. To drive a productive keyword strategy, you’ll want to discover which sites are getting a lot of web traffic looking for cauldron cakes. How to find those sites? Easy, type cauldron cakes into Google search and see what comes up.

You may find that very large businesses have a monopoly on the keywords cauldron cakes. Try not to worry, but do spy on their webpages to see how they’re advertising the product and how you could incorporate their ideas into your website.

Relevant Searches

Okay, you’ve got an idea of who is getting on Google’s first page for the keywords cauldron cakes. It can be off-putting to see competition, but you can easily fight back by targeting keywords in more detail. How to do that? Read on, dear reader, read on.

Relevant & Strategic Keywords

Where would you like to sell your products? Would you like to sell within your local area or send your product out all over the world? The power of digital marketing is so incredible that either of these two goals are now achievable.

If you can do a little research on what age group and location searchers are based in, you can soon work up a good customer profile.

With a pad and pen, make a note of what your target audience will be and where they will be:

• Location:
• Age:
• The price they would like to pay:
• What goods would they be specifically interested in:
• What other goods they might like:

After thinking about it, you come up with the following customer profile:

• Location: Toronto, Canada
• Age: 11 to 37
• The price they would like to pay: $3 to $15
• What goods would they be specifically interested in: cauldron cakes, chocolate frogs, and peppermint toads
• What other goods they might like: Chocolate doughnuts, apple pies, and chocolate milkshakes

Target Keywords

As well as the keywords cauldron cakes, you can now add more keywords to your list such as Toronto, $3 to $15, and chocolate frogs.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are great for targeting potential customers and giving your business more of a chance on search engine rankings. As an example, using our collection of keywords we can come up with cauldron cakes and chocolate frogs in Toronto from $3 to $15.

This type of keyword strategy has produced what are known as long-tail keywords. The best thing about long-tail keywords is that they are used in search engines by searchers who are closer to making a purchase. This means that long-tail keywords offer higher conversion rates and visitors to your site will be more intent on making a purchase of your goods or services.

Here are 3 other things we love about long-tail keywords:

• Long-tail keywords have less competition.
• You can use them to target a particular audience.
• They are good at bringing more visitors to new websites.

How to Increase Website Traffic with Relevant Traffic

To help you drive organic traffic to your website, we’ve come up with two issues that don’t get enough attention. We’re about to show you a link between buyer persona and meta descriptions that doesn’t get mentioned very much.

Buyer Persona

Marketers love to talk about the funnel. No, the funnel isn’t a new chocolate cupcake—it’s a method of sorting potential customers. 

Imagine a great, big funnel. At the top and about to dive in are customers who have little experience with a product but want to know more about it. In the middle of the funnel are customers who now know about the product and are considering whether to buy it.

At the very bottom of the funnel are customers who now really like the product and want to buy it. In summary:

• Top funnel customers: Muggles who know little about the product but want to learn more.
• Middle funnel customers: Know about the product and are considering buying it.
• Bottom funnel customers: Now committed to buying the product.

The funnel method is one of many ways to get an idea of your buyer’s persona. It sounds overly psychological, but this method can help give you an advantage when creating content and marketing your product.

A Strong Meta Description

Earlier in our blog, when we talked about on-page SEO, we talked about meta descriptions. This is the text that Google displays under a search result. It’s always best when it’s 160 characters—or less, if possible. Here’s an example of a meta description you might see:

Would you like a spooky treat? How about one of our cauldron cakes with dark chocolate, lime jelly, and all that good stuff you know you shouldn’t eat!

The meta description above comes in at 153 characters and is aimed at top-funnel customers. Now, how about a meta description aimed at middle-funnel customers:

Our cauldron cakes are made with dungeon flour, dinosaur eggs, and pure witch sugar and are securely packaged to keep them fresh. Buy a pack of 4 today!

Our middle funnel meta description is aimed at someone who knows what the cakes contain, and so would appreciate the finer details of the ingredients. We’ve also promised the cakes will be fresh and let slip that they are sold in a pack of 4.

For bottom-funnel customers, we want a meta description that doesn’t explain what’s in the cakes but the price and other details:

Get 4 cauldron cakes delivered for just $15, with a discount voucher for your next purchase. Price includes Uber Broomstick for same-day delivery!

You can now see the connection between buyer persona and meta description. 

Please remember what we said about attention to detail. Even putting in the extra effort in your meta descriptions will pay off. You can now see how creating high-quality but simple content can drive organic traffic to your website.

Content Creation

We kept you waiting for this part, didn’t we?

At the beginning of our blog we did say our deep dive would be properly structured. What did we mean by that? 

Well, you’re on your way to being an expert in SEO and understanding what keywords are. So, you don’t need to read the blog backwards to go back over creating content—because we’re about to discuss that now. That means you’ll be able to drop your handy SEO knowledge into your content.

We’re trying to say we’ve explained SEO first and content second—if only other blogs could do it like we do. But they can’t, and that’s life.

Blogs

Writing blog posts is a great way to get more website traffic. With relevant keywords in a blog post, you can drive traffic to products and services that you want to highlight.

Before getting started with blogs, consider creating a content calendar. In professional publishing, newspapers and magazines always target popular events and holidays. Here are just a few for you to think about planning content for:

• Valentine’s Day
• Halloween
• Black Friday
• Cyber Monday

Once you have a good content calendar in place, you should take the time to learn how to write a blog post. With the rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek, you can easily produce blogs with a quick turnaround time. If using AI, be sure to edit your blogs, as AI can make mistakes that could lose you customers.

Blogs are also ideal for taking readers to a page that is advertising your product, like an appealing landing page you’ve created on your website that offers a limited-time deal.

For general blog content, mix up the types of blogs you write. Here are a few ideas for blogs that you might not have considered:

• A blog that discusses a list of alternative products. This can be used for all sorts of items, including software products. Don’t forget to put your product at number 1!
• A how-to blog that answers a searcher’s questions and educates them while also hinting that your product could be the answer to their problem.
• A listicle blog that gives a list of the 7 best cauldron cake suppliers and how the searcher can contact them.
• For stronger writers who like to research, there is the alternative of writing a product comparison blog comparing one product in the market to another.

Always Make Sure to Fix Broken Links in Your Blogs

When discussing the use of blogs to get more website traffic, we’d like to once again mention the importance of checking for broken links. A bad link can damage the User Experience (UX).

For that reason, we suggest that small websites (5 pages or less) check for broken links every 3 months. If you have a far bigger site, then we recommend checking for broken links every month. Software exists that will check your website for broken links, thereby saving you a great deal of time and money.

Domain Authority and Your Blogs

If you end up publishing lots of blogs on your website, always check if your old blogs need a paint job. Search engines like Google will continue to carry out quality checks for out-of-date blogs with bad links.

The quality of your website will be judged by search engines using what is known as Domain Ranking (DR). The SEO software tool we mentioned earlier, known as Ahrefs, allows its users to check the DR of another website. A good DR ranking will mean other websites will want to link to yours, and you’ll more than likely be offered the possibility of a guest post or link exchange.

To keep your DR strong, you can try the following:

1. If you end up with lots of blogs, try refreshing them now and again. Add videos, refresh images, and update the written content of the blog.
2. If you have a blog that is getting a lot of attention, consider using the blog as the basis of a podcast that you could add to your website.

Write Irresistible Blog Headlines to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Make your headlines for your content interesting. Sounds easy? Well, there is a method. Think about what makes you click a link or pick up a newspaper. It’s very often something that immediately makes you curious.

For example, people love to read something that will tell them how to quickly improve their lives—often something that takes little effort. So, ask how your product can solve a problem and, therefore, hook interested readers.

Focus On Evergreen Topics for Your Blogs

An evergreen tree keeps its leaves all year round. Of course, you want your content to be seen all year round and the years after that, if possible. How to do that? Well, even if you’ve published lots of blogs already, you can take an old blog and make it evergreen. Here’s how in simple steps:

• Make sure there are no broken links in your content.
• Find more recent articles on the topic you’ve written about and link to them.
• Have another look at your meta title and meta description: Bring them up to date.
• Change the images in the blog to something newer and cutting-edge.

Oh, and moving forward: Try not to put things in your blog that will date quickly, such as a hit record that will soon be forgotten about or a TV show that may not be relevant 6 months from now.

Long-Form Content & Blogs

Blogs are getting longer, a lot longer. The current trend for long-form content is gaining more and more traction. What constitutes long-form content is up for debate; some say it’s anything over 1,000 words, while others feel long-form is closer to 5,000 words.

Try experimenting with existing blogs and see if you can expand them into a longer word count.

Have a Business Blog

While we’re on the subject of all things blog, why not have a good business blog? You don’t need to be a news journalist with 20 years of experience. 

Try reading one or two business stories in your daily newspaper/website. Business blogs really drive traffic to your website if they’re honest. When crafting a business blog, think of the business story of the day and how it might affect your business.

The next step is to jump on your favourite word processor and give your honest thoughts—please don’t say anything slanderous, just a short overall opinion piece. Try writing one short business blog post per day, and remember to drop in some relevant keywords.

Thought Leadership Blogs

What is thought leadership? Well, what are you an expert on? Do you have day to day experience in an aspect of software sales, martial arts equipment, or gardening trends? Everyone has some specialist knowledge they can share. And the smart move is to tie it into the goods and services you provide via your website.

Also, if you have good relationships with other people who are well-known in your business community—be sure to interview them. Great quotes and interviews from well-known business personalities are a winner for any blog.

Post Links to Your Blogs on LinkedIn

Be sure to take advantage of LinkedIn’s interest in new content. As a huge social network with 1 billion users and counting, LinkedIn is good for posting links to blogs on your website. Post a status with the topic you have on your mind and add a link to the content on your site. 

Also, encourage other LinkedIn users to offer an opinion and comment, this will help your blog attract more visitors.

Start an Email Newsletter

For content, add a newsletter sign-up to your website. Be sure to offer a discount code to anyone who signs up and shares their email. As well as generating traffic with a blog post, a newsletter can help drive traffic to your site, as you can provide emails with links to discounts and more content.

Email Marketing

If you accumulate a good email list from your newsletter, you can then issue promotional emails or update emails. Try not to bombard your customers. Begin with one email per month.

Also, try to personalize the emails and make them all about your potential customers. Offer product updates and special offers, host a contest with a prize, or even send a link that offers an educational YouTube video you’ve made.

Create a QR code

Everywhere you go, it seems life is now about QR codes. Why is that so? Because they’re so damn handy! Everyone is using them: TV chefs who want to display new recipes, new movies just coming out, and even local tradespeople.

You could add one to your content to download a blog or contact you by email. That way, you can send a sample of your other goods and services. The great thing is it’s easy to use a QR code. Plus, you can make a QR code for free with a handy QR Code Generator.

Attend Meetings & Conferences

If you’re going to create content, you want the world to know it. Referral traffic is great for your website, especially if you can refer people yourself in the real world. If you’re brave enough, think about giving a talk at a local meeting to generate buzz for your website and business. Building an online community can be done very easily by attending everyday events.

A business card to take with you would be ideal, especially one with a QR code that links to your blogs. Business cards also don’t need to be expensive. You can always get business cards that are free to design.

Four Online Attractions to Bring More Readers to Your Content

As well as blogs and special offers, try some of these 4 top tips:

• Create an online tool: Offer a calculator or a tool that simplifies a difficult process.
• Host webinars on YouTube: Customers like to learn about your product, so why not educate them—for free—via YouTube. You can always consider hiring a freelance expert to make a video for you that incorporates awesome visuals and a professional tone.
• Create a centre for resources: Put together a Knowledge Base that answers your customers’ questions. A good knowledge base can be a lead magnet for potential customers.
• Keep your Google Business Profile up to date: Simply put, Google Business Profile makes your business appear on Google Maps and offers relevant information to searchers about it. To stay in Google’s good books, be sure to keep your contact details, such as your name and phone number, up to date. To learn more about Google Business Profile, visit Edit your Business Profile on Google.

Two Things That Will Stop People Looking At Your Website

Spammy Links

If you have great content, such as interesting blog posts, why let them down with poor-quality links? Also, don’t overload people with links that they are not interested in. You will have heard the term spam email, and we all dislike emails sent to us without permission. If you have acquired your email audience from newsletters, please consider that people have taken you into their confidence.

So, please avoid poor-quality links—add links that point to solid and respected content. If you decide to write a free report, use sources that are trusted, such as the BBC and Forbes. Please don’t just fill content with any links that seem an easy match but whose quality is questionable.

Bad Mobile Optimization

When people look at your website or read one of your blog posts, having to zoom in to read your content may annoy them. Visitors to your site shouldn’t have to put their smartphones under a microscope to look at your content. Make the mobile experience fun for all visitors and check in WordPress or another CMS that your site works well no matter what screen size it’s read on.

Other Ways to Increase Website Traffic Organically

Driving traffic to your website shouldn’t be a difficult chore. There are many easy ways to get your web pages seen more often. Here is one that’s been on everyone’s mind for the last two decades.

Social Media

Social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X—offer you the opportunity to post short content that has been cultivated with relevant keywords.

In terms of time, social media engagement is quick and can send people to your web pages rapidly. Also, you will not need a business account or other initiative that costs money. The main cost will be in the amount of time you can put into social media pages.

While you will need to invest time in researching how to increase social media engagement, organic social media is relatively easy to get to grips with.

If you feel that running a website and employing social media will be too time-consuming, please be aware that social media ads can be short and snappy. You will still need to define your buyer persona in terms of people conducting local searches and those wanting something more global, like a free tool.

Our recommendation would be to first try video marketing in organic social media. Videos can be as short as 3 seconds or over an hour. A popular form of video content is direct-to-camera opinion pieces. You may have a service or product that you want to tell people about. You could be ambitious and create ads by becoming a direct-to-camera superstar!

If you do, a good way to get social media groups interested in it is to link it to a current trend or piece of news. To rank higher on search engines, sometimes all you need is an opinion.

How to Increase Website Traffic for the Non-technically Minded

You don’t have to be a NASA engineer to understand the more technical ways to increase your website traffic. In fact, at the end of his section we have a great idea for how to get super traffic without doing anything!

1. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a brilliant way to help you see how your site is performing in Google’s search results. The idea is that Google Search Console looks at your site and gives information as to how well your site is performing in its search engines. For example, you can troubleshoot your site and find out if Google has a problem with the speed of your page load.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is designed to help you monitor your website’s traffic. You can see where your searchers are located and what devices they use to access your site. This kind of information is great for buyer persona. If you tweak your website, you can soon see the results in Google Analytics.

How to Increase Website Traffic Quickly

The following tip is not free but may be worth an investment of your hard-earned money. If you want your website to do well but don’t want to wait months for SEO-loaded content to start helping you, the following resources will be of interest to you.

Google Ads & Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Google Ads helps website owners create advertisements while also bidding on keywords. In terms of buyer persona, Google Ads is one step ahead as it’s able to show advertisements to people who are searching for particular goods and services.

Within Google Ads, users can try Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. This allows you to buy ads based on high or low-ranking keywords. The idea is that you will be charged money when someone clicks on your advertisement. For example, if you want to target the keywords Hair gel for werewolves in Edinburgh, Google will help drive people to your site when they search for the keywords.

Google Ads and PPC are not free, but they offer a good Return On Investment (ROI) that may mean you get all of your money back and a nice big profit, too!

In Conclusion: Try Not to Overthink Things

To finish, EasyHosting would like to point out two routes that you may take:

1. Organic traffic: This process involves slowly building an audience using content such as blogs and newsletters that are loaded with relevant keywords. This strategy may take more time, but it’s very cheap and, in the long run, also more sustainable.
2. Paid traffic: If you’ve been tempted by the thought of Pay-Per-Click (PPC), you may want a quick result, but one that will come with a higher price tag.

For both of the above solutions there are positives and negatives. Organic traffic is certainly cheaper but there is a heavy price to pay in terms of time invested in learning how to use Ahrefs and the creation of content. For those with a bigger budget, PPC and the outsourcing of content may be the heftier but faster route.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Should I concentrate on organic traffic?

Even if you have no experience with SEO, organic traffic is something you should focus on initially when seeking more traffic for your website. Organic search traffic is a low-cost and highly effective method of driving traffic to your website. More traffic will make you move up the rankings of search engines, resulting in more opportunities to sell your goods and services.

I want to write a weekly blog. Is it essential that I fully understand SEO?

No, definitely not. A good understanding of SEO is achievable with time and practice. But try starting your use of SEO with just the basics. Write a great meta description and polish your blog titles so that they are attractive to your target audience.

Technical SEO sounds like too much work. What can I do if I don’t have the time to do it?

There is a lot to learn with technical SEO, so why not hire a freelancer to do the work for you? Someone properly trained in SEO will be able to discuss your needs and help you drive relevant traffic to your website. Hiring a freelancer is cost-effective if it allows you to focus on your business but feel safe in the knowledge that you will soon rank higher on search engines.

Also, don’t forget that you can leverage paid advertising alongside technical SEO.

How do I figure out what type of person is searching for the things I sell?

When looking at the buyer persona of your potential customers, ask yourself what impression your website is currently giving people. Ask friends or associates to look at your site and give feedback as to what they like and don’t like about your site.

Potential customers are always won over by attention to detail. Although customers search for specific products and services, they are soon put off buying from certain websites when they see poor spelling, bad grammar, boring imagery, or a lack of structure to a website.

In matching your site to a buyer persona, think of the tone your site gives off. Is it professional, friendly, or very informal? Ask yourself if it would be attractive to your target market.

Do a lot of people actually bother reading blog posts?

Yes, a large amount. Many blog readers prefer a blog site that posts at least 4 times per week. When creating content, always think of your target audience and create relevant content that will help your site rank higher.

To attract more blog readers, think of stories and newspaper articles that you’ve enjoyed reading yourself. What was good about them: a great headline, an opening line that hooked you, or was the content well-structured? 

Incorporating what you’ve enjoyed yourself—in other people’s content—can be as good as SEO in building a strong readership that brings you more traffic. With fantastic blogs, paid advertising may not be needed.

Please kindly remind me of the content you suggested putting on my website.

Sure, no worries. Here’s a quick list of content you can put on your website to increase website traffic organically:

1. Blogs
2. Evergreen topics
3. Long-form content
4. Business blogs
5. Thought leadership blogs
6. Links to your blogs on LinkedIn
7. An email newsletter