Drive Online Traffic To Your Website Or eCommerce Store: 18 Free And Paid Surefire Strategies

1. Guest Post Writing

Creating a blog post for another site or guest blogging sounds counterintuitive, but it works.

Guest posting has awesome benefits like building trust, credibility, and authority in your niche.

You can write a guest post for top blogs in your industry. Before writing a guest post, make sure you target influential (or big fish) bloggers within your niche or industry. This handy graphic from Ahrefs can help you choose the right Domain Rating (DR) range for your guest posts.

Obviously, the higher the DR of the sites for your guest posts the more traffic you'll drive to your website.

Free or paid, guest blogging is one of the best and most effective ways for driving traffic to a blog or website in 2021.

To get targeted traffic, create content:

Such guest posts will generate a decent amount of traffic.

2. Social Media Marketing

Social media promotion has proven to have an enormous impact on traffic generation in recent years. Most marketers are using social networks as an integral part of their online marketing strategy.

There are many strategies to grow your social media traffic, including:

The above list is just a small sample of how you can effectively use Social Media for increasing site visits.

3. Write And Post Content On Your Blog

This one's pretty obvious, right? But many miss this simple strategy of using content marketing to attract their target audience. 

Essentially, what you do is create helpful quality content that solves problems/tackles issues and that your audience will find valuable. You also need to distribute this information through social media for maximum exposure and traffic generation.

Your ultimate goal is to get people to come to your website–where they can hopefully turn into paying customers.

Your company blog isn’t for decoration. It’s meant to generate traffic for your business. 

Create your first (or next) blog post today to get the traffic wheels turning. To enhance your chances of success, anchor your content marketing strategy on long-form content. Studies show it ranks higher than short content.

Bonus tip: in your content marketing approach, target long-tail keywords with low competition but high search volume potential. If you consistently produce quality evergreen content, you will dominate google search results and attract organic traffic. 

4. Optimize Your Website For SEO

Google, Bing, and Yahoo account for over 90% of organic search traffic. Simply publishing evergreen content in and of itself won’t help you.

You need to optimize your website for SEO for your content to appear in search results.

There are some free tools like Yoast and All in One SEO that you can use to analyze the SEO of your blog.

For search traffic, you could use the free Google Keyword Planner tool to brainstorm new keywords for SEO. I recommend you get a premium WordPress plugin like Yoast or All in One SEO for more accurate SEO optimization of your posts or website pages.

To produce top-quality content that appears on search engine results, follow these tips:

Doing so will help you get more visitors from search engines. 

Then you should do these two key things:

5. Get Listed On Online Directories

You should start looking for online directories where you can submit your site. 

The traffic drives you'll get from these will depend on how popular the directory is and how many links are pointing to the page that lists your website or blog.

It's not a good idea to spam this type of content, but there's no harm in submitting your website to 10-15 directories.

6. Get Active On Niche Forums And Groups

There are some popular forums and groups that focus on your niche. Getting active in these will give you a lot of traffic and helps you learn how to make passive income online – if you do it right!

The goal is to provide value-added information to other users and then point them back to your site. In the process, you will get more exposure for yourself and what you have to say. Be sure to do these things.

First, post new topics in the appropriate forums or groups. Make your posts long, in-depth, and even a bit controversial (not always!). This will ensure that you get more traffic than if you just posted short, bland content. Also, comment on other people’s threads and posts.

Whenever possible, back up what you say with evidence. Showing that you know your stuff will make people trust you. This will also help your posts get more traffic and engagement from other users on the forum or social media group.

Avoid overusing keywords in titles of topics or comments. While this might help you get more traffic initially, it also comes off as spammy and has the potential to get your posts downvoted (which is bad).

Ask questions in threads. This will help you get more feedback from other users on a forum or social media group. If you've already created good content, then there's no reason you shouldn't do this. It's the fastest way to drive traffic and gain exposure in your niche.

7. Appear On Popular Podcasts

The best way to do this is to get involved in podcasts that are related to your niche. An example of the type of podcast you want will be the Smart Passive Income Podcast by Pat Flynn (who blogs at smartpassiveincome.com).

You might not know it, but there is a lot of traffic sent from these types of podcasts. This is because a lot of people listen to podcasts while driving. They can also be listened to during exercise routines and other activities, such as cleaning the house.

The key here is to appear often, but make sure you are adding value wherever possible. Your podcast appearances will boost visits.

8. Rank Videos On YouTube To Generate Organic Traffic

Another quick and easy way to attract referral traffic is through YouTube. BTW YouTube is the second largest site after Google.

Imagine how many people who fit your audience profile are on YouTube?

Video content is also a great opportunity for you to build authority in your niche, showcase your personality, and build rapport with potential customers. 

Create a YouTube channel that focuses on search engine optimization. Get into the habit of creating videos related to your niche. You can easily avoid keyword stuffing by making it about you. People love hearing from experts in their industry, so don't be afraid to talk about yourself!

You just need to make sure that the videos are optimized for search. 

Once you've created your YouTube video, don't forget to promote it on social media and relevant blogs in your niche.

9. Write Product Reviews And Articles

Creating review articles about your products or services is a great way to drive traffic to a website.

Here are quick tips on writing product reviews:

FB promotions are great for increasing traffic to a page (or an eCommerce store). You simply need to set up a campaign with the following; budget per day, target market, ad type, placement, images/video, and call-to-action. You can also track the effectiveness of each campaign using Facebook's analytics.

- Some ad types are not available in all countries. Do your research before setting up a campaign;

11. Drive Traffic Using Google Ads

Google commercials are very similar to Facebook ads in the sense that you can narrow them down by country, gender, etc. But they're a lot more in-depth than just simply offering website traffic or email leads like Facebook.

Instead, Google allows you to choose between three different types of adverts:

12. Instagram Ads

Instagram adverts are a relatively recent addition to the social network world. They allow you to narrow down your audience by targeting specific hashtags. This can be great for promoting your latest blog posts or driving website traffic to an eCommerce store.

13. Pinterest Ads

Pinterest promos are a great way to drive traffic to a particular URL on your website or an eCommerce store. The layout is very similar to other social advert types, but you can choose if the audience will see your ad based on their gender, age, etc. In terms of what you can advertise, there are three types available:

14. Increase Traffic Through LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn commercials are a great way to drive visitors to an eCommerce store or site, and offer many options for people searching for information on your particular niche. You can choose if you want to target specific jobs or job descriptions (as well as relevant skills) which makes it even easier to get the right people looking at your content.

15. Boost Visitors To Your Site With Twitter Ads

Twitter Adverts can be a great way to drive site visits and get in front of people that are actively looking for content similar to what you're creating.

How To Get Started With Twitter Adverts:

16. Influencer Marketing

You can also increase website traffic through influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is a great way to reach out to people that are similar to your target audience, and get them to help drive traffic to your site or eCommerce store.

How to get started with influencer marketing:

When reaching out to the influencer, also offer them something in return for their help. Let them know how you can promote some of their recent work or social media profiles on your website.

The biggest drawback of influencer marketing is that it’s expensive.

17. Email Marketing

Email marketing is an excellent way to build and nurture a relationship with your readers and turn them into buyers.

Email marketing has an astounding $40 return per $1 spent.

But what I want to focus on here is driving traffic through email.

If you have an eCommerce store or blog, this can be as simple as sharing links to new content that's been published with your email list. You can also get direct sales by including a short ad promoting whatever you want people to purchase (and make sure the email subject line is compelling).

18. Press Releases & Media Coverage

Writing a press release and getting it published on sites with large audiences is one way to drive traffic to your site. But I want to focus on creating content for major publications that will bring you traffic.

There are two ways to get started with press releases:

First, write about something unique or controversial then pitch this idea (you have two options here. The first is to create a press release and distribute it through PRWeb or send it directly to news anchors. 

The second way is to find sites that will let you submit content that they'll publish.

Once your content has been published on a major publication, share the link on social media; then promote the traffic back to your site.