Are you struggling to generate traffic to your WordPress site? Having a beautiful site is not much use if no one can see it… except for your fervent supporters (your family and friends).
Traffic is at the heart of your marketing strategy. The rules and algorithms of social media platforms are changing all the time. Worse, they can close your account overnight.
But your website will always belong to you. It is more important than ever to make your website the nerve center of your business. In marketing strategy, this is called Owned Media (media that belongs to you and that you control)
Fortunately, there are many ways to attract more visitors to your WordPress site. But not just any visitors: the most important issue is to generate quality traffic.
This article will show you our favorite levers.
You don’t have to use all of them, but combining a few of them can produce great results.
Best free tips to generate traffic to your website
Let’s start with the free solutions to get more traffic to your WordPress site.
1. Publish quality content regularly
This may sound obvious, but with the explosion of content marketing, it’s the only way to stand out in the web jungle. The competition between content is fierce.
Relevant content means quality traffic. The more detailed your content is, the better you can keep your readers coming back. They will come back to your site on a regular basis. Read these 10 tips to keep readers coming back to your website
Quality content obviously requires good targeting: you are not writing for the whole world, but for a specific category of visitors.
To address everyone is to address no one. If you aim too wide, you risk attracting tourist traffic. As big as this traffic is, it is not useful. It is therefore necessary to increase your audience in the long term. You may want to know how to write quality articles
Internet users are more and more demanding about the quality of content: if it does not meet their expectations, the penalty is clear: they leave the site and it is unlikely that they will return. The bounce rate then explodes…
Given the competition between the millions of content created every day, long and detailed content is popular. The average size of content positioned on the first page of Google is 1890 words!
2. Take care of the SEO of your site
It is difficult to do without SEO to generate traffic in the long term. In order for Internet users to find your site, you must first learn how to coax the algorithm. To increase your traffic, you need SEO-optimized content.
Related: How to write SEO-friendly articles
The advantage of having a well-optimized site is to have qualified traffic in the long run, unlike “peaks” of traffic that you get by promoting your content on social media.
Obviously, we will not be able to go around the question only in this article.
Nevertheless, we give you some essential good practices:
- Focus on the richness of the semantic field of your content. If content is king, the semantic field is its runner-up.
- Always take care of the meta-title and meta-description of your publications: with these elements well optimized, you will get more clicks on your site in the search engine results.
- Optimize the SEO of your images. This includes image size and alt attribute optimization.
- Use relevant keywords and long tail keywords (with several words, which specify the search of the Internet user).
- Take advantage of WordPress plugins that will allow you to manage the essentials of SEO without being an expert. This is the case with Yoast SEO, its new competitor Rank Math or SEO Press.
- You can only improve what you measure: Google Analytics and Google Search Console will be your precious companions.
3. Optimize your content for voice search
Voice search is growing exponentially. According to Google data, since 2016, voice searches on Google have increased 35-fold from 2008.
It would be a shame to ignore this share of traffic.
But voice queries are different from traditional searches.
Here are some good practices:
- Use long-tail keywords (multi-word keywords with low search volume).
- Write your content in a simple and answer-oriented way. Indeed, the reflex of Internet users is to ask specific questions to their voice assistants. Google wants to satisfy them and therefore seeks to position itself more and more as an answer engine.
- Optimize the content for rich snippets (rich search results highlighted by Google at the top of the results page). Indeed, voice assistants prefer quick and concise answers.
4. Offer guest posts
Otherwise known as guest blogging, guest posting is a great way to increase traffic to your site quickly, while demonstrating your expertise to a wide audience.
How does it work?
- Identify websites with a large audience in the same industry as you, or close to your business. This last point is very important to attract qualified traffic; publishing a DIY tutorial on a site that talks about personal development may not be a good strategy…
- Carefully examine the content of the site. What are the topics that are not yet covered and on which you could bring your specialized expertise? List these topics.
- Contact the content manager (some sites even have forms specifically designed for this type of request), briefly introduce yourself and submit your pre-listed ideas that you could produce content on.
Guest blogging is a win-win solution: the site that will host your article gains quality content and you have the opportunity to make yourself known and get a link pointing to your site (backlink).
Related post: How to find that are willing to link to your content
5. Get quality backlinks
Speaking of backlinks: these are the inbound links that point to your site. Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for all search engines. Their role is to generate traffic from referring sites.
Managing your backlinks must be done in a consistent way. Do not give in to the temptation to buy hundreds of links that actually come from dubious sites. This could well harm your ranking in the search engines! Read this article about White Hat SEO versus Black Hat SEO – Definitions & Differences
In the same way, sort out all the link exchange proposals: check that the sites that offer you links are relevant, and are in the same field of activity or in a field close to yours.
6. Promote your content on social media
Social media are very interesting traffic sources. If SEO works for your traffic in the long run with its long-term effects, the role of social media is to generate traffic quickly.
Promoting your content is a must: unpromoted content is sleeping content… Producing content costs a lot of energy: it would be a shame if it went under the radar!
Social networks will allow you to expand your audience and attract new visitors to your site.
I know: promoting your content is time-consuming. Focus on the social media that are most relevant to you. Today, for example, the organic reach of LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube is very attractive.
Special WordPress tip: To save time, use a plugin like Jetpack to share your new content on social networks.
7. Participate in YouTube podcasts and interviews
Participating in podcasts or interviews serves two purposes (no, it’s not just to show off).
First, it allows a new audience to discover you as an expert. It’s also an opportunity to introduce yourself in a more personal way.
Secondly, podcasts and YouTube interviews generate quality backlinks and interesting traffic in the long run.
So don’t be shy: let yourself be invited!
8. Strengthen your site’s internal linking
Internal linking is the number of internal links between the different pages of your WordPress site. The denser and more relevant the links are, the more the visitor will want to stay on your site and consume your content.
A good internal linkage allows you to increase the duration of sessions and reduce the bounce rate. It is a very good way to offer your visitors complementary content.
Internal linking also allows you to optimize natural referencing by favoring certain pages of your site.
Related post: On-page SEO: 11 Techniques To Boost Your Rankings
9. Unite your community
Facebook group, Slack, newsletter… It doesn’t matter what medium you use: what matters is to gather your community around your site and your content.
If you feel like it, you can even add a forum to your site using a plugin to allow users to ask questions and discuss.
The community is a powerful engine to promote your content. The followers of your productions will be regular visitors, but also your ambassadors. They will not hesitate to help you spread the word.
Similarly, a newsletter, besides establishing a regular relationship with your audience, allows you to notify your subscribers of new content so that they come back to your site.
10. Recycle existing content
Producing quality content takes a lot of time. Why not give it a new life?
It is possible to recycle your content without looking like a lazy person. Moreover, this process allows you to be present on different distribution channels and increase your traffic.
Here are some ways to leverage your existing content:
- Turn a blog post into video content, or the other way around;
- Turn a podcast episode into an article;
- Bundle your newsletters into an article or an ebook…
In fact, the possibilities are endless. Don’t worry: your audience won’t judge you. On the contrary, recycling your content allows you to expand your audience by reaching different audiences. At the end of the day, what matters is to bring content that is relevant to your target.
11. Publish expert interviews
Interviewing experts helps increase traffic to your site while building your credibility and authority. This is a great solution when you are starting your site.
This type of content will increase your audience quickly, as the experts in question will share your content with their own network.
12. Update your old content
Google’s algorithms are very sensitive to content that is regularly updated to provide the most relevant answers to its users.
In addition, old content that has been dusted off and completed will help you improve your ranking in search engine results. The better you rank, the higher your traffic will be.
Take advantage of updating your site’s content to:
- Add new keywords and information
- Improve the tags (meta-description, ALT tags)
- Add a FAQ section
- Optimize the size of the images…
13. Publish tutorials
It must be said that Internet users have taken the reflex to consult their favorite search engine to find quick answers to their questions.
“OK, Google, how do I change the headlight bulb on my Renault Evasion?”
Or more classically (sorry):
“Say, Alexa, how do I talk to my overly intrusive mother-in-law?”
For the past few years, search engines have been striving to give their users what they want: clear, structured answers.
Make it easy for your visitors by offering practical content, like how-to sheets or tutorials.
14. Install a notification plugin
Notification plugins allow you to notify users who have already visited your website about a new article, a promotion, or a special offer.
Sending push notifications is formidable: this solution is up to 10 times more effective than email.
There are totally free WordPress plugins, such as OneSignal, that are not very intrusive for your visitors.
Paid methods to generate traffic to your website
The Paid methods to generate traffic have the great advantage of being very reactive: well-run advertising campaigns allow to have a quick return on investment.
Their common drawback: they can be expensive for a beginner who does not master their specificities.
Let’s see the main ones :
15. Getting started with Google AdWords
This is a classic paid traffic acquisition method. Buying keywords from Google’s advertising network allows you to position yourself above the natural results.
This solution is interesting if you want to get quick results. It is not cheap, even if the cost per click (CPC) remains interesting on some very precise keywords.
16. Get into Instagram advertising
From Instagram, advertising can bring you quality traffic to your site Every day, the number of Instagram users is increasing.
Instagram can generate 4 times more engagement than Facebook.
The big advantage of Instagram is that users interact a lot with the content, whether they are sponsored or not because there is no noticeable difference in presentation between the classic publications and those that are sponsored.
So it’s a great way to bring traffic back to your site quickly.
Check out Instagram Business to find out the ins and outs of it.
17. Test Facebook advertising
How about increasing your WordPress site’s traffic with Facebook advertising?
With its declining organic reach, paid Facebook advertising is an interesting alternative to attract more visitors to your website.
35% of the Facebook advertising audience is under 25 years old. If this is your target audience, Facebook advertising can help you get good results in terms of traffic.
The Facebook ad management tool contains very advanced targeting criteria: you can choose very finely who sees your ads, based on age, interest in certain Facebook pages, or the location of users.
Nevertheless, the price of Facebook advertising is constantly increasing (the average price per ad rose by 17% in the second quarter of 2018).
Head over to the Facebook Business site for more in-depth information.
18. Advertise on Pinterest
Consider investing in advertising on Pinterest to drive more traffic
Often overlooked, Pinterest is an extremely interesting social network to attract traffic over time. In addition, Pinterest has become a visual search engine: people gladly use it to find ideas or inspiration.
Pinterest advertising can take many forms: sponsored pins, videos, or even carousels. Sponsored pins give the best results in terms of traffic to your site.
Head over to the Pinterest Business site to learn more.
19. Produce sponsored content
This is a paid variation of a guest post. If you want to make your website visible quickly, you can go through sponsored articles.
To do this, identify high-traffic sites that have a similar audience to yours and offer to publish your content in exchange for payment. By adding a small backlink to your site, you bring back traffic.
Note: Be careful about the quality and relevance of the sponsored content you offer. As with guest blogging, there is little point in publishing an article to an audience that is not similar to yours.
20. Mobilize influencers
If you are already selling products, you can contact influencers and ask them to promote your products to their audience.
Choose the influencers carefully: just because they have a very large community around fitness doesn’t mean that they will bring traffic to your DIY site.
Beware also of fake influencers: there are accounts on social networks with big audiences… fed by fake accounts or subscribers that have been bought. If you want to be reassured of your choice, you can go through one of the influencer platforms.
21. Use some paid WordPress plugins
There are some very powerful paid WordPress plugins that will help you increase your traffic.
Here are our favorites:
- ThriveLeads is a plugin to capture emails from visitors to your site. What does this have to do with traffic? Building an email list will help you keep visitors coming back to your site. With several pre-configured form templates, you will have the opportunity to convince visitors to leave their email addresses in several places on your site.
- Social Warfare is a social network-sharing plugin. Very easy to use, it allows visitors to your site who liked your content to share it in one click. It’s a clever way to bring more traffic to your site, without any extra effort on your part.
- MailOptin is another opt-in plugin to get the email addresses of your visitors. In its paid version, you can even schedule automatic emails to notify users of new content.
And you, what are your favorite solutions to increase the traffic of your website?
