How do I drive traffic to my website – for free?

People often ask: How do I drive traffic to my website? This post isn’t about anything you do on your website, like blogging or SEO. It’s about what you can do offsite to drive traffic to your website. Once they are on your site, users can read about your products and services and decide if they are going to contact you.

What’s the cheapest way to drive traffic to a website?

The cheapest and easiest way to drive quality traffic to your business is to fill out your Google business profile. Most brick and mortar local businesses have done that but did you know that Google now allows digital businesses to do the same? You do have to add an address, but it does not have to be visible to the public.

Google My Business drives traffic to your website

You can create an account for free on Google my Business. From there, you can add essential information, such as:

• Your contact number
• A link to your website
• Your business hours
• Any health and safety measure
• Directions (automatic)

You can also share:

• Photos
• Your logo
• Posts
• Special offers
• Events
• Excerpts from your blog with links back to your website

You can showcase your:

• Products
• Services
• Attributes: LGBTQ+ friendly; Transgender safe space; Black, Latino, Woman, Veteran owned
• Showcase reviews- it’s ok to ask your customers or clients for reviews. Google even provides a link you can email.

You can also respond:

• Respond to reviews
• Post answers to frequently asked questions
• Send and receive direct messages
• Depending on your business, you can add special features. For example, restaurants and events spaces can add featured menus, take online food orders and let customers make reservations.

Of course, you can always create ads, which cost money.

How do Google reviews improve my ranking?

Google Reviews do help improve search rankings and overall SEO efforts by sending a strong signal to search engines about your trustworthiness and authority. Additionally, having good or great reviews helps your potential customers or clients decide to choose you. You can generate a shareable link to get more reviews. Here is how to make a link for customer reviews.

Pro tip: Respond to the reviews. It shows you are engaged and interested in your customers/ clients.

Get your business listed in directories for free

A good way to drive relevant traffic to your website and create visibility for your business is to get your business listed in free directories or review sites. It’s important to build your profile and include:

• Business category
• Business name
• Address
• Hours
• Phone number
• Website url
• Photos

Sites where you can list your business:

• Moz
• Angie’s
• Bing -can import your Google business page
• Facebook
• Your town’s Chamber of Commerce
• Manta

and more

Claim your business and stay active on those sites. Here is a comprehensive list from Vendassa that pertains to specific business categories: 100 online business directories.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an easy way to directly connect with your audience. You own your list, you control your content, and depending on how you set up your email, you will probably have a good open rate, unlike the puny reach you get on a platform like Facebook.

Incredibly enough, email has a much higher rate of return than social media marketing. Here is a summary of the statistics from from Optinmonster.

There are two types of emails

• Cold emails that you use for prospecting
• Warm emails that you use to market

Cold emails target people who are either unfamiliar with your brand or have yet to engage with it. These people are commonly referred to as prospects. You use cold email to  Introduce your business, establish your authority, engage the recipient, and make them part of your sales funnel.

Cold emails can grow your list, extend your reach and drive traffic and create leads. Write them in plain text, no images, simple language and just add contact information, like Ask me anything instead of Contact.

Warm emails are about building a relationship and making conversions. This is when you use branding, styling, brand images and calls to action.

To learn simple ways to build your email list read our article 10 economical ideas for small business marketing.

Posting to Social Media

Before you spread yourself too thin, think about the nature of your business and where you will get the best reach:

• B2B – LinkedIn
• How to -YouTube
• Visual business-Instagram
• Local B2C -Facebook Groups or Nextdoor
• E-commerce-Pinterest

To get great ideas for marketing your business, read our article 10 economical ideas for small business marketing.

Build backlinks

Links back to your site, especially from authoritative sites will confer authority on your own site and help it rise in search pages. When a site links to you, they’re vouching for the quality of your content or business.

How to get backlinks:

• Guest blog -you can see where your competitors have submitted material or you can enter search terms like keyword + “guest blog”/”guest post” Read how at Forbes
• Find out who linked to your competitors and ask them to link to your relevant content. To look for backlinks, you can use SEO tools like SEMrush. It provides a complete backlink profile of any website you enter. To view the backlinks in SEMrush, go to Backlink Analytics from the left panel and then enter your competitor’s domain. Click Check it. Next, select Backlinks and you’ll have a list of domains from where your competitor gets its links from.
• Become a source for reporters on Haro. Haro sends three emails a day on various topics. You answer questions pertaining to your field. If your answers are used , you will get a link back from the publication.
• Publish high quality posts and do some outreach to other vendors in your field. For example you own an events space, you write a blog post on ethnic weddings. You then share your post with local ethnic wedding planners, photographers, dressmakers, DJ’s etc. If they like you enough, they can send business your way. To learn how to blog for SEO and inspire your readers, read our article Learn how to blog like a pro.

For a comprehensive guide, read Backlinko’s article How to get high quality backlinks. Don’t get overwhelmed. Pick a method that you understand and can follow through with on a regular basis.

How to drive traffic to my website summary

• Use Google my business features to their greatest advantage
• Get listed in various directories
• Guest blog for backlinks
• Use email marketing
• Help a reporter / HARO
• When you have created a great post, send an email asking the people who have linked to your competition to link to you
• Do outreach to potential partners