How to get more unique visitors to website

There are lots of strategies out there for bringing in visitors, including completely free sources of traffic. We suggest you test out as many of them as possible. Some strategies and channels work better than others depending on audience, brand niche, area of expertise, or competition in your space. It’s up to you to know your brand and what aligns best with your content strategy.

Email List

Having an email list is one of the best ways to drive return traffic to your website. This is because you’re marketing to a group of people (your subscriber list) who are already interested in your brand. With the right approach, email marketing can be one of your top sources of web traffic.

We recommend building your subscriber list as soon as possible. Make it easy for web visitors to subscribe to your email list with a prominent button, link, or form. Use an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, or Constant Contact to help you track performance metrics from your email marketing efforts.

Most of all, remember that your email newsletters should aim to be mini curated versions of your content for that week or month. While promotional messages can certainly be included in your emails, they shouldn’t be the sole or primary focus. Always think about what your subscribers will find valuable (your content) vs. what they will likely dismiss as spam (solely promotional content).

Twitter Cards

Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets, 89% more likes, and 18% more click throughs than those without them. It goes without saying that you want to include images on your own social media posts, but what about visitors who share your content? Twitter Cards are a way you can ensure every Twitter share of your web content automatically includes an image.

Guest Contribution

Many sites today accept blog contributions, and it helps drive more traffic to your site and build your credibility as well as brand awareness. Look for sites that have strong readership or the target audience you are trying to reach.

You can also invite industry thought leaders and influencers to guest blog or interview them for blogs. The name recognition will not only increase traffic to your site but boost your credibility as well. You can even build an entire army of volunteer contributors to your own site by asking for guest contributors.

Webinars/Webcasts

Share your expertise with your target audience by offering free webinars or webcasts. Find topics that your target audience is most interested in, then take the time to create an engaging and informative presentation. This is a great way to share your industry expertise and drive traffic to your website by putting a timestamp on the event (i.e. join us LIVE at X date and time).

But don’t make it boring! We all hear the word webinar and (let’s admit it) stifle a yawn. Don’t forget about your killer headline, great description, and interesting topic.

Podcasts

If you’re not ready to do live presentations just yet, podcasting is a good way to practice your presentation skills and still share your insights with your target audience. The key to driving traffic to your site is to make sure you are consistent and are promoting your podcasts on social media. Over time your audience will grow and you’ll build a repeat audience.

Quick tip: boost your podcast audience by inviting guests who are influencers or experts in your industry or who have a large following themselves. This will help you generate interest, gain more listeners and increase web traffic.

Community Building

People like to weigh in and share their ideas on topics they are passionate about. To increase traffic, build community by engaging directly with your audience. You can do this in a few easy ways.

Always leave the comments open on your blog and social media posts. Respond to comments and questions quickly and thoughtfully. Encourage conversation between customers, too! On social media especially, you can ask specific questions to generate a high number of responses and create discourse around topics.

The more you engage directly with readers who are commenting on your content, the more it will happen. Don’t forget, too, that posts with lots of comments and engagements also show up more on people’s feeds. Building community gets your direct audience more engaged but it also helps generate new interest, too!

Join Social Media Groups

We know that building community, commenting on other brands’ content, and seeking brand partnerships are all ways to increase web traffic. One vehicle for accomplishing these goals is through social media groups. Looking for groups relevant to your business and industry and staying active in their groups helps you make new connections and establish yourself and your brand with other industry professionals.

Facebook and LinkedIn are the primary social media platforms for group membership and activity, so look there first if you’re taking on this strategy. Once you’re there, don’t be afraid to share your content in an insightful way (steer away from straight promotion which can come off as tone-deaf and self-serving). Industry groups are mainly made up of peers looking to share insights and learn from each other, not scroll through ad content.

Mobile Optimization

Today more than half of all web traffic is generated via mobile devices, and Google’s share of search engine queries is at 96%. Google has also implemented mobile-first indexing, meaning that mobile versions of your website may be considered even more important than desktop.