There is one thing every online business needs to succeed: Traffic.
You can have the most amazing website selling unique products or services, but the truth is you need to drive traffic to generate income opportunities.
At the end of the day, to make money with any online business, you need a combination of a good product or service, amazing content, and a targeted audience. Then is a game of numbers: The more people visit your site, the more chances you’ll have to make a sale.
But how do you get traffic to your website? And more importantly, are there any free traffic sources that can help you increase your revenue?
The answer is yes; there are plenty of free traffic sources for your website that will help you spread your word and make more money. In this post, I will show you the ones that are working best in 2024.
Let’s dive in!
What Are Free Traffic Sources Online?
Free traffic sources are online places where you can get visitors referred to your website for free.
It is clever to focus on free traffic sources because, with the right strategy, you won’t only save money, but you will also attract more targeted customers.
Next, I will show you a list of some of the best free traffic sources you can use to send potential customers to your website.
10+ free Traffic sources That will Get Your More Visitors
Although these are the best free traffic sources I can recommend to you, I suggest you focus only on a few. It works much better when you master a few of them than trying to tick them all.
I want to start with one of the most important free traffic sources and where you should focus all your efforts: SEO (search engine optimization).
Organic search traffic is so important that ranking for keywords with commercial value will have a considerable effect on your website. It will drive you very targeted traffic with interest in buying a product or service. This will lead to an increase in your sales.
You can see the potential here. However, if you want to rank on Google’s first page, you’ll need to do some work.
Some of the things you should do to optimize your website and article to rank are:
- Topic research. Create the content on topics people are interested in
- Keyword research. Target long-tail keywords with low competition and a decent search volume.
- Create amazing content. Unique long-form content (+1,000 words) performs better than short pieces.
Although there are some free content writing tools for SEO, I can tell you by experience that paid services are well worth it and will take you further. They will help you achieve better results faster.
I suggest you follow this guide to learn how to perform niche keyword research. It is an easy-to-follow guide for beginners which will provide you good results.
When it comes to driving traffic, you need to work smart.
It would be best if you focused your time mainly on strategies that will drive organic traffic. And it is smart to focus on Pinterest because it will drive organic traffic to your content for months with fewer efforts.
This is something that the rest of networks like Facebook or Twitter lacks. As soon as you post something on them, the lifespan compared to pins on Pinterest is nothing! Your posts will get lost in minutes, if not seconds.
But with Pinterest will stay visible for months. You only need to work a little bit more the first time you post your content with Pinterest SEO. Then It will start working like a charm in a few weeks, driving organic traffic to your site without much more effort after your first optimization.
First, you will need to optimize your Pinterest profile. The good news is that you only need to do this once, and it does not take so long.
Next, you will need to optimize your boards and pins with SEO for Pinterest. Luckily for you, I have a detailed guide on how to do this. In fact, this is a guide to Pinterest affiliate marketing where you will learn how to optimize Pinterest and how to use it to make money with affiliate marketing!
Direct traffic is when people access your website directly by entering the URL or through a bookmark. These are normally people who already know your site.
But how do you do to drive direct traffic to your site? Providing value to your readers and posting frequently.
The only reason why a visitor might want to come back to your site is to see if you have published more amazing content. They know already how good your content is, so they want more. So you will need to stick with posting quality and frequency if you want more of that direct traffic to keep coming.
The easiest way to start with some direct traffic is by sharing your page with friends and family. They might not feel like coming to visit your page every day, but every visit counts on Google’s eye.
Also, you can ask them to share your content on their social media. This might bring you some extra visitors.
Lastly, if you create great content and try to post at least once a week, you will be giving new visitors a reason to keep coming back for more.
Medium is a content publishing platform that receives millions of visitors each month.
Because it is a top-rated platform, it can be a great free traffic source for your website. In fact, as of today, Medium is responsible for 26% of my referral traffic, more than Facebook or Twitter.
All you need to do is register (for free) to create and publish content. The main advantage of this method is that this platform already has an audience. Which normally is the hardest to obtain for any website. Moreover, you can even rank on Google’s first page with Medium and drive even more traffic to your content.
Lastly, you can even make money with Medium from your articles with their partner program!
Create a free account and start importing your stories to Medium. You can check this post for a step-by-step guide on creating a post and publishing it on Medium.
Email marketing is not only a very effective tactic to drive free traffic to your site, but it is also the one with the highest ROI.
The way you use email marketing to drive traffic is by simply sending an email to your audience every time a new post is out. This will take them back every time you have something new to share with them.
This method normally works very well because your subscribers are people already interested in your content. So if you craft a good email with great content, it is very likely you get traffic from your email campaigns.
In case you don’t have an audience yet, you will need to create lead magnets to convert readers into subscribers (and potential customers). You will also need a great email marketing service. I suggest you check this Convertkit review to do all this.
First, you should acknowledge the importance of email marketing for your business. You would be surprised by how powerful, and necessary email marketing is.
Next, learn how to run an effective email marketing campaign that will drive traffic and sales step by step. You have every single step you need to do in detail.
Facebook is not what it used to be to drive traffic. In fact, posting your posts to your Facebook wall probably won’t have much effect unless you have a massive audience. Not to mention the lifespan of a Facebook post is just a few hours.
From all the methods I have tried on Facebook, posting on Facebook groups can be a great free traffic source. But for this strategy to work, you must find niche groups where your content will be 100% relevant and help other users.
Check for Facebook groups in your niche. Make sure they have some rules, at least 1k users, and they have frequent activity.
The best way to drive traffic in groups is by being polite and helpful. So instead of just dropping your link, provide valuable answers to other user’s queries.
One of the best methods to do this is by providing relevant and specific answers in your comments. Then, you can always end up saying something like, “for the more insightful information, you can check this post (and insert your link).” That will give them the option to check it only if they want to know more, but you would be solving their queries already with your comments.
Commenting on other blogs can not only drive more traffic but help you to create relationships.
When you comment on other blogs in your niche, you will get noticed. This can bring people back to your site if you provide value constantly.
On top of it, this method does not require having an audience. All you need to do is to provide quality comments on other blogs in your niche with frequency to be noticed. Popular blogs that receive a good amount of traffic can be a great free traffic source using this technique.
Check for popular blogs in your niche where readers normally comment and post questions. Your job is to provide useful and relevant answers to other users.
Once you build trust and reputation by regularly commenting, other users will feel inclined to visit your website.
YouTube is one of the greatest free traffic sources for online businesses. The reason why it works so well is that it is one of the most visited platforms worldwide.
Also, many users prefer video over text content.
The problem with Youtube is that it takes some time to get traction: You will need to publish quality content frequently. But the truth is that this platform is well worth the effort.
Once you manage to upload a few videos and start building an audience, you will see how your channel can increase in popularity in no time.
Also, people are watching videos at all times from mobile devices, which makes videos very accessible.
With no doubt, I would suggest you include online videos as part of your content marketing strategy.
- Create a Youtube Channel.
- Optimize your Youtube profile with your niche keywords. Don’t forget to include your website in your profile description.
- Upload at least 5 videos before promoting your channel.
- Create great and useful videos. Use good quality thumbnails and engaging titles to incite viewers to click.
- If you do all this and create content at least once a week, you will start seeing how Youtube starts driving content to your website organically.
Guest blogging is one of the best free traffic sources that will also help your SEO strategy. It is really a win-win.
Guest blogging consists of writing a blog post on someone else’s blog. In essence, you provide valuable content for that other blog audience, and in exchange, you get a link to your website. This might lead people interested in your article to check on your website.
Not to mention how important link building is for SEO. Links help you build your authority. The higher, the more visibility and the more traffic you can drive.
Find guest blogging opportunities in Google. you can find them by tipping:
- keyword “submit a guest post.”
- keyword “guest post.”
- keyword “accepting guest posts.”
Once you find them, read the guidelines for guest posting. They will normally include the rules and requirements, together with an email where to pitch them for your guest post idea.`
Quora is a question-and-answer platform where people gather to look for information on a great variety of topics.
It is a community where everyone contributes to offer value to others with insightful feedback. Also, Quora is used by millions of users daily, so if you create interesting topics or provide great answers, you can get a ton of traffic.
As with any of these platforms, you should avoid spam, or you will get banned. The best way to include links to your posts is to extend a resourceful answer for users who want more details on the topic.
- Sign up in Quora.
- Set up your profile using keywords related to your niche.
- Start making connections with people with the same interests. That will grow your audience.
- Before placing any links, participate in different conversations and try to be insightful.
- Place one link for every 10 helpful comments you leave. And always use them when relevant.
- Follow up your comments for some other questions that users might have.
Similar to Quora, Posting on Reddit is another great way to get free traffic for your blog.
Reddit can be a great website traffic source if used well. The platform consists of an extensive community of people seeking and sharing information about all kinds of topics.
However, the Reddit community does not like at all self-promotions. So you need to be extra careful when placing links and only do it if it is strictly relevant. Otherwise, you will quickly be banned from the platform.
If you do it properly, by adding links to your website in the comments, you can drive consistent targeted traffic to your website.
- Sign up for a Reddit account.
- Join communities in your niche.
- Share only valuable and helpful content. I suggest you place one link for every ten helpful comments to grow your “karma” (kind of Reddit points.)
- Build trust to grow your reputation. This will allow you to keep placing your links and drive traffic to your website.
One of the best free traffic sources is creating visual and practical infographics if you are good with designs. According to Demand Gen Report, Infographics can increase website traffic by 12%.
And that totally makes sense. Post with visuals always gets more shares than posts without them.
Also, with tools like Canva, creating an infographic is easier than ever. All you need to do is to browse one of the many free templates and work your magic.
Then, you can share them on your blog posts, social media, or even some sites specific to infographics like:
- Research a topic in your niche where people have an interest.
- Create an infographic about this topic using Canva.
- Publish the infographic in the relevant blog posts, social media, and the pages for infographics above.
People love sharing infographics, so if you manage to create a good one it can bring you a good amount of free traffic to your site.
You might want to read next:
How to explore traffic sources of websites
- Web Analytics Tools: Tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and similar platforms provide insights into website traffic sources. They categorize traffic into different channels such as direct, referral, organic search, paid search, social, and others. By integrating these tools with your website, you can get detailed reports on traffic sources.
- Competitor Analysis Tools: For analyzing competitors’ traffic sources, tools like SimilarWeb, Alexa, SEMrush, and Ahrefs can be useful. They provide estimates of a website’s traffic sources, including search keywords, referring sites, and social media platforms.
- SEO Tools: Tools like Moz, SEMrush, and Ahrefs are also beneficial for understanding organic search traffic. They help identify the keywords that are driving traffic to a website.
- Social Media Analytics: Platforms like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics offer insights into how much traffic social media channels are driving to your website.
- Referral Traffic Analysis: Checking the referral traffic in web analytics tools helps identify which external sites are linking to and sending traffic to your website.
- Direct Traffic Analysis: This involves understanding how users are coming directly to your website, possibly by typing the URL directly or through bookmarks.
- Email Marketing Tools: If you use email marketing, tools like Mailchimp or Constant Contact provide analytics on how much traffic your email campaigns are driving to your website.
- Surveys and Customer Feedback: Directly asking your visitors how they found your website can be an effective, albeit more manual, way to understand your traffic sources.
- Monitoring Social Media and Forums: Tools like Mention or Google Alerts can help track mentions of your website across social media and forums, indicating potential traffic sources.
- UTM Parameters: Using UTM parameters in your URLs for campaigns can help track the effectiveness of various marketing efforts in your analytics tools.
Remember that privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA may affect how you can track and analyze website traffic, and it’s essential to comply with these laws.
Conclusion
There are plenty of free traffic sources that can bring more visitors to your website. But I suggest you stick with just a few for the best results. To make them even more effective, I suggest you focus on niche blogging.
It is always much better to master a platform than to try to have a presence in all of them.
To me, these are the best free traffic sources that work in 2024.
Now is your turn!
Which of these free traffic sources will you use?
Leave a comment with your answer below.
