25 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website The Ultimate List of Free, Cheap and Creative Ideas for Your Business

1. Infiltrateonlinecommunities An effective way to increase website traffic thatcosts you nothing but your time and opinions isto find out where your potential customersspend time online and get contributing,promoting your business as you do.

Airbnb used Craigslist to find listings of housesfor rent and reached out to the renters to askthem to place their ads on Airbnb instead.

DO IT YOURSELF: Research where your customers spend time and talkabout subjects related to your business - thinkforums, Facebook pages and Linkedin groups.

2. P.S I love you.... Put youremail signature to workBefore Hotmail became the email powerhouse it is today, their investor suggested putting ‘PS I love you.Get your free E-mail at Hotmail‘ at the end of every email sent through them. This caused a stir and Hotmailstarted averaging 3000 new sign-ups a day in the beginning. They went on to get a staggering 1 millionusers in next 6 months.

DO IT: Do you link to your website in your signature? And how could you entice people to click through?

3.Incentivise Incentivising potential website visitors canbe great way to boost website traffic growth.

PAYPAL CASE STUDY:When PayPal was getting started they had afriend referral bounty. By paying $10 cash toeach new customer and $10 to thecustomer who referred them, Paypal wasable to hack early growth to tens of millionsof users.

DO IT YOURSELF:How could you incentivise potential customersto visit your website and sign up or make apurchase?

4. Become acase study Businesses and people always needtestimonials and case studies saying thattheir product or service works. Beingmentioned in a case study can help tosend you a good amount of reoccurringtraffic to your website.

So be that testimonial.

DO IT YOURSELF:Make a list of the products you use andlove, and the suppliers you work with, andask if they'd be interested in you sharingyour experience with their customers.

5. Build anemail list

If you're not already building up a list of emailcontacts then you're making a big mistake.

Having possession of an email list that you canpromote your product or service to, share content,upcoming promotions and company news with isinvaluable if you want to grow your business online.

It's a great way to engage customers and drive themback to visiting your website.

6. List your business withinan online marketplace Just consider that the marketplace itself has a financial interest in driving traffic to your website, sotaking advantage of someone else’s willingness to promote your products or services is just smartbusiness.

As you're a new you can also piggy back off off the established brand of a respected marketplace - a bigplus for any prospective customers who are thinking about visiting your website.

7.Personalitysells, baby

Now when we talk about ' building a personal brand' we're not askingyou to become the next Kim Kardashian. But it is important that youhave some 'personal presence' online, how you present yourself tothe public at large (or more accurately, how people perceive you).

Your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter updates, your blog comments andprofessional profiles all meld together to form your personal brand.

3 simple rules to follow: be yourself, be transparent and be helpful -oh and always include a link back to your businesses website.

7. Create buzz byholding back

MAILBOX.COM CASE STUDYThe success of Mailbox.com is well documented -after all they did manage to secure a waiting listof over 600,000 users one week after launch.

Their approach was to make an awesome launchvideo after which people could sign only sign upand wait to try their product.

DO IT YOURSELF:People love what they can't have... so how can youcreate a feeling of a secret gang that everyone wantsto be part of that drives people to your website readyto sign up?

8. Take to the streetsFixed, a new app that helps you fight parking tickets, took to the streets to promote their website andapp. The startup employed a group of “Ticket Heroes,” individuals that combed the city of SanFrancisco daily in search of ticketed vehicles. When spotted a parking ticket they slapped a brandedpromo for the app on the windscreen with a link to the website.

Don't over think it; Sometimes creative, targeted grassroots growth efforts can be your most effectiveway to drive customers online to your website

9. Start a referral programDropbox generated lots of new traffic to their website and increased signups by a whopping 60% bymaking it super easy for customers to tell their friends about them. (They even hand out incentives. Forexample, when one person who has Dropbox refers another, they both get a 500MB increase).

TRY IT: Could you implement a simple referral scheme for your customers? How couldyou incentivise them to send more traffic to your website?

10. Make sure Googlelove yourwebsite

If you really want to increase website traffic you need to makesure you appears in those Google search results... and thatmeans one thing, getting your 'SEO' on.

DO IT YOURSELF :Use an online tool to generate a list of SEO 'things to do' for yourwebsite - like this one here. This digital marketing planning toolssuggests lots of simple things you can do for your website thatwon't cost a penny.

11. Webinars.The gift thatkeeps ongiving.People love to learn, and webinars are a greatway to share your words of wisdom to youreagerly waiting audience.

Combined with some effective socialpromotion campaign, webinars are a greatway to increase traffic to your website.

DO IT:Embed the webinar on your website for laterviewing and don't forget to optimise it for SEO tomake sure it keeps generating traffic for you.

13. Cultivateyour ownpersonal fanclub

Linkedin relied on power users to help grow their brand andgenerate website traffic for years. The smart folks over thereseeded the product with well connected influencers, andcultivated an 'inspirational brand', which later drew in themainstream.

DO IT:Find people who love what you do, or people who are closelyrelated to your target market and strike up a conversation. WOMcan be a powerful tactic for getting people to visit your website.

14. Do you feelthe need forspeed? What can we say, Google loves a fast website.

It chooses to rank those that are quick to loadover those that are slow and sluggish, and thatonly means one thing - more website traffic.

DO IT FOR YOUR WEBSITE:Uncover a list of things you need to do to improveyour website, just enter your URL in here. Don't beput off by the technical side of this task - somejobs are as simple as making image files smaller.

If you're a business that's been around for a while and has built up a gang of loyal customers then itcould be time to foster your own online community.

PINTREST CASE STUDY: Take Pinterest for example, in the beginning they focused on a small group of passionate users, holdingphysical meetups for these users where they could get feedback and help get the word out.

With over 100M users under their belt, we think it did the job.

15. Create a community ofyour own

16. Take theonline, offline

Just because you're an online business doesn'tmean you can't take it offline.

REALTIME EXAMPLE:Realtime board, an online whiteboard for teams- used offline events to promote their brandand website to target customers.

They also encouraged early users to writeonline reviews, which in turn brought moreusers to the website. They went from 0 users to100,000 in 10 months.

Pretty impressive.

TINDER CASE STUDY:When dating app, Tinder were first trying toget people to use their app they heldexclusive parties at colleges in the USA, withone condition – you must have downloadedthe Tinder app.

DO IT:Could prompt people to sign up or registerto an event via your website? Don't forget topromote your event with a link back to yoursite across all social media.

17. Get infront of yourcustomers

18. Time to go global?Does your website have traffic potential outside your existing country or language? If so then it'stime to look at expanding your empire online, driving more traffic to your website from far andwide.

Once you've determined if the market is big enough consider things like buildinga separate website, search and social media implications and of course translating your content.

The eureka effect. A moment of deep insight.The point at which people start engaging withyour business in the way you want them to.Working out what this is makes sure thateverything you do is optimised towards gettingcustomers to this point.

TWITTER CASE STUDY:If Twitter can't get a person to follow 30 otherpeople, that person is very unlikely to everreturn to the website.

If you want website traffic to return, make sureeverything you do helps your customers toreach their 'aha moment'.

19. Findyour AHA!moment

20. Drill down on your retargetingRetargeting allows you to reach people who have previously engaged with your business: visited yourwebsite, subscribed to a newsletter or made a purchase.

Getting adverts for your business in front of these customers via facebook means that you can createaudiences to target based on your customer list, website traffic and even mobile app activity.

This is a great way to get people who have already shown interest in your business, to return to yourwebsite. Simply hit up your 'Facebook Ad manager' to get started.

21."Say cheese"

Get customers to take classy snaps of themselvesusing your product or enjoying your service to sharewith you on social media.

DO IT:Post the pictures on your website - maybe within a blogpost, and share everything on social (with your customerspermission of course).

22. Make sureit's easy tospread thelove

Make everything you have on your website sharable. Simple hackshere are to make things like video can be embedded, install a 'clickto tweet' and make sure you have social sharing buttons.

MINT. COM CASE STUDYMint.com became the #1 blog in personal finance within a shortmatter of time - the secret to their success? Creating content worthsharing and lots of one click sharing options.

23. Giveawayswag

This one's simple. Give something to get something.

UBER CASE STUDYWhen Uber was starting out they drove around entrepreneursand investors for pitch events. A waste of petrol yes, but awaste of time no. Uber benefited from press mentions, signups and traffic to the website as people flocked to find outwhat the hype was about.

24. LookbeyondGoogle

Yes Google is a search engine giant and is probablywhat most of your customers will use to find you...

But, you should consider paid advertising on otherchannels with a lower barrier to success like Bing,Facebook, Reddit, Stumbleupon or LinkedIn.

25. Experimentwith landingpage testing

If you're dipping your toes into the ocean of landingpage testing, then here's a quick rundown:

A/B testing is when you run an experiment betweentwo or more pages to see which one performs orconverts the best once visitors arrive. Think aboutmixing up the headline, images, adding a video etc. Agood experience means you're more likely to generaterepeat website traffic.

TRY IT: We recommend using onlinetools unbounce.com and optimizely.com to have a gowith your website.

25. Partner UpBuilding partnerships can be one of the quickest ways to grow your business, generating a flow of trafficto your website. Look for other businesses just that compliment yours and brainstorm the possibilities.Partner with a larger business who can expose you to new customers, or how about cross promotingwith a new partner or non for profit organisation?

TRY IT: Who out there can help expose me to brand new markets and what can I offer them?

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