They say no one rides for free. And while that’s generally true, there is an exception to it — free website traffic. But is it really free?
If you have ever been wondering how to drive traffic to your website, how to increase website traffic free, and how much traffic a website needs to make money — then this is the article for you.
Let’s Make Sure We Are on the Same Page
What is traffic? It’s the number of users visiting your website. We have an article on our blog dedicated to website traffic sources, where you can read about how traffic works, its categories, PPC vs. SEO, how to increase WEB and WAP traffic, and how to assess its quality. While we discussed free traffic there, it’s time to talk about it in depth.
Free traffic refers to incoming users you don’t pay for. Free traffic still requires the investment of time, effort, and even money at times — consider website hosting, design, SEO, copywriting, etc. However, in comparison to paid traffic, it is free of commissions, e.g., Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Mille (CPM).
The more visitors your website has, the more prospects for monetization you’ve got. You need at least 500–1,000 visitors to start making a profit with traffic monetization. That’s why publishers and advertisers are so obsessed with traffic acquisition. Our ad network offers top-quality traffic sources to make sure your affiliate marketing with us runs smoothly. If you require results here and now — HilltopAds is an iron pick.
Social Media to Increase Website Traffic for Free
“How to get more traffic to my website?” or “Why is my website traffic dropping?” are common questions among affiliate marketers. To answer these questions, ask yourself if the content provided on the website solves any user’s problem.
People look for solutions to their anxiety, fears, needs, etc. If the website fails to solve the problems or, even worse, multiplies them, the users will eventually leave. So, invest in content marketing as the first step to increase site traffic.
Your solutions must be communicated clearly. Besides generating valuable and relevant content, it also has to reach the right audience. When it comes to free tools to increase website traffic, consider trying out various free social media platforms, taking into account their core audiences:
- Facebook: mobile phone users, mostly 18–44 years old
- Instagram: 18–34 y.o. people, 90% of which follow a business
- Pinterest: 76% of females, mostly at the age of 18–34
- X: 67% of males, predominantly of the age 18–34 — an ideal platform for customer support
- LinkedIn: 60% of 25–34 y.o. people, converting two times more than on other platforms
- YouTube: people of 18–44, where 70% of ad viewers bought from the brand advertised
- Snapchat: ideal for adults under 35 and word-of-mouth advertising
- TikTok: people of mostly 18–34 y.o., spending $2.5 billion globally
- Other platforms with large userbase: Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit, Stack Exchange, Twitch
It is important to understand that the advantage of being free is to be compensated for. To get website traffic, your content ought to be of high value and delivered to the right place at the right time. Also, your content needs to be free of grammar mistakes — this will add points of credibility and professionalism.
Writing Excellence to Generate Traffic
To perfect your writing skills, consider using software. Grammarly, or any other writing assistant add-on, will make sure you make no mistakes. Moreover, writing assistant tools can paraphrase sentences for your tone to resonate with the target audience better.
ChatGPT and similar AI-writing tools can produce content from scratch. However, be careful not to delegate all the work to AI because there is no fact-checking. Even worse, AI writers can make impossible things sound plausible. Treat them as friends giving suggestions, but at the end of the day remain the one in charge of content production.
Streamline social media marketing (SMM). Tools like NapoleonCat provide a centralized hub for monitoring all your social platforms. You can also automate publishing and schedule all the posts in a single run. Plus, it allows creating customer personas to see who your target audience is.
Repurpose Existing Resources
Experiment with content format. Texts are easy to start with but hard to master. There are other content formats, which might resonate with your audience better. If your core audience is made of Gen Z with an 8-second attention span, then don’t expect them to read prolonged product descriptions. You might already have an ideal audience, but the way to tell your marketing story might be flawed. Consider doing so with an accent on images, videos, or maybe podcasts.
Email marketing as a traffic savior. Email newsletters don’t usually generate new users, but help to retain the old ones better. Customer retention is 5–7 times cheaper than acquisition. Not exactly a way to generate traffic, but emails can help you to save on costs and spend the dollars saved elsewhere.
Content repurpose. Tools like Coverposts enable you to turn large articles into smaller posts. That’s a great starting point when you don’t know which platform harbors your potential audience.
When Quantity Turns into Quality
Put your signature to good use. When commenting on emails, forum posts, and blog posts, make sure you have a link included leading to your blog or landing page. Small details like that boost your chances of being heard as a marketer.
Guest posting & linking. Other bloggers might need content, and you can help them out by sharing your expertise. Make sure to ask to be credited for your work by adding a couple of backlinks there. Also, make sure to add inner links to your blog, so that the visitors have more reasons to hang out on your website.
Discussion fostering and the law of Cunningham. This law states that to get the right answer on the internet, it’s best not to ask questions but to post a wrong answer. People can’t resist the urge to rise above others by correcting them. Use it to your advantage to instigate a hot debate or two — this will bring in additional traffic.
Search Engine Optimization. Implementing a few keywords into an already interesting text is an elevator to ranking high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). SEO will take some time to build up, like 6–12 months, but once it’s done the snowball of organic traffic will start rolling.
If you need WEB or WAP traffic surge, contact HilltopAds specialists. With us, you can launch an ad campaign, aimed at traffic increase. Why would you want to focus on traffic increase instead of actual sales? — SEO. Sometimes maintaining a high search rank is more important than immediate sales. It’s not free from a short-term point of view but in the long run can support free traffic generation.
Conclusion
As the name suggests, free traffic is about removing payments from the equation. But this benefit must be backboned by precise targeting and content of quality. Start off broad with social media and then narrow them down to the most efficient ones — this is akin to A/B testing.
Make sure your content is flawless. Use AI tools to generate ideas, but never delegate text creation to ChatGPT completely — it doesn’t make a difference between fake and truth. Complement your writing with browser extensions like Grammarly to check your writing and the voice of your message.
Remember, whatever you do, it must provide a solution. This is the only way to make content relevant, engaging, and valuable. Once you achieve this, the users will come naturally to your website. And if you have any questions left — contact our specialists for more info. HilltopAds helps to perfect your ad campaigns 24/7.
