Looking to learn how to increase blog traffic for free in this year and beyond?
It seems that you are tired of writing content that doesn’t get enough traffic from search engines and you are looking for a different solution other than seo.
Don’t worry, I’m here to help you learn about 13 free and effective ways that you can use in order to boost the traffic to your blog posts starting today.
So, without further ado, let’s jump in.
13 Ways To Increase Blog Traffic For Free
1 – SEO The Easy (or The Right) Way (Aka: Long-Tail Keywords)
If you have already written lots of content but didn’t get any organic traffic, then you have been doing SEO the wrong way!
You might already know that seo is the best method for generating organic traffic on the long run as you need to put the effort in advance and keep reaping the rewards for months, and even for years to come, if done properly.
It is true that SEO has become more competitive over the years, especially if you are blogging in the English language, and that’s why you might be looking for other free ways to get traffic to your blog, but there’s still a great way to achieve success in this field even in English language.
And you can achieve this success by going after what is called in the internet marketing world as the “Low Hanging Fruit”, or long-tail keywords.
I have written more about these in my article about the ways to find long tail keywords, but here’s a brief:
These are the keywords that might not necessarily get the highest volume of search on Google and other search engines, but they are the ones that you can relatively rank for them easier and faster than the more generic root keywords as they have less competition because fewer blogs have targeted those keywords.
Usually, these long-tail phrases consist of more than 2-words and go after specific intentions and details.
For example, the keyword “spaghetti recipe” might get a high monthly search volume, but it is very difficult to rank for, while the keyword “crock pot spaghetti recipe” on the other hand, gets a lower monthly search volume but has a lower competition and you can probably rank under it with a relative ease.
Yes, long-tail keywords get less potential traffic, but at least you can get this traffic if you target them while you might get nothing if you target the root keywords.
And in any case, people are now searching more for specific stuff through the long-tail keywords, therefore, you get more hot traffic using keywords, which means that long-tail keywords have a better buyer intent associated with them.
There are many paid tool to find such keywords such as Power Suggest Pro, but there are also many free methods to find long tail keywords such as the Google suggest feature, which gives you suggestions of such keywords once you enter the root keyword in the search bar like in this screenshot:
And in general, these have a lower competition compared to the main keywords, but you need to analyze the serp results by yourself.
For myself, I use a paid keyword tool called Jaaxy (but it offers a free plan) in order to find such keywords, where it shows me the monthly search volume and the competing site/pages targeting every keyword, as in this screenshot:
This is the right way to do seo for blogging and to get free traffic faster and easier compared to what it takes to rank under the root keywords.
But of course, you need at the same time to follow the main seo process for blog posts in order to increase your chances of getting higher ranks.
Also, you can read my guide on how to rank on Google fast where I show an example where I ranked for a certain keyword on page 1 of Google in less than few hours.
I learned this method through the seo training at Wealthy Affiliate, which also offers a free membership that explains this process in detail.
2 – Be Active On Reddit
As I’m saying: be active, and not: post links and run away. lol.
On Reddit, there are sub-reddits for almost every possible niche, which allows you to interact with others and probably get some traffic to some blog posts that are intended to help others.
And one of the fastest ways to get banned on this platform is to just share some links without adding any value or without being active on the platform on almost regular basis.
The right way to leverage Reddit for getting targeted, free traffic to your blog posts is by being active and helpful on regular basis through engaging with others and answering their questions and writing useful threads about your industry or niche.
And once in a while, you might link to a blog post on your blog ONLY if it helps others.
In any case, make sure that you read the rules of each sub-reddit before you join it as people on this platform are very strict about spamming and will ban you fairly quickly if you don’t follow the rules.
Make others know your name before you start posting links to your blog.
3 – Explain More On YouTube
If you don’t know it yet, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, and it is also considered a social media platform with around 2 Billion users.
And many bloggers are using YouTube in order to increase the traffic to their blogs for free.
The way to do so is to create helpful, explanatory and engaging videos and how-to’s in order to educate people about specific topics that can be better understood through videos, and then, invite them to visit a related post on your blog through linking to that post in the description area of the YouTube video.
YouTube is also a great way to help build your brand and create more awareness around your blog on the long run. The key is to help folks!
4 – Upload Helpful Visuals To Pinterest
Pinterest is also another search engine-like social media platform where people can either browse, or actively search for stuff to buy, get ideas or to entertain themselves.
Depending on your niche, your audience might be there and many of them might be potential visitors to your blog.
The key to getting free traffic to your blog from Pinterest is to create and/or upload high quality, beautiful images and infographs that would give ideas, inspire or educate people about your niche.
And with each photo, you can link back to a relevant post on you blog.
But if you want to increase the reach of your posts, then you might need not keep linking to your blog with each photo that you upload, as the platform wants keep its users on the platform itself and this might limit the reach of photos with links.
So, a good practice might be to post without linking in order to increase your posts’ reach and followers and then, you can start linking from some posts to relevant posts on your blog.
Also, name your image files properly before uploading them and include a relevant keyword of each image in the description area of the images.
Pro Tip: When using infographic or even specific images, you can place a text on the image itself to the URL of the specific post on your blog. This way you make sure that you reach and show the link to the maximum number of people without placing links in the description of the image. Make sure to use short URLs to make it easier for people to remember.
5 – Educate On LinkedIn
LinkedIn might not be suitable to get free traffic from it to your blog if you are in all niches, but it can be very powerful in many niches where professionals from that niche or industry exist.
For example, if you are blogging in the home garden niche, then you might not benefit from sharing your posts on LinkedIn, but if you are blogging in one of the engineering niches or sub-niches, then there are many professionals in that field on LinkedIn that are willing to visit your blog if it helps them learn new skills, learn more about new tools and software programs in the market and/or improve their career.
The key is to create helpful content that professionals in your niche will learn from.
And what is nice about LinkedIn is that in addition to the ability to create posts and linking back to your blog, but it also gives you the ability to create articles on the platform itself that stay their longer than the usual posts in the news feed.
You can syndicate one of your blog posts or summarise it and use it to create a short article on LinkedIn and link back to your blog post for those who want more in-depth details.
6 – Be Helpful In Community Forums
Forum still exist and many of them are still active, especially those specialized in specific niches, and people spend the time there looking for help and educating themselves, or to help others and network with people who share the same interests.
And this is a great opportunity to get laser-targeted traffic to your blog posts if your posts can help solve people’s problems and answer their questions.
The key again, like in any other platform, is to focus on helping people and giving them clear answers to their questions on the platform itself, and linking back to your blog posts might be just to offer them more knowledge and info.
Or you can also provide answers without linking back to your blog in the answer itself, but instead, you can use your signature in order to link people to your home page or your optin page in order to increase the awareness about your brand and maybe invite people to join your email list.
You can find these forums by typing in Google’s search bar the name of your niche or market and the word “forum”, like in this example:
But first, you want to make sure that the forums you found are active, you need to see the dates of the latest posts and threads and you need to check if people are actively posting and interacting with each other on that specific forum before you waste your time on a place that nobody goes to.
Pro Tip: You can also research forums to find the pain points of people in your niche through their questions and create content on your blog that answers these questions before you go on the forum and give your answer. This way you make sure that you create what people really need and what will find targeted visitors to your blog for free.
7 – Answer Others And Provide Insights On Facebook Groups
Another great method to increase the traffic to your blog for no cost.
And again, helping folks is key.
People on Facebook are there mainly to entertain themselves and the last thing they want to see is someone sharing a review for a product.
If you want to get free traffic to your blog from Facebook, then better you join some of the most active FB groups in your niche, and interact regularly with others before you start linking back to your blog posts.
Use it to build your brand by helping others through giving clear and concise answers to their questions, and link back to your blog post only if it helps more than the answer you have already provided, and then, they will start following you and they you will be able to tell them about your blog.
Make sure that you read the group rules before you join it and start placing your links everywhere so that you don’t get flagged as a spammer or they will kick you out.
Pro Tip: If you want to share your links in posts you create in FB groups, then you need to create unique and useful content that people haven’t heard of before. List posts and controversial posts might get viral on Facebook and might help you even get natural backlinks that you didn’t ask for.
8 – Write Viral Content
Viral content is the one that gets appeal from many people, which drives them to naturally share it with others, and thus, providing you with an army of marketers that would help increase your blog traffic for free.
Again, if your content is not helpful in any way, then no one will share it.
You need to create helpful content that is easy to consume and understand so that people share it with their friends and followers on the different social media platforms.
You can use tools like Buzzsomo in order to find which kind of articles in your niche get the most shares by people.
And in addition to making your content helpful and reader-friendly, here are few tips on how to create a viral content:
- Use (Odd) numbers and brackets in the post title.
- Use short, but descriptive URLs.
- Make your content scanable and easy to read with sub-headings and bulleted or numbered lists.
- Use benefit driven sub-headings.
- Use high quality images and engaging infographics.
- Make your content very practical and helpful.
And there are many other tips that you can learn from Brian Dean’s Guide for Creating Viral Content.
9 – Give Comprehensive Answers On Quora
Quora is one of the biggest Q&A platforms for people who seek help with their problems and answers to their questions.
And you can use this platform either to find ideas for your content, or to interact with others and build an authority and a brand in your space and through the process, get people to visit your blog for free.
The key is always is to be active in HELPING people by giving clear and concise answers to their questions while linking back to your blog for more info like in this example where I answer one of the questions clearly, and then, linking back to a relevant post on my blog:
And not in just spamming the platform with your links by saying: “If you want the answer to your question, then click here to find out.”
Many people got banned from the platform by doing so.
10 – Don’t Abandon Your Email List
This is one of the most underrated and under-utilized free sources of traffic to blog posts, although it might be one of the most effective ways.
People who joined your email list are the ones that trust you the most, and they are still on your list because they know that you can provide them with value, so, don’t disappoint them.
You can use any of the available email autoresponders in order to schedule sending emails to new subscribers in your list by sending to them some of the most useful resources from your blog posts, and by sending them notifications for new posts that you write.
Also, this is a great way to promote to your list for free what you sell by yourself or some affiliate products by sending them a certain sequence of email message to warm them up before you send them the offer to buy whatever product you are promoting.
11 – Increase Value On Others’ Blogs
This is not my favorite way, but it can be useful in getting free traffic to your blog posts quickly if done the right way.
If you want to use this method, then you need to find blog posts for bloggers with beg followings in your niche or industry, read their new blog posts that are related to your industry, give comprehensive and insightful answers in the comments’ area of those posts, and maybe link back to your blog’s home page or optin page in the signature area.
In any case, make sure that your comment adds to what is already written and is helpful for the reader so that the blog owner will accept it and people who read it might click on your name in order to learn more about you.
Pro Tip: This works best by finding the new blog posts for bloggers who have big followings in order to get more eyes on your comment before that blog post dies out.
You can do so by setting Google alert to notify you whenever someone created a new post about a topic in your niche, or by going to Google search and typing the topic you want to find new blog posts about, click on the tools tab, and from the time scroll-down menu you can choose to show only results for pages or blog posts that have been published in the last 24 hours.
12 – Use Subscribers.com To Get People Back To Your Blog
Subscribers.com offers a free/paid tool that allows you to send notification to ask your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog visitors’ list (different from the email list) by showing a small notification on their browser when they first visit your website.
And if they agree to subscribe by clicking the “allow” button without having to fill in any form or field, then everytime you create a new blog post, a browser notification will be automatically sent to your subscribers telling them about the new post and inviting them to view it.
This is a very effective way as people would like to be the first to know about every new article that you publish, and therefore, boosting the traffic to your new blog posts.
13 – Use Twitter’s Hashtags To Reach The Right People
Twitter is still a great way to create a brand for yourself in your industry.
As mentioned earlier, you can create viral content that gets people to want to share it with others, and post it on Twitter and other social media platforms for your followers to see it.
But what is also great about twitter is that you can use the hashtags in order to increase your posts reach to people who use these hashtags to look for information in your industry.
Pro Tip: Twitter is a great place to find news in a certain industry, so, you can either use it to find new ideas or trending topics to write about, and better, you can write about such topics and share your posts on twitter through the relevant hashtags in order to get free traffic from Twitter to your blog posts quickly.
Conclusion – What Is The Best Way To Increase Your Blog Traffic For FREE?
As you have seen, the above mentioned thirteen methods are all great methods for boosting your blog traffic for free, both on the short and on the long run.
But some methods might work better on the short run, and some are better for building a long-term online presence.
Which free traffic method to use totally depends on your style, time, niche, audience, and some times it depends on a specific post that you have created.
There’s write or wrong here, and you don’t have to stick to one method, and most important, you don’t have to do them all.
My advice is to choose one main method that works best on the long run, and pick few of the other methods that suit your niche and your character in order to support your main method.
For me, I found that the best method that works for driving free blog traffic on the long term to be SEO through the use of long-tail keywords, or what is known as “the low hanging fruit”.
And depending on my niche and on each blog post I write, I might use other methods of free traffic in order to visit my blog posts.
And as I mentioned earlier, you need to use a good keyword tool that allows you to find low competition keywords such as Jaaxy keyword research tool that offers a free plan.
You can actually start using the free plan by entering any keyword or topic in the following box and clicking the blue button “Find Keywords”:
But in addition to choosing the right keywords to target with your content, you also need to follow the basic seo guidelines in order to make your whole website and every piece of content that you publish seo-friendly so that you get the best chances of getting ranked high on Google and other search engines.
Next Step?
And in addition to the guides from my blog that I mentioned in the section dedicated to the first method at the beginning of this article, you might also benefit from a step-by-step training that explains how the game of blogging and seo works properly.
And my recommendation to do so is the same place where I personally learned how to do so, which is a platform that is called Wealthy Affiliate.
And if you are asking yourself, what does this platform have to do with SEO for bloggers, and why do I recommend it, then in brief, because this platform focuses mainly on doing affiliate marketing through the use of seo and creating blog posts using the long-tail keywords, and that is the core of their training.
This is platform doesn’t only provide you with the step-by-step training, but also with the keyword tool mentioned above that is offered as a part of your WA membership for no extra cost, in addition to many tools and a great community of around 1.4 million of like-minded online entrepreneurs.
This is a paid platform but it also offers a free membership plan for you to try it before you commit to paying anything.
You can learn more about this great platform through my detailed Wealthy Affiliate review.
Now it’s your turn; do you have any other effective ways of increasing blog traffic for free that I missed here? Or did you achieve success with any of the above mentioned methods? I would love to know your answer in the comments’ section below.
And if you know someone who needs to learn about these methods, then please, feel free to share this guide with them so that they learn about some new methods that they might have overlooked before.