To be clear, using paid ads, hiring professionals to develop content, tapping the expertise of strategists, and investing in the latest tools—all these are effective ways of driving traffic to your website. These methods not only help you achieve your objectives, they can do so faster and more efficiently.

Of course, not everyone has the resources to invest in all these techniques. If you’re looking to drive traffic to your website for free, here are some effective ways to do it:

1. SEO 

Making sure you write relevant, high-quality articles for your site’s blog isn’t enough. You should be doing something to get it out there and noticed, or people won’t even know it exists. SEO is the easiest and most cost-effective way to do that.

Be sure to do your due diligence and research what keywords your audience is actually searching for and include those keywords in your post. In addition, don’t forget to craft catchy and engaging meta descriptions to give potential readers an interesting peek into what you have to offer.

2. Hashtags

Social media is one of the easiest ways to promote your website. One of the techniques that you should definitely be using to bring more eyeballs to your content is hashtags.

Don’t be too quick to dismiss it as nothing more than a social media trend. Hashtags are actually used by people so that the content they consume can be organized into specific categories. Like keywords, if you’re familiar with what hashtags your audience is looking for, you can easily bring your content right in front of relevant networks. Essentially, this lets you target your ideal customer and tap into new ones.

3. Email

To date, email remains one of the most effective ways to engage customers and drive them to your site. Nurturing relationships with your audience through regular email blasts can help significantly boost your traffic. For instance, a study notes that welcome emails are one of the most effective revenue boosting tactics that leverage on this platform. In addition, 80% of retail professionals note that email marketing still remains one of the biggest drivers of customer retention.

If you have a limited budget, you may have to do this manually, which can be tedious and time consuming. However, taking the time to do so will definitely be worth it.

4. Strategize

Take the time to craft a strategy that drives your entire marketing plan. For example, instead of simply writing blog posts as you go along, try creating a content calendar based on in-depth audience research. This will help ensure that you post regularly and consistently, as well as create relevant topics for your readers.

Mapping everything out ahead of time also allows you to review where you can drive additional traffic by linking to relevant posts.

Keep in mind that it does take time to grow and build a steady audience, whether you have the budget to drive more traffic to your website or not. Fortunately, with these tips, you can certainly take a big step in that direction at no cost.

Give these tips a try and see how well they work for you. If you have any questions, leave me a comment below. Or you can try checking out what LeadsPanda can do for you.