One of the best things you can do to drive traffic to your website is use a high-quality website builder that optimizes your page for traffic from get-go. And if you've already done that, you can use plenty of other marketing strategies to drive traffic to your website.
As a business owner, finally launching a website that took you weeks to get just right, then seeing no more than a handful of visits on your analytics page can be a common occurrence. Over half of small businesses receive fewer than 500 site visits per month.
That's why we've put together this guide to increasing traffic to your website.
Start driving traffic to your website built with Wix.
16 ways to drive traffic to your website
We’ve put together a list of 14 ways to drive traffic to your website with information that’ll help you choose the best strategy for you and your business:
01. Market to previous visitors
If a visitor leaves your website without hiring you or making a purchase, you can use cookies and tracking pixels to retarget them with a banner ad that drives back to your domain. These ads can be as specific as displaying the last item a user looked at, prompting them to complete the order. You don't want to miss this tactic, considering that website visitors who are retargeted are more likely to convert by 43%.
Tip: Look to the Wix App Market for ad integrations with retargeting capabilities.
02. Advertise to offline customers
In-store advertising is when you promote your brand inside a brick-and-mortar location. Because customers have already visited the location, you know that they are likely interested in your business—all you need to do is provide another interaction to keep them interested. You can do so by hanging QR code posters in your window display, printing the domain name on your branded shopping bags or customizing virtual receipts with a link to your website.
Read more on how using a QR code generator can benefit your marketing strategies.
03. Partner with influencers
You don’t just want traffic; you want traffic with a strong conversion rate. Influencer marketing—a form of social media marketing in which a business seeks out endorsements from social media accounts with dedicated followings—is highly effective because of its native quality and niche audiences. One study found that the ROI on influencer marketing is 11 times higher than traditional advertising such as banner ads.
You don’t have to spend the big bucks on big influencers. Research shows that micro-influencers actually get more engagement than anyone, even celebrities, because they create content tailored to a niche audience. If their focus overlaps with your target audience, you may find more success working with them than with larger influencers or celebrities who attract a general audience.
To hire an influencer with a following that matches your target audience, try direct messaging influencers to ask if they’re open to new partnerships, root around influencer databases or hire an influencer marketing agency to put the whole campaign together for you.
04. Try guest blogging
Guest blogging can give you links back to your website from a site with higher traffic and a stronger domain. The more backlinks you receive from trusted entities, the more authoritative search engines will deem your site. The writer behind GuestBloggingTactics.com says they saw a 340% increase in annual visits after publishing around 30 guest blog posts.
05. Make a newsletter and distribute with email marketing
An email marketing campaign can increase customer loyalty and drive traffic to your website by notifying high-intent visitors when your company has a new announcement or blog post. According to a Litmus survey, the average ROI of an email marketing campaign is $36 per $1 spent. Make sure to use strong CTAs to increase the click-through rate to your website. Don't forget your utm links as well, you'll need these to track the performance of your campaign.
06. Optimize for SEO
Every site should invest in some amount of search engine optimization (SEO). Properly formatting URLs, applying on-image text and formatting your website for mobile are all simple but significant site optimizations. Making SEO a primary pillar of one’s marketing strategy, on the other hand, isn’t simple, but can lead to significant results.
Whereas advertising benefits can fall off at a campaign's end, the returns on an SEO strategy compound over time. SEO optimized webpages can continue to get traffic from several traffic sources even years after they have been published. Plus, you can manage your site SEO by yourself without spending a penny on promotion.
If you decide to make SEO a key part of your marketing plan, consider creating a blog, targeting relevant keywords and building up your internal linking opportunities.
Here are a few SEO strategies that the Wix marketing team uses to drive traffic to our domain:
Write long-form blog posts: Longer content tends to perform better on search engines than shorter content. In fact, the average word count of a Google top 10 result is 1,447 words. Keep in mind, though, that filler won’t help you much. The word count doesn't matter as much as how effectively the post answers the question. More developed content tends to be longer, but also target more keywords and better answer a searcher's question.
Target long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords (a keyword phrase that contains more than three words) are significantly less competitive to rank for than high-volume keywords. The search engine results pages (SERPs) for long-tail keywords also tend to answer a specific question, which means that you can optimize this content to attract your target market.
Regularly update content: Search engine algorithms tend to favor the most up-to-date webpages, so assess your most strategic webpages frequently and give them a refresh if they fail to perform or start to fall in the rankings. If you notice that two webpages compete with one another for the same keywords, consider merging them to maximize your chances of reaching the number one spot.
Link internally: Internal linking bolsters your domain's strength as it makes the relationships and hierarchy of your different webpages clear to search engines. Plus, if one webpage gets a backlink from a trusted domain, the webpages it links to benefit from that extra traffic, too.
Gain backlinks: Earning links back to your content from high quality and relevant sites, can help your content potentially rank better for its target keywords.
Write evergreen content: Evergreen content is that which answers always relevant questions. An article titled "The Complete Black Friday Marketing Guide" can be a great website traffic driver, but it is only relevant while companies build their Black Friday plans. On the other hand, a piece called “How to Build a Sales Playbook” is relevant all year round.
Tip: In addition to having SEO-optimized infrastructure, Wix has multiple SEO features such as an AI meta tag creator, a keyword research tool and a Google Analytics integration that helps you monitor your real-time site performance. You can even leverage AI to generate fresh, SEO-friendly text for you in Wix—whether on your homepage, blogs or other web pages.
07. Improve site performance
A Digital.com survey found that half of online shoppers will abandon a website if it fails to load in fewer than three seconds. That means you could be losing half of all the traffic you do manage to attract if your site is not optimized for speed. Plus, Google’s algorithm factors landing page speed into its search rankings, so a slow page could also prevent your content from climbing relevant SERPs.
Keep your site's page load speed high with these tips:
Choose a web-hosting provider with a history of strong site performance
Keep your image sizes small and convert them to JPEG files whenever possible
Avoid plugins
Simplify your web design
Only feature necessary videos on your site
08. Attract the press and earned PR
Good press can do wonders for your brand visibility and reputation; therefore, getting journalists to pay attention to your business can increase your website traffic.
The first step to getting press coverage is sending your press releases to journalists that cover businesses like yours. Many distribution services like Newswire, eReleases and EIN Presswire distribute press releases digitally, so you might also get a backlink that could drive traffic to your website and help your SEO.
09. Post on forums and directories
Online forums offer great social listening opportunities for businesses. When the right opportunity arises, to talk about your business in the comments.
Find out if there are online forums dedicated to your industry or practice. Check on sites like Reddit or Quora as well as on social media groups. You'll want to add links or mention your business with relevancy and tact; otherwise, you will come off as a spammer.
You don't always have to join existing conversations. Feel confident to spark a brand new debate about a relevant topic for your industry. If you want to go a step further, add a Wix Community to your website to bring visitors back and engage in further discussions.
Adding your website to directories can also potentially increase traffic to your site.
Directories categorize websites based on niche or industry, making it easier for users interested in specific topics to find relevant sites, then users browsing directories looking for specific information might click through to your website if it’s listed under relevant categories.
To make the most of potential directory traffic you'll need to select directories that are reputable and relevant to your industry or niche. Examples include Yelp, Google My Business, industry-specific directories and local business directories.
Always provide accurate, up to date and detailed information about your website, including its name, URL, description, contact information and business hours (if applicable). It's always a good idea to use relevant keywords in your descriptions and choose appropriate categories to enhance visibility and attract targeted traffic. Regularly check your listings for accuracy and update them as needed to reflect changes in your business.
10. Leverage social media platforms
The average person spends almost seven hours of their day on the internet, and they spend 35% of that time on social media. Therefore, social media offers a great opportunity to attract attention to your business.
The first step in developing a social media marketing strategy is figuring out which platform—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube or Pinterest—is most popular amongst your target audience. You may want to claim profiles on all of those platforms in case you eventually expand your strategy, but focus on just one to start. That way, you can thoroughly explore it and test your content to see what works.
Try sharing company news, announcing product launches, promoting blog content and reposting user-generated content. Remember to share links to your website whenever possible. You can use a link in bio tool like Hopp.co for Instagram and TikTok. Then, look at your analytics to find out which content drives traffic to your website. Once you’ve amassed a following, consider hosting a giveaway in which people must subscribe to your newsletter or create a login on your site to enter.
Drive traffic to your website with these additional social media tips:
Link to your website wherever you can, but especially in your bio.
Use tools like Ritetag to find the most strategic hashtags for each post.
Comment on posts you’re tagged in Engage with followers and actively respond to comments.
Create Facebook and Instagram Ads through your Wix account.
11. Repurpose your content
It's not always about creating more content when you want to drive traffic to your website—repurposing content can attract traffic without requiring as much time as creating new content from scratch. You could use your blog post research to make a video or turn your podcast episode transcriptions into blog posts. You could share Instagram images on Pinterest or share your best customer reviews on Facebook. As a result of diversifying content formats, you could reach more people and drive traffic to your website.
Tip: Use the Wix video maker to make repurposing your content as simple as possible.
12. Use local marketing
If you have a brick-and-mortar business, put some thought into your local small business marketing plan to encourage people who live nearby vicinity to become regulars and extend your customer lifetime value. Make sure that all your local ads have a CTA for visiting your website. Doing so will drive traffic to your website and ensure that local customers always have access to the most current information about your business.
Start your local marketing efforts with making up-to-date Yelp and Google Maps profiles, as those high-intent platforms’ users want to interact with businesses like yours. Make sure that your name, address and contact information match the information on your website.
Here are a few other local marketing tactics for driving traffic to your website:
Send direct mail
Participate in local events
Join your local Chamber of Congress
Localize your Google Ads
Advertise in local publications
Build relationships with local journalists
13. Post from your personal account
Posting about your business on your personal accounts gives you the opportunity to be more genuine and earnest about your love for your work than you might be on your business accounts. Data from a Sprout Social survey shows that 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand more when the CEO is active on social media. Plus, there’s no greater source of site traffic than your friends and family.
14. Boost employee engagement
No one knows your company as well as your employees, so improving employee satisfaction and engagement isn’t just a smart business move—it can also make for a great form of word-of-mouth marketing. According to a study on employee activism, 33% of employees post about their employer without any encouragement to do so. Remind them to include a link to your website in their posts so that you can take advantage of the opportunity and drive traffic to your website.
15. Run ads
One of the most effective short term ways to generate traffic to a website is though paid ads.
Because ads can generate instant traffic to your website, they're especially effective for new businesses or product launches. You can run paid ads on Google and most social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
The positives of ads include that they allow you to target specific demographics, interests and behaviors of your ideal audience, increasing the likelihood of attracting qualified visitors.
You also have control over ad budgets, schedules and ad creatives, allowing you to optimize campaigns based on performance metrics like click-through rates and conversions.
To effectively use ads to drive traffic you'll need to decide whether you want to increase sales, leads, sign-ups or simply drive more traffic to your website. Use targeting options provided by ad platforms (like Google Ads, Facebook Ads) to reach your ideal audience based on demographics, interests and online behavior. Focus your marketing resources on creating attention-grabbing ad copy and visuals that clearly communicate your value proposition and encourage clicks. Continuously monitor ad performance metrics (e.g., click-through rate, conversion rate, cost-per-click) and make adjustments to optimize your ad campaigns for better results.
16. Offer discounts
Discounts can be a powerful tool to generate more traffic to a website for several reasons.
Offering discounts can entice new customers who are price-sensitive or hesitant to try your products or services at full price. At the same time they can motivate visitors who are already interested in your offerings to make a purchase sooner rather than later.
Seasonal discounts or clearance sales are especially effective at creating urgency and driving traffic as customers seek limited-time deals.
Some example of effectives discount strategies include?
Flash sales: Offering steep discounts for a short period can create buzz and urgency, driving traffic as customers rush to take advantage of the limited-time offer.
Coupon codes: Distributing coupon codes through various channels (e.g., email newsletters, social media, SMS) can encourage both new and existing customers to visit your website to redeem the discount.
Bundle discounts: Offering discounts for bundled purchases (e.g., buy two, get one free) can attract customers who might be interested in multiple products.
How to drive traffic to your website FAQ
How to drive traffic to a new website?
Driving traffic to a new website is a marathon, not a sprint. First you'll need to make sure your site is live, indexable by search engines and that it is findable by users. Then you'll need to think of different strategies to deploy to generate traffic from various segments and sources. This includes SEO, or Search Engine Optimization to generate traffic from organic search, as well as social media marketing and paid advertising. Chances are with a new website you'll undergo a period of trial and error as you find the best traffic generating strategy or combination of strategies for your site.