33 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

“If you build it, they will come” may have worked for Kevin Costner, but I think we all know that marketing a cornfield baseball diamond would take just a little more work.

Websites are no different. Even the best content needs readers, and if you’ve struggled to increase your website traffic, you're in good company.

According to 2024 research from Content Marketing Institute, more than half of B2B content marketers say it’s a challenge to consistently create the right content for their audience.

We’ve got a list of 33 ways to increase website traffic, generate more leads, and improve ROI (and none of them involve waiting in a cornfield for ghost baseball players).

Table of Contents

Free Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website Paid Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Website

1. Content Creation

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting the right people to your company. One of the best ways to do this is by creating content through blogging.

To brainstorm content that will attract the right visitors to your website, you must first understand the buyer persona you’re targeting. Once you know your audience, you can create content that naturally attracts them to your website.

But how do you write a good blog post that will draw in the right audience? Follow these five steps:

Identify your buyer persona: Find out more about your target market. Understand everything from job title to pain points. Conduct keyword research: Learn what your audience is searching for on search engines so you can provide the best content. Ideate topics: Identify topics that appeal to your audience’s pain points and experience high search volumes. Tools like our Blog Ideas Generator can help with the brainstorming process. Write a draft: Begin by drafting a post that answers your audience's questions. Use interesting angles to make your post stand out. Publish: Publish your post on your blog site. Use SEO tools to optimize your content. Promote: Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to generate traffic. The more traffic your post generates, the higher it will rank in search engines.

Pro tip: Learn how to implement a blogging strategy with our step-by-step guide and templates.

Want to take your blogging to the next level? Explore our Free AI Blog Writer to streamline your content creation process with the power of artificial intelligence.

2. Topic Expertise

Ranking higher in Google will increase your site's organic traffic. At HubSpot, we do this by using the pillar/topic cluster model. Google favors sites known to be topic experts on the subject matter they're writing about.

To be seen as an expert, you can create a pillar page, which is essentially a longer blog post that broadly covers all aspects of a topic.

Then, you write “cluster content,” or supporting blog posts, targeting long tail keywords that show you've covered a topic exhaustively. Focusing on long-term traffic will help you rank higher on search engines.

Christina Perricone, a former senior blog manager at HubSpot, says, "The pillar cluster model organizes content on your site around a single topic and search term through internal linking. This organization helps search engines easily crawl and categorize all of the content that you have on a particular topic, thereby making it easier for you to rank for that search term."

She continues, "When the model is done right, it also helps visitors navigate your site and move through related pages, boosting traffic for all of the pages in your topic cluster."

3. Organic Social Media

Organic social media is not a new strategy, but it's still something marketers should pay attention to. Besides posting on social media platforms, you can also use Instagram Stories, live video on Instagram or TikTok, or Facebook Messenger.

It's important to have a diverse social media strategy and use the right social media platforms — not just Facebook, Instagram, and X. Platforms like YouTube and even Pinterest can generate a lot of traffic to your site.

And as we saw during the transformation of Twitter into X, users can jump ship during major platform changes — so don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Henry Franco, a former HubSpot marketing manager, recommends two things regarding organic social media.

“First, don't spam your audience — it costs a user nothing to scroll past your post, and if you don't offer them any value, that's exactly what they'll do. Know your audience, and craft content that speaks directly to them,” Franco says.

“Second, stay active with community management. People love when brands like and reply to them — it'll humanize your business, and keep people coming back for more content.”

For instance, HubSpot uses fun carousels on Instagram about your office personality, a lighthearted way of engaging our audience (I am a bi-coastal baddie only by virtue of constantly mixing up time zones.)

Image Source

Pro tip: Check out our social media marketing guide to learn more.

4. Website Analysis

Let‘s do a little reverse-engineering of our thought process. Before you drive traffic to your website, it’s important to learn about your audience.

To do this, analyze your website to see where you're losing and gaining visitors. There are plenty of third-party tools, like Crazy Egg, and HubSpot has a free website grader you can use.

With this information at your disposal, you can create the right content to drive the right traffic to your website.

5. Influencers

We know that customers are more likely to buy from organizations with excellent word of mouth, but how do you create great word of mouth marketing?

First, delight your customers. Second, work with influencers.

Influencer marketing isn‘t a passing fad. In fact, it’s a budget-friendly option to drive traffic to your website. When influencers post discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways, you are tapping into their audience to drive traffic to your website.

6. Email List Building

Using your current readers and customers is a great way to drive traffic to your website. When you post a new blog or content offer, you can promote it to your followers/subscribers for a quick traffic boost. With content-heavy websites, repeat readership is helpful for traffic goals, conversions, and lead generation.

To get started, build an email list or grow your current list. Below are a few strategies you can use:

Content offers: Publish content that requires visitors to share their email to access it. Include CTAs for content offers on your website. Easy-access newsletter sign-up: Include sign-up forms on your website, from your homepage to your about page. If a visitor has a delightful experience on your site, they’re more likely to sign up for your newsletter.

Use HubSpot’s free forms tool to easily add a form to your site and start growing your email list.

Social media: Promoting your email newsletter on social media, whether through a post or contest/giveaway, is a great way to convert your current followers into subscribers.

Pro tip: Learn how to build an email list from scratch or grow your email list.

7. Community Engagement

The more brand recognition you have, the more traffic you will drive to your website. One way to achieve brand recognition is to be active and engaged within the market.

You can implement an engagement strategy today by participating in Facebook group discussions in your industry, answering questions on public forum websites, and interacting with your followers on social media.

One of my favorite brands on social media is Taco Bell. Taco Bell delights its customers on social media just about every day. See a couple of examples from the company’s X account below.