The first thing that would make you anxious once you launch your first website to make money online is the traffic. You keep checking the analytics and get nervous day by day. You read different blogs and they tell you various schemes on how to increase website traffic that are either too technical or hardly works.

Well, I also had gone through this phase during my early days when I launched my first website. But, I started a thorough research, implemented multiple methods one after one (mind it, not simultaneously) and analysed the result. And finally, I continued the most effective methods and scratched out the flop processes.

Of course, it took long time for me to find out the right plan that worked and today I’ll tell you about that.

Before you proceed, I must admit that I’m not a professional SEO expert. So, you have to choose from these three options to promote and get more traffic to your website:

  • Hire an SEO expert and let them handle the boring task
  • Create an AdWord account and run ad campaign
  • Follow my method and get ready to work hard

If you opted for the third option, this blog is for you. Here is the table of content so that you can jump to any relevant section by clicking the links.

Preface

Though, I said to give you tricks on how to increase website traffic without SEO, you need to know the basic about what is it and how it works, so that you can create the right strategy to get the same effect through a different way.

What is SEO?

You might have already come across several technical definitions. Simply, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of highlighting your website among the right audience against particular set of keywords.

I name SEO as a pension scheme for your website that keeps you paying back even when you stop working on promotion.

Let’s try understand it.

People don’t type your website name, unless you are a brand; they type a product or service name or may be a query. Then how search engines return some relevant ‘website names’? It’s ‘optimisation’ that tells Google about the products/services you sell so that it can show your website when someone searches for a relevant product in the internet.

And thus, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) remained the most reliable way to promote your website against those ‘keywords’. The better optimised your site is, the higher rank you’ll be assigned in the result page.

Does Avoiding SEO Affect My Website Negatively?

Of course SEO has great organic value which pays back in the long run. But, it isn’t mandatory. There are several other proven techniques that can give a startup like yours enough traffic quickly.

However, I recommend my readers to fix the onpage errors to make sure search engines (like Google, Yahoo!, Bing) don’t face any trouble crawling your website.

So, what is ‘onpage error fixing’? In simple words, it’s the process to fix every issue in your website to make it look better, perform better and make it highly user-friendly.

If you are using WordPress, you can use plugins like YoastSEO or All-in-One SEO, the two top competitors to fix most of the onpage issues.

Once you are done, you can focus on the promotion.

Traffic is Not Everything

Well, we all want ‘high traffic’. But, you need to know that not all traffic is valuable to your website. ‘Low quality traffic’ or, in laymen’s language ‘irrelevant traffic’ will just increase bounce rate which will finally make Google ‘suspicious’ about your website’s quality.

As per my opinion, stick to low traffic instead of driving huge number of bad traffic. It’ll pay you back in long term.

Another warning for beginners – any unnatural or wrong method can penalise your website. So, don’t keep trying every method that you know somewhere.

Proven Methods to Increase Website Traffic

Here are some exclusive tips that can give a safe boost to your traffic and create some high value backlinks as well.

Blog Commenting – It’s Easy, Free and Efficient

Many SEO experts say it’s old and returns very little value. But, for new websites, every traffic matters.

Simply visit some high PR websites of your niche, read their blogs carefully and make relevant comment. Include a link of your website in the body of your comment (or in the field for website) naturally and ask people to check for some more information from your website.

But, your comment may not be approved. So, I have a trick for you.

Start with a great appreciation of the post that the website has posted. It’ll make them greedy to approve the post. Also, mention some points that you loved most. Make it an honest comment that makes them happy.

I got success every time I used this trick!

Don’t make too many blog commenting in a single day for a single blog/post. Google may treat it as spamming. Say, if you have 5 posts, make one comment against each post every day in different websites.

Make sure the website has a good PR; else, it will be treated as a bad backlink. And yes, don’t overdo.

Again another overlooked way to drive high quality traffic. But, it can be a bit tough for new bloggers due to high failure rate.

What’s guest blogging? You search some high PR websites and post a blog on behalf of them on their website. Yes, you have to write the post and still you may or may not get the credit. But, your condition will be to incorporate a backlink in the post to your website.

There are websites that openly welcome guest bloggers; while in some cases you may have to mail them to post a guest blog.

But, make sure you go through their website standard and write detailed and valuable content as per their class. Also, they reserve the right to accept, reject or modify your content.

Read their guideline thoroughly before you write for them. Before you do this, check if their website contains any adult content. It may flag your site as ‘family unsafe’ by Google and other search engines.

Point here to be noted – some websites may even ask you to pay some money to get your blog published on their website. It’s up to you to accept the deal or not to.

Social Media – A Powerful Yet Free Tool

I think you are overconfident in this matter as you share all your posts regularly through your social profiles.

But, sharing a link doesn’t work enough! There are tricks to ensure action.

Generally people write a line or two and then paste the link. Social sites automatically fetch the thumbnail along with the title and meta description of the post. But, the image that is perfect on a full-screen website may not look great on that small thumbnail. People will simply overlook it. You’ll earn nothing but some ‘impression’ against the post.

So, what to do? Create an image that is enough powerful to grab attention of the users; upload it on your profile/page and paste a shortened link for further information. Use less text on the image to make it easily readable and highlight it perfectly.

Also, share the same on different relevant groups where you can get hundreds and thousands of like-mined readers easily. Say, if you have recently posted a blog on how to become a professional freelance content writer in Kolkata, you should share it on several content writing and SEO groups.

Also, note that, every social site has their own image size that shows in full. If you use a bigger (taller or wider) image than that recommended size, may be some of the valuable parts of the image get cropped on the thumbnail and it loses its attraction.

Another super process offered by social platforms like Facebook, Linkedin etc. is Boost Post. You can spread the post among a huge number of potential audience easily by paying a little amount. It’s not similar to an advertisement campaign; but the effect is somehow similar.

The best part over here is you can select ‘who are your audience’ through several filter options provided by these platforms.

Social Bookmarking – Still Not Obsolete

May be you have read in several posts on how to increase website traffic without SEO about this point. Mostly they suggest not to do social bookmarking as it doesn’t give value anymore.

But, I use it till now and get more than 3% of my total traffic from here.

It’s all about finding out some popular and do-follow social bookmarking sites and creating a persuasive post there. Remember, your title and description is the only tool to force visitors click on your link. So, don’t use just to push your keyword.

Email Marketing – Another Powerful Free Tool

It is like old wine that probably would never lose its value. But, you have to master the skill to create literally powerful mail subject and body.

Every day we get several promotional mails from several shopping sites and other online platforms. Hardly people click on some of them. Yes, most of these emails are sentenced to death even without getting a click for a glance.

Why? Because they fail to appear ‘useful’, ‘relevant’, or ‘valuable’ to the readers. And they decide it just from the Subject line of the mail.

So, you have to keep working to create some really unique mail campaigns and still some may fail badly.

Well, there is another thing here! You need a database of emails of relevant audience. So, you have to use different tricks to increase Subscription.

There are free tools for WordPress like Popup Subscription Form, Exit-intent Popup Form etc. that can help you to attract and retain readers and force them to subscribe. Try those and may be you get some benefit.

Posting Truly Valuable Content – The Ultimate Weapon

Yeah! Nothing can be more powerful than a piece of useful, informative and engaging content.

While experts recommend a minimum length of 300 words for a blog, I suggest to overlook the word count when you write on a topic. Just focus on the information that you share.

If your content has some real values, you don’t need to research on how to increase traffic to your website without SEO. Google has become ‘intelligent’ enough to smell the content quality and reach it to the right audience.

Final Word

Most of the search engines are working consistently to return high quality result to their visitors and thus no shortcut would work if your website hasn’t that quality. So, just keep the worries aside and work on creating some killer content that people want and love to read.

Have some query? Just write it in the comment box below and I’ll reply as soon as I check it.