How to generate free traffic to your Blog

Succeeding in blogging as an online venture depends so much on the amount of traffic that is visiting your site. The higher the number of visitors to your blog, the better for your online business. There are several ways in which you can generate Traffic to your blog. In this article, we are going to look at different ways in which you can generate free traffic to your blog as detailed below:

Social Media 

Social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn etc. can be a major source of free traffic if used well. All you need to do is post your blog post link on any of these social networks, whenever a person visits your site through a link posted on social network, it is treated as a free traffic. But this doesn’t come that is easy, you will need to time engaging your followers in the comment sections, and replying to their questions or queries to build a reliable traffic base. Your followers need to see you as someone they can interact with freely and learn from. Also you need to have a quite a large following on these networks to be able to get a reasonable traffic from them.

10 ways to drive free traffic to your blog

Search Engine

This can be one of your major traffic sources. The Search Engines includes Google, Bing and Yahoo. Most of the successful bloggers in fact use Search Engines as the main source of traffic. But for you to benefit from Search Engine free traffic, you have follow Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques. Some of the Techniques include, On Page Optimization, which if followed well,  may see your blog pages or posts ranked high in Search Engine Results Page (SERP), and thus you get high volume traffic to your blog.

Email Marketing

If you want to generate highly targeted, free traffic to your blog, that is relevant to your blog content, then email marketing is a good option. This involves building an email list. To achieve good results, you need to entice your visitors by offering free Newsletters, or E-books. Once you build your email list, you can pursue email marketing. You can send emails to these subscribers with links to your latest blog posts. When the users clicks on these links, then are directed to your site. The advantage of Email Marketing is that it goes a long way in helping you build a fruitful and long-lasting relationship with your visitors.

Guest Blogging 

Guest posting is also a free traffic source. You need to select high quality blogs in your niche that have a good traffic for your guest posting. When your guest posts are approved, they are then published. To be able to benefit from the traffic from those blogs where you are guest posting, you can include one or two back links such as from the author bio section or from within the guest post. Guest blogging also helps you build backlinks for search engine optimization.

Forum Posting 

Forum posting/Forum Marketing is where you share your views, opinions and expertise as well as ask & answer questions on topics relevant to your niche, you then leave behind your identity signature that carries a link to your site or blog post. These forums usually have a large audience base where people participate in discussions. If you actively participate in these forums, you can benefit from these large audience by driving them to your blog besides benefiting from back links.

Video Marketing

Nowadays videos are getting more popular with most of the internet users. You can use Video marketing as one of your strategies to drive traffic to your blog. You develop a video that is relevant to your blog’s niche and upload to sites like YouTube or Vimeo. In the description section, you can include a link or two pointing to your site. When users watch videos posted by you, they also get links to your blog. Once they click on these links, they arrive at your site or blog hence bringing in more traffic to your blog.

Also read: 15 Secrets of Success shared by a Professional Blogger

Blog Commenting 

This is similar to Forum Marketing though the only difference is you are commenting on the blog. With good blog commenting, you can build up your brand value. Regularly commenting on blogs helps you to build your relationship with other bloggers. You are seen as an expert who has authority on the subject in which you are commenting. You can leave  a link to your blog where necessary in the comment section. This can bring free traffic to your blog.

Document sharing sites

These are sites used to host PDF files or any other documents. All you need to do is to upload PDF documents, which can be downloaded by other people. You can attach a link to your site from within the PDF document. This will enable you to drive traffic to your blog.

RSS Aggregators

These are websites which collects/aggregates blog post. You need to list your site in a RSS Aggregator and your latest blog post will be shown on their website. The advantage here is that you get an opportunity to access  a larger readership base.

Q&A Traffic 

Q/A sites like Quora, Yahoo answers can be used to drive traffic to your site. When you answer questions in your niche, you have an opportunity to place a link to your site in the references section.  This can boost your traffic when people visit your blog for more information.

Related: How to increase your blog traffic and views

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Author: John Mulindi

John writes on a variety of topics. He blogs on topics ranging from social media marketing (SMM), search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, business, personal finance tech, entrepreneurship to personal development. In free time he likes watching football, reading, listening to music and taking nature walks.

182 thoughts on “How to generate free traffic to your Blog”

  1. This was a great post on other ways of driving traffic to my website i have been wanting to get into going to forums or other pages that are within my niche but just not sure where to start this helped

  2. Leaving comments and participating in Facebook groups has really helped me to get to know other bloggers. There is always so much to learn from our friends!

  3. Good information! As someone who is struggling with traffic, this gave me some new insights. I will begin researching forums, RSS Agreggators and Quora – have not used these methods. Thanks!

  4. Thank you for sharing another great post – I have recently set up a Quora account so I’ll definitely be utilising it to drive traffic (which I never knew I could do) xxx

  5. Thank you for those tips they are very helpfull indeed , i am yet to try guest posting
    kind regards Pati Robins

  6. Hi John, I’m always searching for ways to generate free traffic to my blog. Currently, I’m focused on Pinterest and Google+. I’m going to use them for a while and see how it turns out.

  7. These are really great tips for increasing blog traffic. I have seen good results from Pinterest and some from Facebook. But need to work on other social media sites. Thanks for sharing.

  8. I didn’t know about some of these. The RSS sites and the sites for PDF documents sound very interesting. I will be looking into using them.

  9. So interesting! All the different ways social media can be used to drive traffic to a website in one concise article!. As usual John, your piece had some great advise. I would love it if you spared more of your in-depth knowledge on SEO techniques and strategies too! I’ll be waiting!

    1. Hi Carrie, I really appreciate your feedback on this post. Thanks very much. I have several articles on SEO. You can check the category on SEO Strategies for bloggers, and if you have a question feel free to write back. Thanks.

  10. Thanks for your tips! I definitely find social media helpful, especially Pinterest. I will definitely work on SEO/search engine traffic and email traffic.
    xoxo
    Annie

    1. Hi Annie, I appreciate your visit. Yes SEO if well done on your site can help you drive free traffic from search, and actually traffic from Search engines converts well especially if you are selling products on your blog or website.

    1. Hi Karen, thanks for visiting. Everyone is facing problems with promoting on Facebook. They do remove blog posts without your knowledge when you share say in groups. That is why we are using other social media networks to drive traffic and also bloggers communities. You can check out this new bloggers community and join to help you drive traffic to your blog. Bloggers Traffic Community

  11. Great ideas. I had heard of many of them, but I’d never thought of the Q&A forums. That’s a great idea! #embracingchangelinkup

  12. Becoming part of a forum or even yahoo answers sounds like it could be a fun little community. I need to motivate and give them a try!

    1. Hi Dr. Elise, Yes Quora is a great site to build audience especially in a given field of expertise. If you can be able to set yourself as a person who can solve problems in a given field, then overtime, you build an audience base. Driving traffic is easy as putting links back to your blog in the answers to their questions.

    1. Hi, thanks for visiting, it takes time to become an expert in anything, so don’t worry. Take one step at a time, with time you will master all that is required to succeed online.

  13. I’m a newbie blogger and I’m determined to not spend a dime on marketing my blog and create traffic organically. It takes A LOT of effort when you go about that route, but I think the pay off is greater. Thank you for the tips John!

    1. I too don’t spend money driving traffic to my blog, all you need is to use various ways like Social media and Optimizing your site for organic traffic from search engines.

  14. That’s a great post! I like how you summed up all the different ways to drive traffic to your blog, instead of focusing only on social media like most people do. That’s a perfect list for new bloggers!

  15. Great ideas here. It’s always super important to be working on new traffic generation. I’m just getting started so this is super helpful.

    1. Hi, examples of document sharing sites: Slideshare, Scribd, Box.net, Zoho etc. For RSS aggregators, some in use are Feedly, Feedspot, Comma Feed etc.

  16. Very helpful information. I am currently working on my blog’s traffic so this is great!

  17. Great article! I use most of these traffic sources now for awellpacedlife.com. Are there any good tools to find a site within my niche(health/fitness, healthy lifestyle blog) that I could guest blog on?

    1. Thanks for visiting, at now I haven’t heard of such a tool but if you can check with Facebook groups especially in your niche, am sure you will get bloggers you can work together with.

  18. Good article, thanks John. The trick is not running all over the place to get traffic (it’s not really free if you have to spend hours just to promote a post) and find out which channels, whether it’s social media (what sites then), email marketing or something else, that works for you.

  19. I will look into RSS generator. Never heard of it but If it’s something to generate traffic hey why not.

    1. There are a fewer places where it is used for content sharing like Feedly. Check my post on Content Promotional Communities. But I think few people still use it.

  20. Hey John…Those were some pretty awesome tips you gave for getting traffic to your blog. Using most but will definitely look into the others. Have a great day! 🙂

    1. Yeah, these are simple tips for any blogger to apply. No complex technical knowledge required. Thanks for commenting on Business and Life Blog.

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