How to Drive Traffic to Your Website without Investing in SEO or Content Marketing

Every powerful digital marketing campaign rests on SEO and content marketing as some of the most effective traffic boosters. However, optimizing your site for search engines is not the only way to drive more traffic and improve your search results. On the contrary, you need to find a way to diversify traffic to your site.

Let’s see how to boost your website traffic without using SEO and content marketing.

Use Q&A Websites

How many times have you entered a search query into Google and the first thing that appeared in your results was a Q&A site, like Quora, Reddit, or Stack Exchange? We use these sites every day to find answers to certain questions or discuss particular subject matters, without realizing how valuable they actually are.

Namely, if used properly, Q&A websites can be immensely significant boosters of organic traffic. According to Alexa, Quora is the 129th most popular site in the world, while there are 24,016websites linking to it. Similarly to any other digital marketing technique, before you start using these sites, you need to have the right plan in mind that will keep you on track and maximize your results. Take some time to figure out how Q&A platforms work, what types of questions would work the best for you, and how to hook your target audience’s attention effectively.

Here are a few steps you should take before you start posting on Q&A sites:

  • Update your profile by adding your areas of expertise to show your target audience that you know what you’re talking about.
  • Choose relevant topics, keywords, and categories. When looking for the best questions to answer, you need to focus on the most recent ones, with more views and fewer answers.
  • Once you spot a perfect question to answer, don’t rush in and write the first thing that comes to your mind. Make your answers well-structured, concise, and relevant.
  • Link naturally to your site and provide an explanation of how your product solves a particular problem. Only this way will you be upvoted by users and get the organic traffic you’re hoping for.

Finally, once you start using Q&A sites, you need to start tracking your performance out there and Google Analytics may be the right option for you. All you need to do is go to Acquisitions- Overview- All Traffic- Referrals, look for the Q&A sites you use, and see how much traffic comes to your site from them.

Drive Organic Traffic with Social Networks

Researchers predict that the number of social media users will reach an astonishing 2.62 billion by the end of 2018. What this figure tells you is that the majority of your target audience is online and, to market to them properly, you need to be there, too. Social networks can be immensely important when it comes to driving more traffic to your site and boosting conversion rates. To harness all the power of social media marketing, you cannot barge into your target audience’s discussion and tell them to visit your site and make a purchase. On the contrary, you need to inspire them to do so.

Driving organic traffic from social networks is closely related to content marketing. However, if creating and sharingquality content is still not your cup of tea, there are other social media tactics you should take into consideration.

  • Focus on social networks your customers use and fill out your profile effectively. Make sure that you’ve branded your visuals with your logo, colors, and typography. You should also create a personal and objective bio, telling your customers who you are.
  • Find your tone of voice. Cast a critical eye on previous interactions with your customers. If your brand were a person, what type of personality traits would it have? Would it be strict, authoritative, quirky, or action-oriented? Choose the tone that fits your brand best and stick to it.
  • Humanize your brand. Start by sharing fun and engaging content, such as GIFs, memes, quote graphics, educational videos or ephemeral content.It wouldn’t hurt to share a few photos of your staff from time to time to let your customers meet the people behind your brand. If you’re throwing a corporate event or party, don’t forget to share the images on your Facebook and Instagram profiles.
  • Test your strategy constantly. Some of the most significant social media metrics you should keep track of are volume, reach, engagement, and influence.

Work with Influencers

People are getting thousands of brands and products thrown in their faces every day. So, to fight this information overload, they usually go with the popular brands they trust the most. For smaller brands, this would be a complete disaster if it weren’t for influencer marketing.

Simply put, influencer marketing means creating strong relationships with the most authoritative people in your niche. These people acquire their base of followers over a long period of time by delivering engaging, quality, and relevant content. Most importantly, influencers are relatable and respected by their followers. Precisely because of this, brands see the value in turning to influencers to engage new audiences.

Now, connecting with the right influencers and getting them to promote your products is a daunting task. However, there are several proven techniques that may help you out. Writing guest posts is one of the most reliable ways to grab influencers’ attention and drive some quality traffic to your site. Alternatively, you could also ask them to review your products, gift them your products and hope that they will cover them in some of their future social media or blog posts, or even organize an influencer contest. In the latter case, you should make sure that the prizes are valuable enough for them to enter, from exclusive access to your latest products to giving them a chance to travel on your dime.

Advertise Online

Face it, people hate online ads and they actively avoid them. According to the 2016 HubSpot report, over half of the respondents claimed that they use ad blockers or were planning to install one in the coming months. They find ads intrusive, disruptive, spammy, and suspicious. But, this shouldn’t discourage you. Remember, not all ads are equal and you can still deliver a valuable user experience using them.

Focus on native advertising

Studies show that, when it comes to online advertising, people respond best to email newsletters and sponsored posts on social networks. The reason for this is obvious. Email newsletters are something users sign up for on their own and they can choose to unsubscribe whenever they want to. This form of advertising is less aggressive in nature, focusing on sharing amazing deals or content.

Sponsored media posts, on the other hand, cannot be chosen or removed by a user, which is why they resemble traditional online advertising methods. However, unlike annoying auto-playing videos or pop-ups, they can be personalized and tailored to a user’s preferences.

This is exactly why you should turn to native advertising on social networks. For example, Google AdWords is one of the most popular advertising channels that can be considered native, given the fact that it is both subtle and highly targeted. With the data you collect about your users, you can segment your ads granularly, delivering the right ads, to the right people, at the right time.

Target your social media ads

One of the major advantages of implementing digital ads as opposed to offline website promotions is the plethora of targeting options they provide. With their help, you can narrow down your target audience and drive relevant traffic to your site, turning these visitors into quality leads.

Facebook

Use Facebook’s “Choose Your Audience”to target people who live in the areas relevant to your business, as well as pull more precise information about your followers’ life events, education, financial status, job interests, etc.With their “Custom Audience,” you can use your recent website traffic, customer lists, email addresses or even phone numbers to market to your current or past customers.

Twitter

Similarly to Facebook, Twitter gives you the opportunity to target your ads based on geographic information, keywords, followers, and their habits or interests. You can also take advantage of its advanced “Tailored Audiences” feature that, just like Facebook’s “Custom Audiences” allows you to use your website traffic, as well as your customers’ email addresses, phone numbers or Twitter usernames.

LinkedIn

While some of its targeting options are similar to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn takes your targeting efforts to the next level. Apart from factors such as your followers’ age, friends, location or company, you can also take their job title, employer, industry, and skills into consideration.

To Wrap it Up

When it comes to generating your website traffic, you should never rely on SEO alone. Now that you know what your alternatives are, you can finally take advantage of them and diversify your target audience. Still, you should never forget that, to make the most of them, you should combine the techniques mentioned above with your inbound marketing efforts.

How do you generate traffic without having to invest in SEO or content marketing?

Guest article written by: Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and regular contributor to Technivorz.

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