Having a website is essential these days, but creating one for your business is only the first step.

Once you have made a website, you need to learn how to market it so it gets noticed. After all, a website without marketing is simply another empty domain, and you want people to see what you are doing.

A website can be a great resource for all kinds of businesses, allowing you to reach out to your target audience and develop a relationship that can bring in revenue. But this will only be possible if you know how to promote your website and how to find people online who are interested in what you do.

There is a lot of competition online these days, and to get the attention you desire, you need to stand out. Learning how to promote your website and finding the best marketing channels for your content is essential and will bring attention to your work.

Marketing can be difficult for a beginner because there are so many marketing tools for you to consider. Some of these can be quite expensive, like paid advertising and influencer marketing, and are therefore not ideal for all businesses, but this does not mean you are out of options.

In this guide, we are sharing tips on how to promote your website and ensure you are increasing website traffic without breaking the bank.

Can I Promote My Website For Free?

There are many marketing channels that you can consider as a website owner to bring traffic to your website.

As we have mentioned, some of these advertising methods can be quite expensive, which means they are not always accessible. If you are a small business, freelancer, or simply want to have a space to promote your work, then paying for advertising through things such as influencer marketing is not ideal.

Luckily, it is possible to find free tools for website promotion, and these can be some of the most successful methods for increasing organic traffic.

Creating a website is only the first step in getting noticed in the current market, as you want to find ways to draw people to your site, where they can be pushed through the sales funnel and bring in money for your business – regardless of what this process means for you. Even if you do not necessarily want to make money through your website, you still want to work at increasing website traffic to ensure your work is being noticed.

There are ways you can get more traffic without breaking the bank or even spending any money at all, which is ideal for those without a marketing budget.

How To Promote Your Website For Free

There are various ways that you can bring more traffic to your website without spending a penny.

Each requires some work on your behalf as the website owner, but they can continue to provide results and ensure you are standing out from the competition.

In this guide, we are sharing the various ways you can promote your website and get traffic by focusing on specific areas of work for you. This way, you can focus on each task as you try to promote your work and see the results fly in.

For the best results, a combination of multiple forms of website promotion is required, and consistent work is needed to ensure lasting traffic to your website.

Promote Your Website With Content

If you run a website, you cannot avoid creating content for long if you want to draw in traffic.

Almost all of the tools you can use to promote your website require content, so you simply cannot skip this step if you want site visitors.

There are various ways that you can create content to bring traffic to your website, and these all apply to content marketing.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, and marketing content on your website.

This can be a great tool not only for promotion but also for developing a relationship with your audience, which encourages them to continue visiting your site and share your content.

There are many forms of content that you can rely on to promote your website, and essentially, all forms of online marketing cannot be done without content of some kind. If you want to work on generating traffic to your website, you need to come up with a content marketing strategy and learn how to post content.

Many promotion ideas rely on content and can be a great tool to get more traffic to your site, including:

1) Start A Blog

A blog is one of the most important tools for content marketing and is a great way to bring traffic to your website.

There is a reason why almost all businesses have a blog platform of some kind, and this is because it works. Publishing blog articles, which are long-form written pieces, about your business, the industry, and anything else that you think is interesting to your target audience encourages people to visit your site regularly.

Blogging also offers more benefits, such as opportunities for guest blogging, which generates referral traffic, as well as being an additional revenue source for your business.

How To Start A Blog

Before you can begin writing blog posts and publishing content on your website, you need to plan.

A large part of content marketing is the planning, and to ensure your blog articles bring in traffic, you need to consider the following:

– Your Niche

Outlining your niche market is a great way to find a focus for your blog.

This is more than your business category, as it will be the overall focus for your blog and will inform every blog post and ensure all the content you publish here is relevant to your audience.

– Your Target Audience

Every blog post you create must be relevant to your desired audience; otherwise, there will be no interest in your work.

Creating an audience persona and performing market research before launching a blog gives you a focus for your content and allows you to create things that are going to be engaging and informative for this group.

– Your Purpose

While your purpose for creating a blog may be marketing, you need something more to work with when it comes to content creation.

Before launching a blog, spend some time considering what the purpose of this website or section of your website should be. Using your niche market, you should be able to identify what people want from you and, therefore, use this in content creation.

For example, many businesses have a blog to inform their audiences about their products and services or even the wider industry as a whole. The blog can be a platform for discussing trends and how this influences the products you put out.

Local businesses can use their blog to promote upcoming events in the region or to provide advice regarding the best things to do in the area.

With this focus, it will be easier to create content for your blog and ensure you maintain a regular upload schedule. You can create engaging and informative content that not only draws in your audience but also encourages them to share your work for additional promotion.

It is important to ensure you are publishing high-quality content to get the right attention online.

Having a blog is a good start in content marketing, and it offers a platform for other promotion tools that will bring people to your website.

2) Guest Blogging

Now, you have a platform for it; you can work on guest blogging as a free tool for promotion.

Guest posts are a great way to bring in more traffic to your website and increase visibility online, as you are essentially sharing an audience with other sites in the same niche.

Guest blogging is a tool that works two ways – either you can invite other businesses to write content for your site, or you can write content for another site. Both of these allow you to share audiences and gain more referral traffic.

If you are just starting, writing a guest post for another website in your niche is the best idea, and this is known as outreach marketing.

You need to ensure you are creating high-quality content that is engaging to your shared audience, as this is easier to pitch to the other website owner and allows them to benefit from the sharing of posts, too.

After all, no one wants to promote bad content as this will not reflect well.

Once you have good content, you can use this to back up your outreach marketing and get better results when reaching out to other creators.

How To Find Websites For Guest Blogging

To drive traffic to your website using guest posts, you want to find quality websites within your niche market that share the same audience.

After all, you want to bring in people who are interested in what you have to offer, so there is no point in finding a website outside of your niche.

It is also a good idea to find a better-established website, one that has a good reputation and a big audience, to get the most promotion.

You can also guest post for shared platforms where online communities gather based on interest. When done well, this can be a good tool for finding more potential customers across the internet.

3) Try Multi Media Content

While blogs are a great tool, you may find it difficult to get shares and referrals if all you create is written content.

The internet is a fast-moving space, and if people cannot find what they need from you, they will quickly move on. This is why incorporating other kinds of content, such as YouTube videos or images, into your blog is a good idea.

With interesting visuals and informative, engaging videos, you will find people are more likely to share your content, and you can get more traffic from this alone.

As well as getting shares, the better your content is, the longer people will stay on your website.

This contributes to the click-through rate of your site, which plays a large role in another free tool for promotion that we will discuss later in this guide. All tools are interconnected, which is why you want to ensure everything you do online is of a high standard and reflects your business well.

If you do not have the time or skills required to make long-form videos, visuals can go a long way and can be used to promote your blog and, therefore, website on social media platforms. Visuals, which can be made using free apps and tools online, are not only engaging but easy to share online and can be a way to pass on information to your audience easily.

4) Make A Resource Centre

A blog is not the only thing you should add to your website to increase traffic.

Creating a resource page for your business profile is not only a good tool for link building, as you are required to generate links with other websites to have more resources, but it is also very useful for your audience.

When you spend a long time creating content and publishing it across the internet, you want to make sure it all comes back to your main website. This applies to everything from guest posts to appearances in local directories or online directories.

Having a resources page where you list your content and the other platforms it has been published on is useful for your audience and opens up more promotion opportunities for you.

5) Email Marketing

This is a great way to connect directly with your audience and work on developing the relationship more.

Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of content marketing that is renowned for offering a high return on investment for most businesses.

Even with a small number of subscribers, you can see great benefits in terms of website promotion because you are actively in contact with your audience.

Email marketing campaigns can start from your website, where you will prompt readers and buyers to leave their contact details by offering exclusive deals. It is common for online stores, for example, to develop this direct link to their audience by offering an exclusive discount or coupon to those who leave their contact details.

Once you have the details, you can start making email marketing campaigns and get in touch regularly.

It is important to note that, much like with content creation, your emails should offer some kind of value to your audience. While email marketing is a good tool, this applies to long-lasting email subscribers, so you want to continually offer value to prevent customers from leaving.

Plan out your email marketing campaigns along with all other content to ensure it remains informative and engaging for your readers.

Promote Your Website With SEO

Search engine optimization is one of the most valuable tools for gaining more traffic to your website.

While content is a good tool, it is not going to draw attention on its own, and search engine optimization is the way to help you get noticed.

After all, if you are looking for something or require more information, where do you turn? Search engines are the modern library and a way for people to find all kinds of businesses, so it makes sense for your audience to turn here, too.

By ensuring you are noticed on search engines, you are bringing in people who are then encouraged to share your content or register for email marketing.

This is done through optimization, and there are many SEO tools that you can use for this.

What Is SEO?

If you want to promote your website without spending money, then you need to be visible on search engines.

The whole purpose of SEO is to optimize your website so it ranks highly in search results. Websites that appear on the first pages of search results get the most organic traffic, and this is done through SEO tools.

While you can pay for Google Ads and Pay Per Click advertising, which will get your website at the top of results without the additional work, SEO is free and can offer lasting results.

1) Keyword Research

To ensure your website is search engine friendly, you need to be seen as a relevant source on Google and other search engines. This is done using keywords and applies to all industries.

However, before you can incorporate keywords into your content and ensure the same terms appear throughout your website, you need to understand what your audience is searching for in the first place.

Keyword research is done to identify your target keywords and is the beginning step in any SEO strategy.

While you can pay SEO experts to perform keyword research for you, there are also free ways that you can promote yourself. You can also determine good keywords simply by looking at your competitors, which will be those that appear at the top of search engine results pages, and highlighting the keywords they use within their content.

You can use tools to find the search volume of specific keywords, such as Google Analytics.

These keywords can be used not only in your content but all areas of your website for the best results on search engines, such as in page titles.

2) Upgrade Meta Description

This can be done to existing content as well as improving all future content on your website once you have highlighted the best keywords to use for clicks.

The meta description is the small business profile or insight that is offered for every link on search engines like Google. Adding keywords to this description, as well as page titles and other forms of on-page SEO, can make it easier to rank your website as a relevant resource and, therefore, get more website traffic.

Keywords should be included in the meta description and title of every page and blog post you publish on your website. These must also be short and relevant for the best results on Google.

For example, if you want to rank highly in local search results, you need to ensure to use the name of your town or city in most titles and descriptions. Adding this keyword to your Google business profile can also ensure more clicks, as people will be searching for services in their area.

3) Simplify URLs

Likewise, shortening URLs across your website is a great tool for SEO.

Not only does this make it easier for Google and other search engines to index your site and determine whether it is relevant, but it also makes it easier for people to share your link, which in turn contributes to better ranking.

Instead of paying for Google Adwords or other tools, you can instead work on your SEO through simple adjustments like shortening URLs, which makes it easier for other sites to reference your work.

When it is easier to reference your work, you will be promoted on more websites and, therefore, generate a better link profile. As we have mentioned, link building is a key element of SEO, and with short URLs, this is easier to work on.

4) Appear In Directories

Online directories are a great tool for businesses because they help you generate more links, which in turn can increase your search engine ranking.

The more links you have, the more authority your domain is seen to have, which is a ranking factor for sites such as Google. Whether you opt to appear in local directories or create a Google Search Console for your business, these can all drive traffic to your website with every search.

Appearing on established directories is a good sign for customers, as it shows you are not only a legit business but are also recommended by other sites they trust. The process is similar to guest blogging in the sense you can get referral website traffic from this, but there is no need for content creation.

Instead, ensure your details are correct so potential customers can find you easily.

How Many Backlinks Should I Get?

Backlinks are generated whenever another site or resource references your website. Whether this is from guest posting, social media platforms, or even from online directories, all links contribute to your link profile.

A link profile is considered by Google when assessing the domain authority of their results.

By appearing on many other sites, you are seen as a reputable resource – but there are conditions to this.

While you may be tempted to generate as many backlinks as possible to improve search engine ranking, a careful balance between quality and quantity needs to be met for this to be effective. Your website cannot appear on low-quality sites if you want to rank highly, and instead should only be referenced by other reputable resources.

When working on link building, ensure you are only connecting with relevant and reputable resources for the best possible results.

Promote Your Website On Social Media

Social media marketing is a highly valuable tool for businesses these days, and it can be done for free.

While there are options similar to Google AdWords that you can pay for on social media platforms, you can also drive traffic to your site by connecting with the right online communities through social media.

As with most of the tools mentioned in this guide, more work is required than simply opening a Facebook page for your business. Balancing social media and your website can become overwhelming, which is why it is recommended that you use content management systems to plan out content and map where and when it will be published.

Social media sites can be used to promote your work, whether this is a blog post, video, or even your appearance on other marketing channels, with an established online community that already has an interest in your niche.

Whether this is the audience that follows your business directly or those interested in the same themes as your work, social media is a great tool to connect with large groups of people and can also be useful when promoting your goods, services, or work as well as your website.

All links published on social media should drive traffic back to your website.

Summary

Promoting your website is the only way to make money online these days.

It is important that you are sharing your work and ensuring you are getting attention online if you want to make money in the modern market, and online attention relates to website traffic.

There are many ways you can go about promoting your website, but not all of these are going to be suitable for your business. For example, paying digital marketers to drive traffic to your website is not accessible to many brands because there simply is not enough in the marketing budget.

However, there are many tools that you can use for free to promote your website and get the attention you deserve, as we have seen in this guide.

With a considered use of content, SEO, and social media, you can increase website traffic and bring in more money from your online platforms.

Now you have the tools at your disposal, it is time to start promoting your website online.