Dec 02, 2025
Tashia T.
22min Read
Contrary to popular belief, ensuring the success of a website requires more than just a catchy domain name, visually appealing layout, and quality content. Even if you build the most captivating website and publish high-quality articles, they won’t do you any good if no one sees them.
Creating a website and its content is just the beginning. To make sure its success, it’s necessary to learn how to drive web traffic. After all, the more people visit your site, the faster it grows.
If you want to learn more about the various ways to drive more traffic to your website, this article is for you. We will explain the 20 best free and paid traffic generation methods for better ranking.

Watch this tutorial to find out how to generate website traffic, along with tips and tricks to stand out from competitors.
There are two main types of website traffic – organic and paid. Organic web traffic refers to site visitors from search engines like Google or Bing.
On the other hand, paid traffic lands on your site through advertisements such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, promoted links, and other paid methods.
Research has proven that 53% of all website traffic is organic. This number has many site owners racing to improve their websites’ search engine optimization (SEO).
Organic traffic, also known as free website traffic, is a long-term investment that brings you the most relevant traffic. Getting a site to rank in search results takes time. You might not see significant results for months, especially if your site’s niche is crowded.
To drive more visitors to your website quickly, aim for paid traffic. You can set it up within minutes and receive more visitors on the same day.
Tons of advertisement services also offer various targeting options, letting users choose who sees their ads based on criteria such as location, age, and sex. However, be ready to spend significant money, especially in competitive markets.
If you want to know how your website performs, use a website traffic analytics tool like Similarweb to gain more insights into which strategies work best.
Whether concentrating on organic search or paid traffic, having a reliable web hosting provider is crucial for optimal website performance during the growth period. Hostinger offers managed web hosting, virtual private server (VPS), and cloud server hosting services to facilitate seamless scaling as your traffic increases.

Increasing website traffic is achievable with enough effort and the right methods. Let’s discuss organic and paid ways to drive traffic to your website.
Well-implemented SEO best practices will help your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and get more traffic. According to digital marketing statistics, organic search brings the highest ROI among digital marketing channels, with 49% of marketers reporting success. This emphasizes the importance of optimizing your website effectively to capture valuable organic traffic. One way to get started is to research and create content based on popular keywords.
Through research, learn how many people search for specific keywords and how fierce the competition is. Determine which keywords to use to write SEO friendly content.
To rank high among search results, include long-tail keywords, as they are usually used by people looking for specific information. Long-tail keywords are specific search phrases with three or more less competitive words, making it easier for you to rank in Google search results. They attract a more targeted audience, leading to higher conversion rates.
There are many keyword research tools, the most popular being Google Keyword Planner. Find keyword ideas or check historical metrics such as average monthly search volume and competition.
After deciding which keywords to use, it’s time to optimize your website. The optimization process can be divided into off-site and on-site SEO.
Off-site SEO is anything you can do to boost website traffic and visibility without tweaking it. There are many ways to promote your website for free, such as social media marketing and guest blogging. Furthermore, remember technical SEO aspects, like increasing site loading speed.
On the other hand, on-site or on-page SEO involves optimizing different parts of your website. Producing quality content is one great way to optimize your website.
When creating website content, make sure to focus on on-page SEO first. After all, the website has to be great before you market it to others. Here are some SEO tips on which elements to modify to improve on-page SEO and ultimately generate traffic:
To optimize your website for search engines, prioritize local SEO. This strategy helps drive targeted traffic from local search, increasing the chances of conversions and building stronger community ties. Small business owners can leverage local SEO to dominate their local market without spending money on paid advertisements like Google ads.
Consider building your website with Hostinger Website Builder to make it SEO-friendly from the start. The onboarding process gives you the option to generate a unique template tailored to your needs, making the platform one of the easiest AI website builders for beginners. Moreover, it offers free tools for SEO and can generate SEO-friendly content with the help of AI.
Although on-page SEO is a great way to attract potential customers, you need to make sure they don’t just visit once. Sending regular newsletters and promotions through email is a great way to engage with customers and share product knowledge.
Keeping in touch with people encourages them to revisit your site. Like regular customers of a coffee shop, they can eventually become loyal visitors to your website.
Creating effective email campaigns used to require significant time and design expertise, but modern tools have simplified this process dramatically. For example, Hostinger Reach eliminates the complexity entirely by using AI to transform your ideas into polished newsletters within minutes.
You just need to describe what you want to communicate, and Reach generates complete emails with subject lines, engaging content, and clear call-to-action buttons. The platform automatically connects to your website and imports your contact lists, so new subscribers are instantly added to your email segments without manual work.
If you want to make an email marketing campaign, use email marketing services like Omnisend or other alternatives.
However, avoid bombarding subscribers with too many emails. Send weekly or bi-weekly emails containing marketing campaigns, special offers, useful information, or a roundup of site updates subscribers need to know.
Take a look at Hostinger’s newsletter, filled with valuable tutorials that empower recipients to build and enhance their websites:
The following are some email marketing best practices to increase website traffic:
Consider using a business email address for your campaign instead of a personal one to appear more professional and official. Besides helping you build trust with costumes, a business email address has higher deliverability rates than free email services.

Social media sites are a powerful free tool to drive more traffic to your site. Accessible to anyone with an internet connection, they can boost brand exposure and serve as a traffic channel for your website.
Make sure your organic social media content is easy to share by embedding social sharing tools, but don’t sit and wait around for people to share your content. Instead, be proactive and reach out to potential customers.
Every time you upload new content, share it on social media sites. Repurpose your blog posts into various formats, like infographics and videos. It’s free and can significantly increase website traffic.
Marketing your content via ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok can quickly increase the traffic to your blog post when done correctly. This strategy requires some familiarity with paid advertising and the creation of ad campaigns. In terms of marketing strategy, each social platform is slightly different, so you’ll need a fundamental understanding of each before you get started.
Here are some tips to promote blog posts on social media sites:
Content is the core of every site. Engaging content will keep visitors coming back and turn them into loyal audiences. Furthermore, they will be more inclined to share it with others.
Check out our tips on how to create content that can generate website traffic:
When it comes to writing good website content, practice is important. Over time, you will learn how to write effectively and drive traffic to your website.
The fact that mobile phones account for 56% of all web traffic should be enough to understand why a website has to be mobile-friendly. If visitors have a bad mobile experience on your site, they might never return, and you may lose a huge portion of potential traffic.
A mobile-friendly website should be responsive, which means it should automatically adjust the design based on the device’s screen size. Visitors can then browse through your website comfortably without having to scroll around. Try Google’s mobile-friendly test to see whether your website meets the standards.
To build a responsive website, you must hire a professional or use website-building platforms with responsive themes and templates. If you choose the latter, we recommend using WordPress, as many of its themes are mobile-friendly.
Having a responsive website is also crucial for great SEO. Since Google has implemented mobile-first indexing, its bots predominantly use the mobile version of websites for ranking and indexing. As a result, responsive websites are more likely to rank higher on SERPs.
All websites created with Hostinger Website Builder are mobile-friendly. The platform also has a mobile editing feature to edit site elements for mobile screen sizes.
Periodically publishing new content is a great way to drive more traffic to your website. The same effect can also be achieved by refining and improving existing content.
Search engines constantly crawl through websites to search for new content. Whenever you update existing content, search engine bots will recrawl the page to reassess and readjust its ranking in SERPs based on the modifications made.
To speed up results, updating old content boosts website traffic. If they already rank well on SERPs, an update keeps them relevant and increases their chances of ranking higher.
Use Google Analytics to identify popular blog post entries and optimize your content writing. Remember not to make unnecessary updates just for the sake of it. Aim for quality, not quantity.
Below are some updates you can make to an existing blog post:
An affiliate marketing program is a partnership in which site owners pay people to send them referral traffic or sales.
Affiliates write articles to persuade readers to buy your products. As the merchant, you provide each affiliate marketer with a unique referral link or banner for their site. Marketers earn commissions for readers who visit your site through the link or banner. It differs from the referral program, which relies on word-of-mouth promotion.
Many businesses choose this online marketing strategy and even create affiliate marketing websites. It’s a cost-effective method for driving website traffic and boosting conversion rates.
Before choosing an affiliate, understand your target market. The affiliates or publishers must be appealing to your potential consumers. Ideally, opt for individuals who are already admired by your target demographic.
For instance, if your business operates in the IT industry, you can contact influential IT bloggers and propose an affiliate marketing agreement. By doing so, they can promote your products or services, creating a mutually beneficial partnership.
Here are some of the best affiliate marketing practices to bring more traffic to your website:
Gather as many quality backlinks to your site as possible. You get these when other websites link to your site. Similarly, when you link to other sites on your site, they obtain backlinks from you.
Collecting external links is important for generating traffic to your site as it helps boost SEO efforts. The more backlinks you get, the more credible your site appears to search engine bots.
Here are some ways to gather backlinks for more website traffic:
Sometimes, webmasters prioritize backlinks while overlooking the importance of internal linking. However, both types of links play an equal role in driving traffic to your website.
Google uses internal and external links to determine the value of a page. When numerous links point to a page, Google deems that page important, resulting in higher rankings in search results.
When creating content, try to include relevant articles within your website. For example, if you write a blog post about starting a business, you can link back to an existing article about online business ideas.
Another benefit of internal linking is that it improves site navigation and user experience, encouraging visitors to stay on your website. It’s also a great way to share your content without overwhelming users with too much information and drive more traffic to other parts of your website.
Here are some tips to help you build a strong internal linking structure:
Site speed refers to the time it takes for users to access and interact with a website. It is a crucial aspect of the page experience, which directly influences Google ranking factors, user experience, dwell time, and conversion rates.
Generally, the faster a site loads, the better its SEO is. Research conducted by Google shows that the bounce rate increases by 32% as page load time changes from one second to three. Over half of the visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes over three seconds to load.
A useful, free tool for improving website speed is Google PageSpeed Insights. It analyzes the content of a webpage, provides detailed reporting on its performance on both mobile and desktop devices, and offers suggestions on what to improve.
Here are some tips to speed up your website’s load time:
In addition to the aspects above, many factors of web hosting, such as RAM, hard drive size, and bandwidth, impact site speed. This is why choosing the right hosting provider is important.
Hostinger offers different types of hosting to suit various needs. Webmasters who want to maintain great site speed can go for one of Hostinger’s cloud hosting packages, which come with plenty of SSD storage, RAM, unlimited bandwidth, and free CDN.

Facebook advertising is another effective way of driving visitors to your website. In 2023, Facebook had 2.9 billion monthly active users, making it the most active social media platform. By advertising your website on Facebook, you can reach many potential customers and drive more website traffic.
There are two ways to advertise on the platform ‒ boosting existing posts or using its Ads Manager.
Users can turn any Facebook post into an ad using the Boost Post feature. However, the Ads Manager may be a better option if you wish to create dedicated marketing campaigns with more customizable options.
Based on average costs, Facebook Ads are a cheaper alternative to search engine ads. The average cost per click (CPC) across all industries is $1.72. You choose the daily budget and ad duration.
The key to running a successful Facebook Ads campaign is ensuring every dollar counts. Do so by defining your Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion goals when creating a campaign:
After defining your goals, create a marketing campaign to catch your audience’s attention. Here are some suggestions on what to do to generate traffic via Facebook advertising:
YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform, with approximately 2.7 billion monthly active users. Such a large audience makes YouTube an excellent avenue for driving traffic to your website.
After creating a YouTube channel, post videos on various topics relevant to your industry. You can redirect viewers to your website, where they can find more information, an easy way to increase website traffic.
Here are some YouTube best practices to help drive traffic to your website:
Check out Hostinger Academy if you’re looking for inspiration for your YouTube channel.
Instagram is another popular social media site for digital marketing. It is best suited for those targeting young audiences, as over half of its users are under 35. As Facebook owns this social platform, Instagram Ads is similar to Facebook Ads.
There are two ways to advertise on Instagram ‒ via the multi-platform Facebook Ads Manager or by boosting existing posts. Although the latter is easier, the Ads Manager provides more features and customization options.
To achieve your goals, utilize various targeting options such as age, gender, language, and country available through the manager. Additionally, you can adjust your campaign budget, schedule, and placements.
Creating visually appealing campaigns is essential on Instagram, as it is a visual platform. There are many types of Instagram ads, including image, video, story, and carousel ads. Conduct split testing to know which type best fits your branding needs.
Here are some Instagram Ads best practices to drive traffic to your website:
Social media has transformed how people find what they need. Nowadays, they trust recommendations from their favorite influencers. Utilize this to your advantage by partnering with influencers who can promote your brand to their audience for a commission.
If affiliate marketing rewards individuals for driving sales or traffic via commission, influencer marketing leverages social media personalities to boost brand exposure. The former is performance-based, while the latter focuses on credibility and reach.
Unlike affiliates, influencers usually receive a fixed amount of commission regardless of sales or traffic. However, compensation is not limited to money. In some cases, merchants offer free products instead of or in addition to a fee. As long as all terms are agreed upon beforehand, there should be no issues.
Here are some tips to help establish your influencer marketing network and gain more website traffic:
One of the best ways to drive traffic to a specific page is by advertising it with a QR code, a two-dimensional barcode that users can scan using their smartphone camera.
The QR code is a blend of online and offline marketing. Advertisers strategically place it in public spaces, such as promotional posters or billboards, to maximize their visibility. You can also put your QR code on physical products and printed publications.
Users can scan the code with their mobile devices and get instantly redirected to your webpage. Doing so eliminates the need to manually type your site’s domain in their browser.
Besides driving users to specific pages, the QR code is also useful for providing business details, contact info, promotional messages, locations, and discounts.
Many QR code generators can help turn your URLs into scannable codes. However, like a call-to-action button, your QR code needs eye-catching visuals and enticing copy to encourage scanning.
Consider the following factors before generating a QR code:
Hostinger users can generate their QR codes instantly. Simply open your hPanel and navigate to Domains → Domain portfolio. Then, select the domain you want to create the QR code for. That’s it – in the Generate QR code window, click Generate.
Since QR codes often lead to web pages, making your site link memorable with a custom domain helps boost brand awareness. Hostinger, an ICANN-accredited domain registrar, offers a wide range of domain names for creating unique QR code destinations.
LinkedIn is ideal for targeting skilled professionals globally. It’s one of the best platforms to drive traffic to business-focused websites.
Once you’ve signed up, complete your LinkedIn profile. Include all the necessary information and keywords relevant to your niche to boost credibility and visibility. Remember to provide a link to your website and personalize your profile while maintaining a professional tone.
Like other social media platforms, being active on LinkedIn is key. Create valuable and insightful posts. Optimize your content by incorporating natural anchor text for links to your site.
Additionally, join relevant groups and interact with other members. Building networks and engagement helps increase website traffic for free and attracts potential customers and collaborations.
Another way to drive traffic to your site on LinkedIn is by running ad campaigns. Using the Campaign Manager, you can set up four types of campaigns ‒ sponsored content, sponsored messaging, dynamic ads, and text ads.
Choose from three categories of objectives:
You can also use LinkedIn’s targeting tools to reach audiences based on demographics, company, job experience, education, interests, and traits.
Remember to set the campaign budget and schedule. Track your ongoing campaign’s click-through rate (CTR) for future campaign optimizations.
Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, is an effective method for boosting referral traffic. It helps you reach a broad audience of readers with similar interests within your niche.
Submitting a guest post to reputable sites helps establish your authority and credibility in the industry. In return, the website you create content for usually allows backlinks to yours in the guest post, giving you a chance to increase website traffic.
Here’s how to increase traffic to your website with guest posts:
A webinar is an online event where hosts and panelists discuss and share knowledge on a specific topic, streaming live to a virtual audience. Promote your webinar through multiple channels, engage social media followers, and encourage them to generate buzz about the event.
Hosting a webinar is one way to increase traffic to your website for free. This strategy is also ideal for improving brand awareness and social media presence.
The interactive nature of webinars allows you to establish trust directly with your audience. For instance, you can host a webinar featuring a live Q&A session, where the audience can submit questions and actively participate in the discussion.
A high-quality webinar can boost brand authority and credibility. People will be more likely to visit and engage with your site if it offers valuable info and features industry experts.
After the webinar ends, use the session recording to generate free website traffic. Share the videos on your site or repurpose them into different types of content, including short and long-form copies, to market your site.
Hostinger often hosts webinars with IT experts on topics like WordPress SEO essentials and using social media to grow your business. Browse our recorded webinars for inspiration.
Take the following factors into account when preparing a webinar:
To host a successful webinar, you need a reliable and fast website that can handle real-time streaming and sudden visitor spikes. Consider migrating to Hostinger for enhanced security and speedy content delivery.
Online communities comprise people with shared interests gathered on social media or niche websites. Members exchange stories, ask questions, and discuss virtually any imaginable topic.
Participating in online communities within your industry may help boost organic traffic to your website. Those you meet are already interested in your niche and, therefore, will likely visit your site.
The key to promoting your site in online communities is to do it after establishing a strong relationship and trust with fellow community members. Join discussions, ask for advice, answer people’s questions, and help solve other members’ problems.
Promoting your brand immediately after becoming a member will make the interaction seem inorganic. A strong relationship makes the community more receptive to your business and open to visiting your website.
You can find various online communities on popular platforms like LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Reddit, and Quora. Alternatively, use Google to find niche communities and forums.
Find an online community that fits your niche. For example, Stack Overflow is a programming forum, while Warrior Forum caters to people interested in internet marketing.
Before sharing content, assess the community to ensure it’s the right place to promote your site. Research if similar content has been discussed and observe the engagement and reception.
After promoting your content, track and measure the volume of traffic to your site using Google Analytics. Identify communities that provide the most value and engagement to your website.
You can bring more traffic to your site by publishing relevant blog content on Medium, a popular blogging platform, and inserting links to your site in the posts.
The platform covers a wide range of topics, increasing the chance of finding your target audience there. Numerous businesses use Medium to publish content and increase brand awareness among potential customers.
Another benefit of using Medium is that you can make money blogging by joining the Partner Program. Write compelling blog posts on the platform and earn commission based on the total read time. The longer people spend reading your article, the more you’ll make.
Here are some helpful tips on driving traffic to your website via Medium:
If you are a webmaster, learning how to drive traffic to your website is a must. While there are different types of website traffic, you should focus on two ‒ organic traffic, which comes from search engines, and paid traffic, generated by advertisements.
We’ve shared the top free and paid methods to drive traffic to your website. If you’re unsure where to start, we recommend the following strategies:
We hope this article has given you insights on how to get traffic to your website. Since there are multiple ways to increase website traffic, make sure to test and find out which strategy fits your needs best. Good luck!
Comments
September 29 2020
Very helpful. I am a newbie with email marketing and currently using Udimi.
October 01 2020
Very helpful. I am using Udimi and your tips will help me in my campaign.