You have chosen a good blogging niche and designed your website. Now, all you need to do is figure out how to get traffic to your website so you can start making money with your affiliate links.
From social media to SEO hacks, this article will help you determine what channels you should explore to increase traffic on your affiliate marketing website. The best part is all our hacks will not cost you a single cent.
What is website traffic?
In short, website traffic tells you the number of visitors to your website in a specified period. Your website analytics will often give you a break down of the number of website visitors and the number of unique page views.
The more targeted website traffic you have, the more opportunities to convert a high number of users using your affiliate links, the more revenue you will generate.
Here are the top 5 ways to increase traffic to your website
1. Optimize your website for search
Once you have a blogging niche, spend time doing keyword research and select a group of keywords you want to prioritize and carry out throughout your blog content. Typically, you will have one or two main keywords that you will use on every single webpage alongside other keywords in line with your topic. There are several free SEO tools like Keywords Everywhere and KWFinder you can use to help you find the relevant keywords for your blog.
Focus on keywords that have a search difficulty of 30 and below that have a monthly search volume of under 10,000 searches. After accumulating a fair number of blog content and your blog has gained some authority, you can then focus on using keywords with a higher search volume.
2. Submit your site to search engines
Search engines are where your audience find your blog and works hand in hand with SEO. By submitting your site to search engines you allow them to crawl on your webpages and index your website, this, in turn, increases your chances of appearing result pages for relevant searches.
To index your blog on google: submit your website via Search Console.
To index your blog Yahoo and Bing: Learn how to submit URLs here.
3. Build backlinks
Building out your backlinks is not an easy task, but, it is an equally important component to SEO. Having external sites link your site signals google that your website is credible and relevant to the words in the anchor text (the clickable words in a hyperlink).
Over and above SEO, backlinks allow you to gain potential traffic from the website that is referencing yours.
4. Study your competitors
We are familiar with the saying 'good artists copy, great artists steal'. Before you start any form of business, always start with a competitor analysis, this will save you money and time. In this context, knowing what traffic channels your competitors use will give you a hint on which to prioritize to thrive in your niche.
Try out tools like Alexa, Similarweb and Serpstat to uncover where your competition is sourcing its traffic, backlinks and what keywords they are using. All you need to do is copy and paste their URL in the search bar on those SEO tools, just like that, you have uncovered a gold mine. Whichever traffic source is the top choice is the one you should invest in.
5. Optimize your content for long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are keywords or key phrases that are usually longer and more specific than more commonly searched for keywords. 'Affiliate Marketing' is a short tail keyword, 'Best Affiliate Marketing network in South Africa' is a long-tail keyword. Long-tail keywords have smaller search volumes and therefore have less competition. They make it easier to guess the searchers intent and will yield more conversions.
6. Add new content regularly and consistently
Google factors in how fresh your content is to rank your website, updating your content and uploading new material consistently keep your blog relevant and guarantees you more visitors.
By virtue, it is good for SEO and gives your readers a reason to come back to your blog. Let them know how often and when you upload new material or even give hints on the next posts topic to lure them back to your website.
7. Use Facebook to drive website traffic
Facebook is not as vibey as it used to be, even so, organic reach on the platform has plummeted as Facebook gives preference to posts from user's family members and close friends. This does not mean you should disregard it as a traffic source. You can generate tons of traffic to your website by sharing your blog posts in Facebook groups relevant to your niche, using Facebook Ads, adding a social post on your timeline and business page and of course sharing via messenger.
8. Try out Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the sworn ways to get massive traffic flowing to your website. Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social platform, by pinning your blog content several times per week, the traffic generated from Pinterest can outperform platforms like Facebook. Once your pin goes viral, you can get endless streams of traffic to your blog. The best part, your pinned content will always remain relevant for as long as it is on the platform.
9. Participate in forums
Forums are digital communities where people ask questions and have discussions about any given topic. Some famous and all known forums include Yahoo Answers, Quora and Reddit. The idea is, if your blog serves a need, there is a group of people that are asking questions that your blog answers.
Bear in mind that your participation in forums should not be salesy. Even though the objective is to acquire traffic, your contribution should be organic. You need to add value to the reader, earn respect and build relationships before you start promoting your business. Only then should you add links to your affiliate marketing website, this can also partially help you build backlinks.
10. Leverage your best traffic source
Now that you have explored all the free traffic sources for your affiliate marketing website, dive into your web analytics and determine what your best traffic source is. Below are a few questions to help you conclude:
- Which sources send the highest volumes of traffic?
- Which sources send the highest-converting traffic?
- Which sources send the most engaged traffic?
Once you have outlined this, assess why those traffic sources are effective. Then double your efforts on it. That is optimization in a nutshell.