24 Effective Ways to Drive Website Traffic in 2025 (Complete Guide)

Driving traffic to websites gets increasingly difficult with each passing year. The days of identifying relevant keywords and writing long-form content to attract qualified traffic are long gone. Today, marketers are not just competing against themselves. They must also compete with Google’s products, like AI overviews and featured snippets. Searchers’ behavior has also shifted massively with the rise of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. The good news is that Gen AI platforms are not replacing Google. Reports suggest that users are using the platforms to complement traditional search engines, which is why Google searches increased by 21.64% in 2024 despite ChatGPT’s continued adoption. However, you must adapt your digital marketing strategy to the new user behavior to continue driving qualified traffic to your website. So, here are 24 proven ways on how to drive traffic to your website in 2025. Drive more qualified traffic with email marketing Create lead magnets, build an email list, and create traffic that converts, and generates sales all within Getresponse! Through Email marketing Many businesses ignore email marketing and its great potential as a high converting traffic source. At GetResponse we surveyed over 1000 marketers, and more than 60% are actively investing their time and attention into email marketing today. Moreover, 26.9% said email marketing was delivering the highest ROI. Here’s how you can properly use email marketing to increase traffic and conversions. 1. Create a Lead Magnet This is a crucial first step to attract qualified traffic to your website and build a valuable audience. A lead magnet serves two purposes: it brings new visitors to your site and helps you grow an email list of your ideal audience — people you can reach anytime to promote new products, offer exclusive discounts, or educate them about your solutions to generate demand. A lead magnet can take many forms, as long as it’s gated behind a signup form. Examples include: An ebook Free software or tool Giveaway or contest Webinar Ticket lottery Excel or Google Sheets template A free course or course preview With tools like GetResponse, you can easily create a landing page to promote your lead magnet. The landing page should feature a signup form asking for basic details like name and email. Once someone signs up, you can deliver the free resource via a thank-you page and also send a follow-up email with a link to access the lead magnet. It’s also highly recommended to integrate your lead magnet with your social media channels. This will help you generate more shares, comments, followers, and ultimately more website traffic. Over time, you can convert those followers into loyal subscribers. 2. Send Targeted Emails to Your List Once you’ve built your email list through your lead magnet, the next step is to engage, educate, and convert your subscribers. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to nurture your audience, build trust, and drive more traffic and sales. Here’s how you can make the most of your list: Welcome new subscribers with an automated email series that introduces your brand and delivers the promised lead magnet. Educate your audience by sharing tips, guides, and use cases related to your product or service. This positions you as an expert and builds credibility. Promote your offers by announcing new products, running limited-time discounts, or inviting subscribers to exclusive events or webinars. Drive traffic back to your website or online store by linking to blog articles, product pages, or landing pages with clear calls to action. With GetResponse, you can automate your email campaigns, segment your audience based on their interests and behaviors, and track performance to continually improve your strategy. Features like pre-built templates, automation workflows, and advanced analytics make it easier to turn your email list into a revenue-generating asset. By combining a compelling lead magnet with a targeted email marketing strategy, you can build lasting relationships with your audience and consistently grow your business. Through content 1. Maintain a blog Businesses with blogs get 55% more website traffic and generate 67% more leads than those without blogs. The truth is that customers will rarely buy from you if they don’t know who you are. It is usually said that a customer must interact with a business seven times (the rule of 7) before they consider doing business with that brand. A blog is one of the best ways to increase customer touchpoints. Not only that, but it also allows you to demonstrate your expertise and cultivate a relationship with potential and existing customers. This is not just helpful for your customers. It also helps with search engines. With a blog, you can focus on creating content around a specific topic or niche. The more you cover this topic, the more search engines associate your brand with that niche. As a result, you will start appearing on the search engine results pages when users search for things related to that niche. That results in more traffic and more potential leads landing on your website. Finally, a blog is a great way to generate leads. The blog brings people to your website. Once they’re there, you can use other techniques like content upgrades and exit-intent popups to capture email addresses of the website visitors. This technique helps you build an email list, where you can interact with the potential customers further and promote your products over time. 2. Create high-quality, relevant content A blog will not help your brand much unless you fill it with high-quality, relevant content. Users want helpful content that helps them resolve a pain point or achieve a particular goal. Your objective is to identify the pain points or goals and create relevant content that helps these users. You can use keyword research tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to identify such pain points. The goal is to find relevant keywords that allow you to create content that aligns with both your target audience’s needs and your business goals. Take GetResponse as an example. Most of our target audience is made up of marketers. One of the things marketers struggle with the most is generating qualified leads. We help to resolve this pain point by writing blog posts on relevant topics like this one you’re reading. Therefore, after identifying relevant keywords, write high-quality content that addresses the search intent and helps readers achieve their goals. You can use SEO writing tools like Surfer and Copyscape to help you write quality content that’ll perform well on search engines. These tools give you a content score based on how thoroughly you’ve covered a topic. It’s also important to ensure the users are engaged and do not abandon your content halfway. To that end, include visuals like images and videos, break up the content into subheadings using H2s and H3s, use bullet points, and adopt a conversational tone. We talked about AI products like Google AI overviews taking up significant real estate on the search engine results pages. To avoid competing with them, avoid generic top-of-the-funnel content. Instead, focus on addressing critical pain points that require subject matter expertise. What’s your most effective strategy for driving website traffic in 2025? 3. Repurpose content into different formats Unfortunately, creating quality content is an expensive endeavor. You’ll need to pay for the keyword research tools, content writing, optimization tools, and so on. It can get very expensive, which is why you must learn to repurpose your content. Content repurposing helps you get optimal ROI from each piece of content you invest in. So, take that blog post and use it to create a video script. You can then create an engaging video on the same topic. Distribute this video on different platforms, including social media. You can also embed it in the blog post itself for users who prefer watching videos to reading the content. That’s what we’ve done on this post. You can also repurpose your blog post into an email, social media post, etc. Basically, every piece of content that can be repurposed for several marketing channels should be repurposed. Also, you don’t always need an expert to help repurpose. As long as the original piece of content is of high quality, you can use generative AI platforms like Gemini and Perplexity to help repurpose that content for other channels. 4. Create engaging video content 86% of businesses report that video content has been instrumental in driving traffic to their websites. Moreover, users stick around on pages with videos three times longer than on pages without videos. Another 87% of marketers say that videos have helped them generate more leads. That’s the power of an effective video content marketing strategy. As mentioned above, you can start by creating video content to accompany blog posts. This is a technique used by many brands, including GetResponse. But it’s not just about repurposing your blog content. You can also create original video content for different functions. For example, you can build tutorial videos and case studies/customer testimonial videos. These types of videos are instrumental for converting leads and helping them get maximum value from your product. Another clever idea is to create video content showcasing your brand. Customers love a relatable brand. But they can only relate to your brand when they know how it operates. To that end, you can create content like behind-the-scenes videos where you take users through the process of how the products they love are made. You can also showcase the people making your products through employee highlights. Even fun video content featuring employees, as shown below, can help give your brand a unique personality and attract more customers. Source These kinds of videos perform really well, especially on social media. They help capture the attention and interest of users, some of whom will eventually visit your website. 5. Informational podcast Podcasting is another strategy that can help you drive traffic to your website. This strategy is very similar to blogging in that you identify relevant issues or goals among your target market. Then, you create high-quality content (so audio content in the case of podcasts) to address these issues. That said, driving traffic to your website from a podcast is much harder. If you think about it, most people listen to podcasts while engaging in other activities. That makes it harder for them to move from the podcast to your website. However, you can use several techniques to encourage podcast listeners to visit your website. For example, you can promote exclusive time-limited offers on the podcast. Mention the discount code in the podcast or share a link to the offer in the show notes. This will likely attract more people to your website. But besides that, you can enjoy other additional benefits of podcasting. For example, it helps with building brand awareness. A podcast also presents a unique opportunity to host interesting guests with whom you could collaborate to enhance your marketing efforts. 6. Build email newsletters Email newsletters are a great tool to ensure first-time site visitors turn into return visitors. A great newsletter strategy works alongside a good blog. Remember when we talked about creating content upgrades and signup forms and using them to capture email addresses from your blog visitors? Use these email addresses to build a high-quality email list. Next, plan out your email newsletter schedule and content plan. What content will your newsletter cover, and how often will you send the newsletter? A consistent schedule ensures that your subscribers know when to expect your emails. But that is nowhere as critical as making sure the content is valuable. Use your newsletter to distribute useful information. This nurtures your relationship with subscribers and ensures they continue engaging with your newsletters. You can then include a few links to your website, where they can find additional resources or claim the offers shared in the newsletter. That said, avoid common email marketing mistakes like bombarding subscribers with too many emails or including too many links in your newsletters. Also, make sure to segment your email list to run personalized campaigns. Lastly, A/B test your newsletters and use the data to tweak your strategy accordingly. 7. Write guest posts Guest posting is a popular link-building technique. The premise is very simple. You come up with a topic you’re an expert in and write an educational blog post on behalf of another website. The post will then be published on that website (typically for free), and in exchange, you get a backlink pointing back to your website. They also let you add an author bio with your name and a link to your website. Guest posts increase your website traffic in two major ways. First, they boost your SEO. Quality guest posts published on high-authority websites give you high-quality backlinks. These backlinks signal to search engines that your website is a good source of quality information. As a result, you’ll see your search performance improve significantly, leading to more organic search traffic. Guest posts can also boost referral traffic. A guest post published on a popular and relevant blog gives you massive exposure. Think about getting featured on the HubSpot blog (if you’re in the marketing niche), for example. Or on NerdWallet if you’re in finance. Some of the audience from these blogs will inevitably Google or follow the links to check out your brand. You can learn more about guest posting here. But basically, you need to focus on a few things: Identify high-quality blogs with growing website traffic and a high domain authority Pitch relevant content ideas that will benefit the website and fall within your area of expertise Write quality content because it will reflect on your expertise Use SEO tools like Semrush and Surfer to identify content ideas and write optimized guest posts. Build your online presence with GetResponse tools Create professional websites, landing pages, and email campaigns that drive traffic and convert visitors into customers. Our all-in-one platform makes digital marketing simple and effective. Through SEO 8. Target relevant keywords Use keyword research tools to identify relevant keywords that your target audience uses when searching for solutions online. Then, understand the search intent behind each of those keywords and write relevant content that will help you rank for the keywords and meet the user’s expectations. The best practice here is to avoid broad keywords. Not only are these highly competitive, but they also attract a broad audience that is less likely to convert into leads. Instead, narrow down your keyword research into more specific keyword ideas that align closely with your product offerings. This is where long-tail keywords come in. For example, “email marketing” vs “email marketing tools for nonprofits”. The latter is more specific and less competitive. Besides the primary keywords (main focus of a content piece), try to identify secondary or supporting keywords and incorporate them into each content piece. This technique allows a single blog post to rank for multiple keywords to pull even more organic traffic. Keyword research tools should help you identify all these keywords. 9. Link internally to high-quality pages Internal linking is a powerful onsite SEO strategy. This technique gives search engines more context on how your web pages relate to one another. The anchor texts you use also help search engine crawlers understand what each page is about. This makes it easier for search engines to understand your entire website and serve relevant pages on the SERPs. Strategic internal linking isn’t just good for search engine crawlers. It also helps your readers discover related pages where they can find more information on different topics. This contributes to keeping readers on your website. Identify related pages on your website and make sure to interlink them. Make sure to use descriptive anchor texts, but do not use the same anchor text for the same page too many times. Vary the anchor texts. For example, the anchor text in this post is relevant to the page we’re linking to. Finally, make sure each page has a reasonable number of internal links. Too many links on one post can look spammy and hurt the user experience. 10. Focus on external link building External link building involves building backlinks to your website from high-authority sites. Search engines use backlinks as signals. The more high-quality links you have pointing to your website, the more visibility you’ll see on the search results. Guest posting is one of the most popular link-building techniques. But you can complement it with link insertions. Unlike guest posting, where you write an article from scratch, link insertion allows you to get your link added to an existing post. You must identify a relevant post on a relevant website and pitch to the editor explaining why your link should be added, i.e., what extra value will it provide to their readers? Another great way to build links is by creating high-quality resources. Think about original research or reports, free tools, and templates. These resources are more expensive to create, but they attract backlinks with little to no input from you. A resource like original research can also help establish your place in the industry. For example, at GetResponse, we frequently conduct and publish research on email marketing. These reports are some of our best-performing pieces of content. They drive a lot of relevant traffic to our website and have helped us win some really good backlinks. For example, the above report has won us backlinks from top sites including HubSpot, Shopify, and OptinMonster. Consider doing the same thing but for your industry. What relevant tool or report could you create that would add value to your audience? 11. Update your content regularly Don’t focus too much on producing new content and forget some of the gems that already exist on your blog. Audit your blog regularly and update any outdated pieces of content. Ideally, you shouldn’t have a blog post that is older than 2 years. Go through these posts to make sure all the concepts are still relevant. Where you mentioned statistics, look for the latest data. Remember, search engines always want to deliver the most up-to-date information to users. That’s why, at times, the difference between a post ranking at position 4 and position 1 comes down to which one has the latest information. Yet, the difference in CTR between position 4 (8.4%) and 1 (27.6%) is 19.2% more website traffic. 12. Improve page speed 40% of shoppers will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. The more people bounce from your website, the worse it looks to search engines. These bounces send negative signals, and they’ll eventually affect your entire website’s performance on search engines. Don’t let it get to that. Compress images and videos, clean up your site’s code, move to a faster web hosting service provider, and delete unnecessary plugins to optimize your site speed. Another effective way to speed up your site is to use a content delivery network (CDN). This ensures that users can access your website from servers close to their geographical location. This results in faster server response times and enhances the user experience. You can also use caching, which is often available within most web hosting plans. Caching stores a static version of your website to reduce HTTP requests on the servers. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can help test your site speed. Aim for an LCP of under 2.5 seconds. 13. Make your site mobile-friendly A mobile-friendly website is responsive, which means it adjusts to fit the various screen sizes of mobile devices. This is more about enhancing the user experience than anything else. Search engines like Google have adopted a mobile-first indexing approach where they use the mobile version of your website for indexing. That means responsive, mobile-friendly websites are more likely to perform better in the search results. So, as you build your website, make sure it is responsive and works perfectly on both desktop and mobile devices. The menus, images, form fields, and other elements should render correctly on mobile devices. The good news is that top website-building tools, like GetResponse’s AI website builder, create responsive websites right out of the box. You can get a mobile usability report on your website from Google Search Console. Check under Experience, then Core Web Vitals. 14. Consider local SEO This is vital for any business that serves a local community. Think restaurants, salons, spas, and gyms. Local SEO will ensure that your local business shows up on the local Google Maps and for “near me” searches. The first step is to claim and optimize your Google Business Profile. Google uses this profile to understand your business and place you in relevant search results. Claim the profile and fill out the details. Make sure to indicate your business’s industry, operating hours, location, contact number, and share some photos of your business. You also want to enable user reviews and encourage customers to leave positive reviews. Good reviews signal that your business delivers quality services. This will help search engines prioritize your establishment on the results pages. Also, it attracts more traffic to your business website and foot traffic to your establishment as prospective customers want to engage with brands that deliver quality services. Check out this business profile that ticks all the boxes. In addition to setting up your Google Business Profile, make sure you’re listed in local business directories. This is another excellent way to increase the discoverability of your business. Through social media 15. Promote your site on social media Admittedly, driving traffic from social media platforms to your website is much harder. Most social platforms have implemented mechanisms to discourage this. For example, they limit the places you can share external links. They want to keep users on their platforms. Still, you can use several techniques to promote your site on social media and generate some traffic. First, optimize your profile by including your business name, profile picture, relevant bio, and link to your website. Here’s our Instagram profile, for example. With your profile all set, turn your attention to creating quality content. Social platforms thrive on engaging visual content, so create a lot of high-quality videos and images. Besides the link in bio, platforms like Instagram also provide a URL feature for Instagram stories. This is another tool you can use to promote your site. But don’t limit yourself to standard social media posts. Take advantage of additional features like quizzes and polls. Use these to engage your audience within the platform. You can also promote your site on social media platforms through contests and giveaways. These are some of the best ways to get people to visit your site. Come up with exciting prizes and partner with influencers where possible to promote your giveaways and contests. Which traffic generation method has worked best for your business – SEO, social media, or paid advertising? 16. Post consistently Consistency builds brand trust and credibility. Also, it helps you stay top of mind as users consistently come across your social media posts. Algorithms also love consistency. Posting on a consistent schedule positions you as a reliable source of content, and this can increase your visibility on social media. It also builds your momentum and helps grow your social media presence. So, create a content calendar that allows you to post consistently each week. For most platforms, 3-7 times per week is sufficient. That’s because you also don’t want to overload your followers with too many posts. Plus, you shouldn’t prioritize volume over quality and consistency. That said, you can get away with more posts per week (2-4 posts daily) when working with social platforms like Pinterest and Twitter. Understand each platform you want to use and customize your strategy accordingly. 17. Add social sharing buttons Social sharing buttons let you use your own audience to promote your site. You can add these buttons to your blog and even marketing emails. Then, ask your readers to share the content on their platforms. This technique turns your existing audience into brand ambassadors. Also, since the content is shared by friends, not some brand, more people will likely visit your site and interact with the content. You can easily add social sharing buttons using WordPress plugins. The best email marketing service providers also offer the option of adding social sharing buttons within your emails. 18. Leverage user-generated content User-generated content is content produced by your own customers. This is one of the most effective types of content because it is authentic and trustworthy. Customers trust the word of fellow customers more than they do branded messages, which is why 93% of them read reviews before making a purchase. Source User-generated content doesn’t just drive user engagement and traffic; it also wins you customer trust, which helps you convert more prospects into loyal customers. Encourage your most satisfied customers to create content talking about their experience with your product. You can even incentivize them with discounts or offers, but make it clear that you want a genuine review. Share these customer stories on your socials. You can also create a dedicated hashtag just for this. Something similar to #mycalvins by Calvin Klein or #ShotoniPhone by Apple. The more UGC you reshare, the more customers will create the content. So don’t stop engaging with and resharing all the user-generated content. Other effective methods 19. Run paid ads So far, all the techniques we’ve discussed require time before they start producing results. That’s not the case with paid ads, though. With paid advertising, you can drive traffic to your website immediately. And the best part about paid ads is that you get to choose exactly who you want to see your ads. You can do paid ads on social media and search engine platforms like Google. In both cases, you get robust ad management platforms that let you choose the audience you want to target. Meta, for example, lets you select the demographics (age and location) as well as the interests of the target audience. This ensures that your ads only appear in front of audiences that align with your ideal customer profile. Both platforms are also great options for running retargeting campaigns. They’ll let you install a tracking pixel on your website to track website visitors. You can then create compelling Meta and Google ads to retarget any site visitors who do not convert. Paid ads are a proven way to drive traffic to your website, but you must get your ad creatives right. A/B test different offers and creatives to see what works with your audience. Use Google Analytics to track how much website traffic comes from your paid advertising campaigns. You also want to complement your ads with an equally brilliant landing page. Make sure the landing page copy and offer align with the ad creative. Online community forums like Reddit and Quora have been enjoying enormous visibility on search platforms recently. This has presented brands with various opportunities. But you must first build an online community. An online community brings like-minded individuals together. Of course, you want the community to be around a topic or subject in your industry. For example, GetResponse would build a community of marketers or email marketers to align with our area of expertise. Once you have a solid goal for the community, figure out the platform to host your community. Reddit and Quora are two obvious options. Still, you can create a Facebook group, Discord channel, or build your own community from scratch using online community platforms like Mighty Networks and GetResponse. Source The next step is creating engaging conversations and encouraging community members to participate. The truth is, you’ll need to do a lot of the heavy lifting until your community takes off. Once that’s done, you can simply let the community members take the control seat. Your role will shift to that of a moderator. With the community in place, you’ll now have a platform where you can promote your offers, share your latest blog posts, and provide company updates. Just make sure that you do not do that too much. The community should focus on delivering maximum value to its members, not promoting products. 21. Host webinars Webinars present a unique opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and interact with your audience. The idea here is to identify a crucial topic your target audience struggles with. You then bring together a panel featuring speakers or guests who are experts in the subject. Then, you host the webinar and educate your attendees on the subject. At the end of the session, the webinar attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions. You can have your experts address these questions. Finally, conclude the webinar by asking the attendees to perform a specific action, like signing up for a one-on-one consultation or claiming a particular offer. The beauty with webinars is that they can remain useful long after the live event. You can create a dedicated page on your website to provide on-demand recorded webinars, for example. Like our webinar library page. You can also use them as lead magnets to capture email addresses. These webinars will attract traffic and generate leads as long as the subject remains relevant. Just make sure to promote your webinars extensively via social media, email newsletter, your website, and even paid ads. 22. Build affiliate and influencer marketing campaigns You don’t have to do all the marketing yourself. Partnering with affiliates and influencers is one effective way to drive qualified traffic to your website and even generate sales. Create an affiliate program where other internet marketers can sign up to promote your product in exchange for a commission on each sale. GetResponse, for example, has one of the most incredible affiliate programs, giving affiliates up to 60% in commission from each referral. Similarly, you can partner with influencers by giving them unique codes to promote your product. Affiliate and influencer marketing programs allow you to lend the credibility of different personalities. Remember, the best affiliates and influencers have worked hard to build audiences that trust them. A recommendation from these personalities will ensure their audiences check out your website. The name of the game here is to create affiliate and influencer programs that are easy to join and have reasonable commissions. You can also go the extra mile by providing marketing materials and educating your affiliates and influencers on how to best promote your products. 23. Create dedicated landing pages Sometimes the best way to drive traffic to your website is through a dedicated landing page, not the standard homepage. This is usually the case when you have multiple product lines. A dedicated landing page for each product line gives you enough real estate to tell the readers exactly how each product benefits them. GetResponse is a good example of this. Our marketing platform has a ton of tools, ranging from email marketing software to marketing automation and an online course builder. We’ve created separate landing pages for each of these vital tools to ensure our users can easily understand the value they provide. Dedicated landing pages also support your search engine optimization efforts. It’s easier to rank a page focused on a single topic, e.g., “online course builder,” than a standard homepage that covers multiple topics. Use the GetResponse landing page creator tool to build your custom landing pages. Our tool also provides various templates for different industries to simplify the process. 24. Run public relations campaigns Public relations is proving to be really useful, especially with the rise of generative AI. Gen AI platforms seem to analyze the context around how a brand is mentioned and how often it is mentioned. Brands that get mentioned a lot around a particular context stand a higher chance of appearing in Gen AI results for relevant search queries. More studies are being conducted to see exactly how brands can optimize their websites for Gen AI. Still, we cannot dispute the potential of a good digital PR campaign and media coverage. Think about newsworthy content you can produce and pitch your idea to journalists covering stories in your niche. You can also write press releases when you have important news, like a new executive joining your team, a new product launch, a new funding round, etc. Distribute these press releases to relevant media publications. These stories can help you earn media coverage that will boost brand awareness and potentially drive more traffic to your website. In closing The truth is, you’ll need several strategies to drive traffic to your website. This article has shown you how to drive traffic to your website in 24 different ways. Some techniques, like SEO and social media campaigns, will require time to produce results. On the other hand, you have options like paid ads, affiliate, and influencer marketing campaigns that can generate traffic instantly. Combine these efforts to maximize your results.Affiliate and influencer

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