How to increase website traffic: 12 ways that work without ads

How do you increase website traffic without ads?

Increase website traffic without ads by first winning more clicks from searches where your pages already appear, then adding and linking pages for real queries, and finally widening your reach to Bing, AI search, local results, email and communities. The first group is cheapest because Google is already showing your pages; you only have to move them up or make them more clickable.

This guide is about getting more traffic. If your traffic just fell and you want to know why, start with why did my website traffic drop instead. If you want to know how much traffic you have, see how to check website traffic.

Which traffic tactic should you start with?

Start with the tactics that use data you already have and need the least work: page-two queries, skipped results and decaying pages. The table ranks all twelve by effort and by how soon you can expect to see a change. Effort and timing are our estimates for a typical small site, not measured figures.

Ways 1–4: Get more clicks from pages Google already shows

The quickest organic traffic gains come from pages that already appear in search: move the ones just off page one up, make skipped results more clickable, refresh pages that are slipping, and stop your own pages competing with each other. All four start in the Search Console Performance report, which shows clicks, impressions, click rate and average position by query, page, country, device and date.

1. Push page-two queries onto page one

What to do: In Performance → Search results, open the Queries tab, show average position, and sort or filter for queries at roughly position 8 to 20 with a meaningful number of impressions. For each, open the page that ranks, search the query yourself, and add what the top results cover that your page does not: a missing step, a clearer answer near the top, a table, your own example. Link to the page from a related page that already gets clicks.

How to check it worked: Filter the report to that page and query, and compare the 28 days after the change with the 28 days before. Impressions and average position usually move before clicks do. Our average position guide explains why the average can wobble.

Effort: Low to medium: an hour or two per page.

2. Fix titles and snippets people skip

What to do: Find queries where you rank in the top five but the click rate is well below your other results at a similar position. Rewrite the title so it names exactly what the page offers, and write a meta description that gives the specifics a searcher wants (price, date, number of steps). Google's snippet documentation says snippets come mainly from page content and the meta description is used when it describes the page more accurately, so make the first paragraph a clear summary too.

How to check it worked: The query's click rate at a similar average position, before and after. If the position stayed the same and the click rate rose, the new title and snippet are doing the work.

Effort: Low: minutes per page.

3. Refresh pages that are losing clicks

What to do: Compare the last 28 days with the previous 28 (or the same period last year for seasonal topics) on the Pages tab, and sort by the change in clicks. Open the biggest losers and look for what went stale: old prices, outdated screenshots, steps that no longer work, a newer competing page that answers better. Update the substance, not just the date; Google's helpful content guidance lists changing dates to seem fresh without substantive changes as a warning sign.

How to check it worked: The page's clicks in the 28 days after the update against the 28 before. If the drop was sudden and site-wide rather than one page, use the traffic drop guide instead.

Effort: Medium: a few hours per page.

4. Merge pages that compete for the same query

What to do: On the Queries tab, click a query and switch to Pages. If two of your pages share its impressions, pick the better one, move the useful parts of the other into it, and redirect or clearly differentiate the weaker page. Our keyword cannibalization guide walks through the decision.

How to check it worked: The query should settle on one page in the Pages view, and that page's impressions should rise as the other's fall.

Effort: Medium: an afternoon per pair.

Ways 5–7: Add and connect pages for real queries

Once existing pages are in order, write new pages for queries you already have evidence for, link them from your strongest pages, and make sure Google crawls them. New pages take the longest to pay off, so choose topics where you already see demand rather than guessing.

5. Write new pages for real queries

What to do: Look in Search Console for queries where you get impressions but no page truly answers them; often an existing page ranks at position 30 or lower because it mentions the topic in passing. Customer emails, sales calls and support tickets are the other good source. Write one page per distinct need, answering it in the first paragraph. Do not make a page for every wording of the same question; Google's spam policies treat mass-produced low-value pages made to game rankings as scaled content abuse.

How to check it worked: The new page appears in the Pages tab with impressions for the query you targeted. Give it a few weeks before judging clicks. Our plan for how to rank on Google covers the steps for a single page.

Effort: High: a day or more per page, done well.

6. Add internal links to pages that are close

What to do: For each page from way 1, find two or three of your pages that already get clicks and already mention its topic, and link the existing words to it. Google's link documentation says every page you want found should be linked from at least one other page, using normal <a href> links with descriptive anchor text in context, not clusters of links. Fix orphan pages that nothing links to.

How to check it worked: The target page's impressions and average position over the following weeks. In Search Console's Links report, its internal link count should go up.

Effort: Low: minutes per link.

7. Get new and updated pages crawled

What to do: Keep an XML sitemap listing your indexable pages and submit it in Search Console. For a few important new or changed URLs, use URL Inspection and request indexing. Google's recrawl documentation says asking several times for the same URL won't speed it up, and that crawling can take a few days to a few weeks.

How to check it worked: URL Inspection shows the new crawl date and whether the page is indexed.

Effort: Low: minutes.

Ways 8–9: Reach Bing and AI search

Google is not the only search engine sending visitors: add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, notify Bing of changes with IndexNow, and make sure AI search crawlers are allowed to read your pages. Both are mostly one-off set-up work.

8. Add your site to Bing

What to do: Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and import your sites from Google Search Console. Bing's import guide says imported sites are verified automatically and traffic data can take up to 48 hours to appear. Then set up IndexNow, a protocol that tells participating engines (Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep) when a URL is added, changed or removed, instead of waiting for a routine crawl. Many CMS plugins and CDNs offer it. Our Bing Webmaster Tools guide has the full setup.

How to check it worked: Bing's Search Performance report shows clicks and impressions once data arrives, and URL Inspection shows whether a page is indexed.

Effort: Low: under an hour.

9. Be visible in AI search

What to do: For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google's AI features documentation says there are no additional requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet, so ways 1 to 7 already apply. For ChatGPT search, OpenAI's crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot decides which sites can surface, and sites that opt out won't appear in ChatGPT search answers (though they may still show as navigational links). Check your robots.txt, and any bot protection on your CDN, does not block the search crawlers you want. Our guide to AI crawlers in robots.txt lists the tokens, and how to get cited in AI Overviews covers Google's side.

How to check it worked: Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the Web search type in Search Console. For ChatGPT and other assistants, look for their referrals in your analytics, and ask them the questions your customers ask to see whether you are named. See how to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand.

Effort: Low to check; earning citations is the same ongoing content work as ways 1 to 6.

Ways 10–12: Local results, email and communities

Three channels you control send traffic without waiting for rankings: your Google Business Profile for local searches, your email list, and the communities where your customers already talk.

10. Complete your Google Business Profile

What to do: If you serve customers in a place, verify your Business Profile and keep the address, hours, category and attributes accurate, reply to reviews, and add real photos. Google's local ranking help page says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, with prominence drawing on things like links from other sites and the number and rating of reviews. It also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Put your website link on the profile.

How to check it worked: The profile's own performance view shows website clicks; in analytics, look for visits from Google that land on the URL you set on the profile.

Effort: Low: an hour to set up, minutes a week to keep up.

11. Send new and updated pages to your email list

What to do: When you publish or substantially update a useful page, send it to subscribers with one sentence on why it helps them. Add a sign-up form to the pages that already get the most search traffic, so search visitors become repeat visitors you can reach without a ranking.

How to check it worked: Tag the links with UTM parameters and read them in your analytics as email visits. Watch sign-ups per month from your top pages.

Effort: Low per send; building the list is ongoing.

12. Share in communities and on social

What to do: Answer questions where your customers ask them (forums, groups, industry communities) and link to your page only when it is the best answer. Google's SEO Starter Guide names word of mouth as one of the most effective long-term ways to promote a site, and warns that overpromoting can backfire. People who find a page useful may also link to it, which helps search too.

How to check it worked: Referral visits by source in analytics, and new linking sites in Search Console's Links report over the following months.

Effort: Medium and ongoing.

How do you measure whether website traffic went up?

Measure search traffic in Search Console and all traffic in your analytics tool, compare equal periods before and after each change, and keep a dated log of what you changed so you can tell which tactic worked.

1. Keep a change log

   One line per change: the date, the page, what you did and which tactic it was. Without it, a rise three weeks later is impossible to attribute.

2. Compare 28 days with 28 days

   In the Performance report, compare the period after a change with the same length before it, filtered to the page. Use the same period last year for seasonal sites.

3. Read impressions, then clicks

   Impressions show whether Google shows the page more; clicks show whether people choose it. Ways 1, 5 and 6 move impressions first; way 2 moves clicks at the same impressions.

4. Split by channel in analytics

   Organic search, referral, email and AI assistant visits each answer for different tactics. Our guide to checking website traffic explains where each number comes from.

A one-week starting plan

If you have Search Console data and a few hours a week, this order gets the most from them; it is our suggestion, not a guaranteed result.

• Day 1: add the site to Bing by importing from Search Console (way 8), and check robots.txt for blocked search crawlers (way 9).
• Day 2: list your ten biggest page-two queries (way 1) and your five most-skipped top-five results (way 2).
• Day 3: rewrite the five titles and descriptions. Start the change log.
• Day 4: improve the two page-two pages with the most impressions, and add internal links to them (way 6).
• Day 5: request indexing for the pages you changed (way 7), send the best one to your email list (way 11), and update your Business Profile if you are local (way 10).
• Four weeks later: compare 28 days before and after for each changed page, then move on to refreshing decaying pages (way 3).

What MrKeyword does not do

MrKeyword does not send traffic to your site; it reads your own Search Console and Bing data and your site's crawl, and tells you which of the changes above are worth the most. Specifically:

• No ads, links or posting. It does not buy ads, build links, send email or post to social or communities for you.
• No Google Business Profile management. Way 10 is done in Google's own tools.
• No traffic guarantees. Clicks at stake on an opportunity are either observed changes or an estimate from your own click rates, and each item says which.
• Nothing without Search Console for most of this. Opportunities and internal link suggestions are built from your queries, so a site with no Search Console data gets none.
• No AI traffic estimate. AI visibility tracking reports what ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity answered to questions you choose each week; it does not estimate visits from them.

What it covers: the opportunity list for ways 1 to 4, internal link suggestions for way 6, the Site Audit for crawl and indexing problems behind way 7, rank tracking from Search Console and Bing for measuring, AI visibility for way 9, and traffic drop alerts when clicks fall 30% below a normal week. Free covers one website; paid plans are $10 a month for one website, $19 for three and $49 for ten (pricing).

Questions and answers