Seven proven tactics to drive more traffic to your website

Executive overview

Most traffic advice is generic. These seven tactics are tested with real spend figures, subscriber counts, and ranking data from Ahrefs' own properties.

The strategies span free and paid channels — from answering Quora questions strategically to running Pinterest ad arbitrage to compounding SEO traffic over time.

The fastest sustainable traffic growth comes from treating content as a durable asset: optimise it, repurpose it, and let SEO compound it.

Strategy 1: answer high-traffic Quora pages

• Quora receives over 100 million monthly search visitors from Google.
• Don't guess which questions are popular — use Site Explorer to find Quora pages ranked by organic traffic.
• Filter by a relevant keyword to find pages with consistent or growing traffic.
• Check view velocity of the top answer (total views ÷ months since posted) to estimate your upside.
• Context determines clicks: in one experiment, the most contextually relevant link got 39× more traffic than the least relevant one.

Strategy 2: tap less competitive ad platforms

• Mainstream platforms (Google Ads, Facebook) are crowded; Pinterest, Outbrain, Taboola, Reddit, and Yahoo Gemini are less contested.
• Pinterest CPC averaged ~$0.26 across campaigns; spend of ~$17,000 returned ~2.5× in affiliate commissions.
• Pinterest users actively pin things they intend to buy — purchase intent is high.
• Pinterest ads converted better than Google AdWords, Facebook, and Bing combined in this test.
• Match the platform to the audience: consumer products fit Pinterest; niche B2B does not.

Strategy 3: update out-of-date content

• Time-sensitive content (e.g. "best headphones 2019") loses rankings as it ages.
• Updating a stale post can produce a near-instant traffic spike — Ahrefs saw this after refreshing their "top Google searches" post.
• Signal to update: rankings or traffic are declining on a page that covers a topic requiring freshness.
• Repeated updates (monthly or quarterly) sustain compounding growth.

Strategy 4: repurpose content across formats

• Repurposing can double reach without creating net-new ideas.
• Turn list posts into bite-sized Twitter tips; sharing insights without links increases share rates and brand discovery.
• Adapt blog posts to video (and vice versa) — keep ~60% of tips different across formats to add value on each platform.
• Use Keywords Explorer to check search volume on both Google and YouTube before deciding which format to prioritise.

Strategy 5: improve click-through rate

• CTR (click-through rate) is the ratio of clicks to impressions. Doubling CTR doubles traffic with no change in rankings.
• Three levers: title, description, image.
• Use Google Search Console to identify high-ranking pages with low CTR — these are the highest-leverage targets.
• Rewrite titles to be more specific, curiosity-driven, or problem-solving.

Strategy 6: SEO for compounding, passive traffic

• Other tactics stop working when you stop paying or promoting; SEO traffic compounds over time.
• Ahrefs' blog receives 220,000+ monthly visitors from Google search alone; the full site gets ~500,000.
• The spike of hope (viral or paid bursts) is followed by the flatline of nope — SEO avoids this pattern.
• Key components: keyword research, link building, on-page optimisation.