Steal Free Traffic: Case Studies of Brands That Did It Right
Picture having users visit your website or using your app without having to spend your hard earned money. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. It has indeed become quite easy to learn on how brands can steal free traffic from various sources without having to spend huge amounts for advertising.
Let us examine some of these other real life incidences and find out how they got it right, thus coming up with the success factors that will inform our assessment of the organisation.
What Is “Stealing” Free Traffic?
So let us get into our case studies but first, let me explain to you what it means to steal free traffic. Basically, SEO is about how to attract more unique visitors to your site without having to purchase pay per click advertising. Some ways of doing this include the use of search engine optimization, use of social media, or even getting a glimpse of your rivals traffic. The best part? This is all perfectly legal, and most of the time it only requires a little wits and a lot of determination.
Now, let’s look into how successful brands have applied it!
Case Study 1: Sephora and the Power of User-Generated Content
Sephora, a beauty products retailer, has made it her specialty to drive free traffic. Among their most successful methods, there is only one — stealing free traffic from a social network. Instead of going top heavy on media placements and time-honored ads, Sephora took advantage of the user-created content. People use Sephora products and share their experience through online social sites such as Instagram and You tube.
Just one more advantage to Sephora’s strategy, by asking their followers to show what they could do with the products, the brand not only received content for free, but also recruits an online army. Blogging and micro-blogging also helped create user-generated content that appeared on search engines and all major social networking sites and caused traffic back to Sephora’s website to increase naturally.
The secret? Sephora is aware of how to create a community that truly supports the products. He casted his show not for the money they could get out of the program, but to ensure the viewers paid for the traffic.
Case Study 2: Airbnb and the Power of SEO
Another brand that has also perfectly implemented the art of stealing free traffic is Airbnb through SEO.I n the initial stages of Airbnb, it became easy for the company to generate organic traffic or the flow of relevant traffic through targeting long-tail keywords — these are actual phrases that customers are likely to enter when searching for a vacation rental.long-tail keywords — specific phrases that people are likely to search for when looking for vacation rental options.
To address these keywords, Airbnb developed content which includes blog, city, and travel articles amongst others. It not only changed their ranking to Google, but also the traffic search by users outside of ideas travelling and accommodations. Thus, Airbnb just like every other website knew that by concentrating on SEO they did not require the services of ads so that they could be found by travelers; every content put up got ranked and got traffic even without request.They utilized the search engine to the hilt — extracting free traffic from customers who were searching for these services anyway.
By focusing on SEO, Airbnb didn’t need to pay for ads to get found by travelers; their content ranked organically, driving consistent traffic to their platform. They used the search engine to their advantage — stealing free traffic from users who were actively searching for the services they provided.
Case Study 3: Glossier and Leveraging Reddit
Reddit is somewhat underestimated as a source of traffic, but many examples show that brands like Glossier have effectively work with it. Without any direct advertisement, Glossier was able to steal traffic from Reddit and quickly obtain a dedicated customer base while also directing high amounts of traffic towards their site.
Reddit is a underrated traffic source, however Glossier and others have figured out how to tap into it. By stealing free traffic from Reddit the company was able to grow its fan base and receive a substantial flow of visitors to the site without using money for advertising.
What did Glossier do? They understood the importance of engaging with the Reddit community and participating in discussions about beauty products. Instead of pushing their brand aggressively, they contributed valuable insights and fostered organic conversations. By being genuine and helpful, Glossier generated curiosity and traffic from users who were curious about their products.
One of the reasons was the brand’s activity on the beauty-related subreddits of Reddit, which brought a lot of discussion and free traffic to their website. People started to realize they exist, and it spilled over to natural growth and the gathering of loyal consumers, which is what Glossier did.
Case Study 4: Buzzfeed and Viral Content
Buzzfeed is a great example of a brand that trained itself on how to create viral content and thus steal free traffic. Their strategic focus is on creating content that users love to share across their social networking sites.The equation goes like this: the more people share, the more visitors will come to Buzzfeed’s website — organically. traffic. Their strategy revolves around producing shareable, engaging content that people can’t resist sharing with their networks. The more people share, the more traffic Buzzfeed gets to its website — without spending money on ads.
Buzzfeed newsfeed is filled with quizzes, listicles and most other formats of content that are meant to grab the user’s attention and ideally, share with friends. It is organic sharing that increases their exposure on the social platforms, especially facebook, which directs users to their website.
Therefore helping Buzzfeed leverage a constant flow of visitors mostly through word of mouth. This is a strategy that pays great well given the fact that they post things that ‘’are emotional, humorous, or topical’’.
How to Check Competitors’ Website Traffic for Free
If you are thinking how to track and analyze the performance of yours and your competitors’ websites in terms of traffic, there are ways to do it. For instance, similar to using SimilarWeb or SEMrush, you can view the website traffic statistics of your competitors for free.
With these tools, you are able to know the source of their traffic, the amount of traffic they receive and more importantly the keywords that are directing people to their site. Realizing your competitors traffic source will create a realization of where you lack focus or cover gaps you can simply do the same and steal free traffic.
How to Use These Methods for Your Own Brand
As to how major brands have applied these strategies to steal free traffic, let’s think about how you can do the same for your business. Here are a few takeaways:
- Leverage SEO: Optimizing your website’s content is fundamental ensure that it can be easily found in searches. In your business, aim at targeting keywords that your audiences are likely to search for. To make most valuable microcontent being blog posts or type of landing pages that can rank organically.
- Use Social Media: Generate information that can be shared on the social sites. Seems like inviting people to share their reviews or photos of products they have used are examples of using user-generated content. Administrators can use web such as Reddit to engage in discussions in a bid to create brand awareness.
- Create Engaging, Shareable Content: Try to prioritize creating the content that has a chance of becoming a viral one. This could be simple trivia such as quizzes or fun facts or even juicy news or related exciting real life stories to mobilise the people and get them telling their friends.
- Spy on Competitors: To track your competitors’ traffic try to use the free tools. This can help you see what is good for them and how you too can turn out to be good for them.
Conclusion
Thus, you can see that the main activity to stealing free traffic is all about how smart you can be. This includes targeting the SEO, interacting with social media, developing content to be shared and studying your competition in order to increase the website hits without putting any money down on ads. So if you want to follow in the footsteps of these brands and find more ways to get more visitors to your site, you know where to start!
