How to increase website traffic 2019

The fundamentals of driving traffic haven't fundamentally changed since 2019, though the tactics have evolved. Your primary channels remain search engine optimization, paid advertising, content marketing, and social media—but success requires matching your approach to how search algorithms and user behavior actually worked in that period.

For SEO specifically, 2019 was the year when Google's core algorithm updates heavily penalized thin content and rewarded topical authority. If you were building traffic then, you needed to move beyond targeting individual keywords and instead create comprehensive content clusters around topics where your site could demonstrate real expertise. This meant investing in pillar pages that covered broad topics thoroughly, then supporting those with detailed content pieces that linked back to the pillar. You also couldn't ignore technical SEO—site speed was becoming increasingly critical to rankings, and mobile-first indexing was in full effect, so responsive design wasn't optional. Building quality backlinks remained essential, but the bar was higher; guest posting on random blogs delivered diminishing returns, while earning links from authoritative sites in your industry actually moved the needle.

Content marketing in 2019 required distributing your work strategically. Publishing excellent articles on your own site wasn't enough; you needed to repurpose content across multiple formats and channels. If you had a strong blog post, you could extract data for infographics, turn it into LinkedIn articles, create videos for YouTube, or break it into social media updates. Video content specifically was becoming impossible to ignore—YouTube traffic was soaring, and video snippets were appearing more frequently in search results.

Paid advertising remained a faster way to generate immediate traffic while your organic efforts took time to mature. Google Ads and Facebook/Instagram advertising let you test messaging and audiences quickly, providing data that could inform your organic content strategy. The key was treating paid traffic not just as an immediate revenue source but as a testing ground for what messaging resonated with your audience.

The realistic expectation for 2019 was that meaningful traffic increases took three to six months of consistent effort across multiple channels. Agencies that won were those helping clients understand that traffic growth required sustained investment in all areas simultaneously—technical optimization, content creation, distribution, and advertising working together.