How to get traffic to a new website

To get traffic to a new website, work on two tracks at once. Search traffic takes months to build on a new domain, so start making the site findable today. While you wait, bring visitors in by hand from communities, launch sites, newsletters and people you know.

Track 1 pays off later. Track 2 pays off this week, and it tells you what to write for track 1.

Why a new website gets no traffic at first

A new domain has no history, no links and often no indexed pages. Google has to find it, crawl it and decide it is worth showing. Indexing usually takes days to weeks. Steady rankings usually take months.

Nothing below skips that wait. What you can do is remove the blockers so the clock starts now.

Track 1: make your site findable

1. Get indexed in Google and Bing

Add your domain in Google Search Console and submit your sitemap. Search Console is the only place Google tells you which pages it indexed and why it skipped the rest.

Check the sitemap before you submit it. Our XML Sitemap Validator validates the file, so you don't hand Google a broken one.

For Bing and other engines, use IndexNow. The IndexNow Checker verifies your key file and submits up to 100 changed URLs to Bing, Yandex, Naver and Seznam. Google does not use IndexNow, so keep using Search Console for Google.

If pages still don't appear after a few weeks, read how to get Google to index your site and why your website is not showing up on Google.

2. Make sure robots.txt lets crawlers in

New sites often launch with the Disallow: / rule left over from staging. That one line tells every search engine to stay out.

Run the Robots.txt & AI Crawler Checker. It shows which search and AI crawlers, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, are allowed, and the exact line to change. If you block AI crawlers, AI assistants have less of your site to read and quote.

3. Target keywords a new site can rank for

A new site will not rank for "project management software" this year. Large, old sites own those results. Aim for longer, specific searches where few strong pages compete.

Run Keyword Research on a phrase that describes what you do. It returns related Google searches with monthly searches, difficulty and trend, sorted into easy wins, blog topics and keywords worth bidding on. Start with the easy wins. Volumes and difficulty are estimates, so use them to compare keywords, not to forecast traffic.

Our guide to low-competition keywords shows how to judge which ones you can win.

4. Write pages that answer the question first

For each keyword, write one page. Answer the search in the first two or three sentences, then add the detail: steps, examples, prices, limits.

Searchers get what they came for, and AI assistants get a clear passage to quote. A page that makes readers scroll past an intro to find the answer helps neither.

Track 2: get traffic this week

Search is slow. These sources are not.

Post where your users already talk

Find the subreddits, forums, Slack and Discord groups where your users ask questions. Answer those questions well. Link your site only when it answers the question better than a reply could. Read each community's rules on self-promotion first.

You get visitors, and you learn the exact words people use. Those words become your keywords in track 1.

Launch on launch sites and directories

List the product on launch sites such as Product Hunt and on directories in your niche. Launch traffic usually spikes for a day or two and then drops. The listing stays up, and it is often one of your first links.

Get into newsletters

Find newsletters your users read. Pitch the editor one short, specific item: what you built, who it is for and what is new. Small niche newsletters are often easier to get into than big ones, and their readers already care about the topic.

Tell people you know

Message friends, former coworkers and past clients one by one. Ask them to try it, and ask who else might need it. A personal message usually gets more replies than a public post.

Earn your first links

Links send visitors directly and help search engines find you. Start by copying what works for competitors.

Run Backlink Finder on a competitor. It shows the strongest sites linking to them and whether each looks spammy. Pick the directories, review sites and lists that would list you too. It does not give contact details, so find those on each site. The full process is in how to get backlinks for a new website.

Get your new website into AI answers

Many people now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini which product to use. Those answers draw on pages the assistants can read and on what other sites say about you, such as reviews, lists and forum threads.

Track 1 covers the first part. Track 2 covers the second, because every community answer, listing and link is one more place your name appears. For the rest, read how to get mentioned by AI.

Check your new website before you send people to it

Run our website check before you post anywhere. It checks your home page and up to two more pages for crawling and indexing, on-page SEO, structured data and content. You get one fix list sorted by priority and 0 to 100 scores for SEO readiness, AEO readiness and AI access. A quick preview of your home page costs no credits, needs no account and takes about 20 seconds.