How to Get Traffic to a New Website (Free Ways for Makers)

You shipped. The site is live, the domain works, the signup form is wired up. Then you open your analytics and see a flat line. If that sounds familiar, you're in good company: almost every new website starts with zero visitors, because nobody knows it exists yet.

This guide is the free, practical version of "how do I get traffic to a new website". No paid ads, no growth hacks, no promises about algorithms. Just the steps that actually put your URL in front of people in the first weeks, written by makers for makers. The worked example all the way through is BuildShipper, the free weekly launch board we run, because it was built for exactly this problem.

Why a new website gets no traffic (and what fixes it)

A new site has two problems at once. Search engines haven't found it or trusted it yet, and people have no reason to stumble onto it.

Google is open about the first part. In its guide to getting your website on Google, it lists the most common reasons a site gets missed. The first one is that "your site isn't linked to by other sites on the web". The second is that the site is new: "It can take a few weeks for Google to notice a new site". Google also warns you not to pay for links, since that can break its spam policies.

So the fix for week one is simple to say:

1. Get a few honest links from real pages that already get crawled.
2. Put your URL in places where people browse new things on purpose.
3. Measure which of those places actually send clicks, then do more of what works.

A launch board does all three in one step, which is why we start there.

Step 1: List your site where people browse new launches

The fastest free traffic for a brand new website comes from people who are actively looking at new products. They opened the page to discover something. You just need to be on it.

Start with BuildShipper. It's free to list, and it was designed for makers with no audience yet:

• You get a followed backlink. Every listing gets a project page with a link to your site that doesn't use nofollow, and that page is in the sitemap. That's one of the honest links Google says new sites are missing.
• The board is ranked by real clicks. Not upvotes from friends, not paid placement in the numbered list. A visitor clicking through to your site is what moves you up, and likes only break ties.
• It resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC. A brand new site isn't competing with products that collected votes for years. Every week is a fresh start, and each finished week's winner goes up on the winners page.
• You can see what it did. Your project page shows the clicks, so you know whether the listing sent anyone at all.

It takes a couple of minutes: submit your site, and BuildShipper fills in the name, tagline and image from your URL so you only have to edit. It's also worth bookmarking buildshipper.com while you're there, because the board is a running list of what other makers shipped this week, which is handy when you want ideas or people to swap feedback with.

Then add a few more places. Once you're on BuildShipper, spreading out is smart. Product Hunt is the big, well known daily launch board, and Hacker News has a dedicated Show HN section. If you post there, read the Show HN guidelines first. They say Show HN is "for something you've made that other people can play with", they ask you not to post landing pages, and they say "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment". Respect those rules and the feedback can be gold.

For a longer list, our post on where to launch your SaaS in 2026 walks through 28 launch sites one by one, and the best launch directories page covers what to check before you submit anywhere.

Step 2: Make sure search engines can find you

Search traffic is slow at first, but the setup takes an afternoon and keeps paying off. Do it once, early.

Submit a sitemap. Google's sitemap documentation explains the options: submit it in Search Console using the Sitemaps report, or add a Sitemap: line to your robots.txt. Google is clear that a sitemap "is merely a hint", so it helps discovery but doesn't guarantee anything.

Ping Bing and friends with IndexNow. IndexNow is a simple way to tell search engines that a URL was added or changed. It's supported by Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep. Many hosting setups and SEO plugins can send these pings for you.

Check if you're indexed. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. If nothing shows up after a while, that's your cue to get a few more links pointing at you.

Be patient with the results. Google's own SEO Starter Guide says some changes take effect in hours and others "could take several months", and suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change worked. That's exactly why the launch board traffic in Step 1 matters: it fills the gap while search catches up.

Step 3: Earn a handful of good links

You don't need hundreds of backlinks. You need a few real ones from pages that search engines already visit.

Good free sources for a new site:

• Launch boards and directories with followed links. Your BuildShipper listing is one. Our guide to free startup directories with dofollow backlinks lists others we checked on live listing pages, including which ones need a badge or only link the top three.
• Your own profiles. Your X bio, GitHub README and any maker profiles you already have. Small, but they're yours.
• Useful posts on other sites. A guest post, a tutorial or an answer that solves someone's problem, with your site mentioned where it genuinely helps.

Skip anything that asks you to pay for a link. Google calls that out directly, and it isn't worth the risk for a site you plan to keep.

Step 4: Borrow other people's audiences

If you don't have followers yet, go where the people already are, and bring something useful instead of a pitch.

• Communities. Subreddits, Discord servers and forums in your niche. Read each community's rules first, take part for a while, and share your site when it actually answers a question.
• Build in public on X. Show the work, not the ask. Our post on what to post on X when you launch has 12 templates you can adapt.
• Newsletters and roundups. Many niche newsletters feature new tools. A short, specific email to the editor works better than a press release.

Every post you write needs somewhere to land. A tweet fades from timelines in hours, but a listing on a weekly board keeps working all week. Pointing people to your BuildShipper page also means every visit is counted and people who never saw your post can still find you there. If you want the full playbook, read how to launch a side project without an audience.

Step 5: Measure where your clicks come from

Traffic you can't measure is traffic you can't repeat. Keep it simple:

• Use one analytics tool and check referrers once a day during launch week.
• Add UTM tags to links you control (social posts, newsletter mentions) so you can tell them apart.
• Compare against the board. Your BuildShipper project page shows its own click counts, so you can check them against what your analytics reports.

After two weeks you'll know which two or three sources are worth your time. Double down on those and drop the rest. Our guide to getting your first 100 users shows how to turn those clicks into signups.

Step 6: Keep the traffic coming after launch week

Launch day is a spike. What you want is a habit.

• Relaunch on a fresh week. Since the BuildShipper board resets every Monday, a big update is a good reason to point people back to your listing and see what a new week does. Read how weekly clicks work for the details.
• Write one helpful page a week that answers a question your users actually search for.
• Keep showing up in the two or three communities that worked.

If a week matters a lot, BuildShipper also has optional paid boosts that sit above the numbered list: Spark is $6.99 for 48 hours, Rocket is $14.99 for 7 days and Orbit is $34.99 for 30 days. A boost doesn't change your numbered rank, and listing stays free, so you can ignore boosts completely and still get the backlink and the weekly shot. A lot of makers keep buildshipper.com bookmarked simply because it gathers these launch resources, guides and the weekly board in one place, so the next launch is easier than the first.