Instagram has 2 billion users as of 2025 can be your primary source of traffic to your website, blog, or online store. But the problem is, Instagram is a wall garden. It allows limited features to drive traffic outside its ecosystem. In this blog post, we will reveal all the secret methods that allow you to bring millions of people from your Instagram account to your website faster.
Instagram allows adding links in only a few places in its entire platform, those are:
- Instagram Bio
- Instagram stories
- Personal DM chats
- Instagram groups
- Broadcast channels
Instagram doesn't allow links in post descriptions just like Facebook. Though it appears limited but you can still drive an enormous amount of traffic from sources mentioned above. Let's understand each one of them in detail, and later, we will also explain a bonus trick to get traffic passively for the long term.
Instagram Bio Links
Instagram bio is the primary location to add links. Earlier, Instagram only allowed 1 link per profile, but with the recent update, you can add up to 5 links to your account. This gives you even more flexibility to drive traffic to different web pages of your website.
Although 5 links are beneficial yet one important thing to keep in mind is that Instagram completely blocks any malicious link, fake URLs, bypass domains, redirect links, broken links, etc. So before adding any link to your bio, make sure it's legit and lands on the correct website.
How to use Instagram Bio Link to Drive Traffic to your Website?
As the name says itself, it's an Instagram BIO link, so anyone can only click if they visit your profile. Keep that in mind, you need to create posts that encourage profile visits. Some good post ideas are as follows:
- Divide a post into to series of posts, so if they read one, they may come read others.
- Tag yourself in each post. Tags make it easier for the audience to visit your profile
- Giveaways are legendary; they always work for profile visits.
- Reminder post for new post with profile tag
- Interesting headlines post with secrets
- Quiz post with winners posted on the link
- Encourage content saves so they will visit again to read it
- Use CTA in your post like "Know More", "link in bio," etc.
Given above are some of the ideas you can try to encourage the audience to hit on your profile. The more profile visits you get, the higher the chance of getting clicks. Many influencers try the same trick to get clicks on their profile to the affiliate product link.
How to Track Instagram Bio Link clicks?
To track external link clicks, you can rely on a link shortener website that provides link click data. Next, you can check your total profile visits in Instagram's professional dashboard. These give you clarity about the number of people who visit the profile and the data on how many people click the link.
Tracking links will help you optimize your content for more clicks. If profile visit numbers are larger than the outbound link clicks, that means you need to update your Instagram bio for maximum clicks.
Use Instagram Stories to Drive Traffic
Instagram stories are an effective traffic source driver as they appear at the top of the feed. Additionally, there's no limit of five links. You can share as many stories as you want with links. In Instagram stories, links are added with the help of Link Sticker. Just like the Instagram bio link, story links are also checked for errors and threats; that's why it's better to avoid spammy links.
Encouraging your audience to click the link on your stories is easier than profile links. You just need to create stories that provoke them to take action. Some working ideas could be as follows:
- Curiosity Trigger: Pose a question that sparks curiosity in your audience's mind.
- FOMO: If you are selling something fear of missing out trigger works better for you.
- Giveaways: Similar to an Instagram bio, Giveaways are winners in Instagram stories as well
- Limited Period Offer: Just like FOMO, you can create an offer that expires with the stories, ie, in 24 hrs
- Polls and Quizzes: You can conduct a quiz and announce winners on your website.
Instagram allows uploading videos to stories, which are highly engaging and effective in convincing people to click the link. You can try using video with the above content ideas to get maximum impact on your audience
How to track Instagram story link clicks?
Just like an Instagram bio, you can use a link shortener on online websites to track the number of clicks you are getting on stories. If the ratio of story views to link clicks is higher, that means your story is performing well. Otherwise, you need to try other story ideas.
Traffic via Personal DMs
This one is a bit difficult, but a highly impactful method of getting traffic to your website. Personal DM's are end-to-end encrypted, which means you can share all kinds of links there. But, you have to ensure you don't do it often; if someone reports your account, Instagram will disable your messaging feature or ban your entire account.
How to safely share links in DMs?
To keep your account safe from Instagram warnings, it's necessary to follow some guidelines while sharing links in DMs. It's always better to avoid spammy links as a rule of thumb. Other than that, keep these guidelines in your mind:
- Don't share links unless you have exchanged at least 10-12 messages
- Don't share links with a completely new Instagram account
- Start with followers first, then move to unknown accounts for DM
- You can try sharing stories with a link instead of sharing links directly.
Leveraging Instagram groups to drive traffic
Instagram groups can bring large amount of traffic if you grow them well. A successful Instagram group is not just about how many people joined; it's about how strongly they trust your group. If you create a group just to share links, that's not gonna work; instead, create a group to provide extra value to the group members, more than what you provide publicly on Instagram.
Some of the great working ideas for creating a traffic-driven Instagram group are as follows:
- An exclusive content group in which you provide exclusive content that's not available publicly
- A Q&A group that allows people to ask questions to you, and you solve them
- A Help support group where you post daily tutorials to use your services or product
- An exclusive offer group, like an extra discount, or limited-period deals.
- Giveaway contest group where you organize a contest among group members
An Instagram group will only be able to bring people to your website if you build group credibility over time. If you just spam people with links, they are going to exit your group, and it won't grow larger. The golden rule is to be slow and steady in the long term.
How to use Broadcast Channels to get website traffic
Broadcast channels are similar to groups, but they only allow admins to post messages in them. It works in the same way as your Instagram account, with the only difference that broadcast channels ensure 100% delivery of your content to each member.
Whenever you post content, every member of the broadcast channel gets notified, whether or not they actually see the content. This mechanism increases the impression of your shared content and also increases the CTR of your shared links.
Since Instagram groups and broadcast channels are similar, you can utilize the ideas shared above to provide extra value to your audience. In return for your provision value, you get traffic to your blog or website
Bonus Tip
All methods mentioned above require consistency and credibility to start getting traffic to your website. But there's a shortcut marketing trick that you can try to bring people to you instead of you going to them.
For this trick to work, the crucial part is your domain name. You need to choose a domain name that's super easy to remember. You can take the help of AI tools to generate such names. But keep in mind, you need to find a unique but easy-to-remember domain name.
Once you have it, all you need to do is spread site awareness. In each content you post flash your site, in your videos or stories, show your site name clearly and explain your USP.
Since your domain is easy to remember when people watch or hear it, it will stick in their minds. Sooner or later, they will search your domain name in Google and land on your website.
In marketing, it's called a customer touchpoint. The more they see your brand, the stronger their trust gets. You don't have to pay Instagram to bring clicks on your ads; the audience will come to you by itself.
Conclusion
In this short blog, we went through all the possible ways that can generate traffic to your blog or website. Meta is a wall garden; it always wants people to stay within its ecosystem. To bring them out from Instagram and land on your website requires a strategic process that we have discussed in this blog.
If you like to add any new method to drive traffic from Instagram, feel free to share in the comments. Other queries and questions are also welcome.