Have you ever wonder why there are free and paid traffic? And since there is free traffic, why should paid traffic exist in the first place?
Before I address this topic, I must state my opinion that any form of traffic is good traffic for me! However not all traffic are equal and I will share with you here.
When Internet Marketers talked about free traffic, it is basically applying Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques on a website to generate organic traffic. There are many ways to obtain free organic traffic and the most common method is to write articles on your business and submit to as many article directories as possible.
Paid traffic as the name implied is to buy traffic through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising with the search engines. Traffic to your website will cease once you stop funding to your Pay Per Click advertising campaign. To get traffic from PPC advertising is almost instant once your account is setup. The most popular PPC advertising is Adwords from Google.
Now that I have explained what free and paid traffic is, it is time to weight the differences.
- Time Taken
- Quality Of Traffic
Free traffic from Search Engine Optimization is a slow and time consuming process to generate traffic. There are many articles and books on the Internet to teach people on how to conduct SEO on their website.
Unfortunately many do not fully understand how it is being done and eventually they don’t get as much traffic as they expected. Soon they are demoralized and they will stop their SEO activities.
Paid traffic on the other hand is the opposite. Not much work is required apart from collecting a list of relevant keywords that are targeted to the business.
Being free traffic, we do not have the control over it. Very often these traffic comes from places where you least expected. Whenever you post an article in an article directory, anybody is allowed to use your article provided he/she put a link back to your website.
As you can see from the above example, you have no clue on where is your next traffic is coming from. This traffic is not targeted and hence it is not easy to turn them into your customer.
Paid traffic is the opposite of free traffic. It is targeted. Your advertisement will only show up only when the searcher type in a search word or phrase that correspond to your keyword list. If you are targeting customers on “computer memory ram”, your advertisement will not show up when the searcher type in “computer monitor”. Can you see how targeted is your traffic with Pay Per Click advertising?
These are the two main differences between free and paid traffic and as I have said before, all traffic be it free or paid is good traffic to me. If you have a tangible business, employing PPC advertising is not only effective but also FAST!
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2 Comments
I personally suggest using SEO in developing the website, although it take longer time but the result can be amazing. I wont say paid advertising (i.e. PPC) is not good, it is worth to try if you have the budget.
Hi Simon
Both are equally good. But very often newbies have no clear direction on how to monetize on their blog.
To summarise i think if you are trying to make money from adsence, then SEO should be your choice. If not, driving tons of traffic from PPC might be a better solution to show them your offer on the blog.
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