Free Website Traffic vs. Purchased Website Traffic - Which is Better?


by Kevin Mulholland - Date: 2006-11-30 - Word Count: 362 Share This!

The obvious answer to the question "Free Website Traffic versus Purchased Website Traffic", without delving too deeply into the question would appear to be that its better to spend no money for something rather than spend money for it. However, matching objectives with method is a far better way to analyze the question, rather than simply counting up dollar cost.

These days there are many available ways to generate traffic for a website, including:

PPC (Pay Per Click advertising)

Banner advertising

Guaranteed traffic purchase

Classified ad sites

FFA (Free For All) sites

Traffic exchange programs

Search engine optimization

I have personally used most of these methods at one time or another and can give some insight with regard to matching method to objective.

For instance, building up traffic for free, slowly through search engine placement or subscriber list build up may be the best strategy for a heavy, long-term information site that will continually have new information added. This would likely not be a good strategy for many affiliate-marketing sites, for example, where good search engine placement would not be likely. In this case, the more direct PPC or guaranteed traffic would likely be more effective. Selling a single item, or making announcements would be best done for free on a classified ad site such as Postaroo.com. On the other hand, if you are looking for search engine placement or a PPC ad campaign then you need to spend a lot of time researching and analyzing your keywords first. There are many good sites out there that provide the critical data for this (I personally use WordTracker.com). You will want to look specifically for keywords that have relatively high search occurrence, and relatively low competition.

So regardless of your chosen method of promotion, the most important thing is that you have a clear idea of the nature of your website and determine the type and purpose of your desired traffic. Then pick your advertising program based on the appropriate match between the two. This will ultimately be a much more successful route than simply deciding on the basis of cost whether to try to get free or paid traffic for your website.

© 2006 Kevin J. Mulholland


Related Tags: search engine placement, free website traffic, ppc advertising, banner advertising

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Kevin J. Mulholland has been a computer instructor and consultant for more than 16 years near Toronto, Canada, where he lives with his wife and son. He continues to share his professional expertise through many forums. His information sites include:
Building Free Websites
- Step-by-step instructions for creating your webpage.
Free Web Counter
- How to add buttons, counters and professional-looking items to your webpage.
Free Web Space Site Builder
- Step-by-step instructions for getting your files online (for free, of course).
websitetargettrafficsubmission.com
- How to get traffic to your website. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

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