If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Everyone who has a website wants more traffic. However, not all traffic is created equal. Many people get so caught up with driving traffic to their website they forget to check whether it is working towards the actual goal of the website.

Different websites have different goals. One may be to build a brand, another may be to sell a product while yet another may be to build a list from leads. No matter what the goal, tracking should be done to see whether the traffic generated from various sources is actually helping to achieve that goal.

Quite often the difference between different ad sources is quite apparent. For instance when doing PPC advertising (Pay Per Click) Content Network Ads are very much less expensive to buy than Search Network Adverts. In Search Networks the user types in relevant keywords which then trigger your ads and this is seen as more relevant traffic than the Content Network where you ad appears on an Adsense Publisher’s website and this is seen as not as targeted.

In general it’s considered that most people who click on content network ads tend to be researching their intended product and in the main are looking for free information. It’s been proven that on the other hand searchers who type in (especially long tail) specific keywords are further down the buying funnel and are more likely to click the buy now button. Inevitably this means that to advertise in the Search Network is more expensive but often more effective.

As a short term way of getting traffic pay per click is very effective but careful watch has to be kept on the cost of this traffic and conversion rates as it is very expensive. Without proper tracking unprofitable campaigns which seem to be profitable are just going to drain the budget. Organic traffic, i.e. appearing high in the search results which is in effect free traffic is the best way to go but unfortunately takes longer. Search Engine Optimization is required here: This is the process of optimizing web pages to get high positions in the search engine results. This is a long term answer to Traffic and initially should be done alongside pay per click.

One technique to overcome this problem is to aim for ‘low-hanging fruit’. That is, keywords that have less competition. While these generate lower traffic, it is possible to build up considerable amounts of traffic by building up a portfolio of less popular keywords.

Other good forms of generating free targeted traffic include article marketing, email marketing and utilizing joint venture partnerships. The main thing is to avoid traffic generation strategies that cost money, but don’t result in conversions.