Free Website Traffic vs. Purchased Website Traffic

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

Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Kevin J Mulholland

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