Free Traffic or Paid Traffic - Which Way To Go?

Free or paid traffic - which option is best for you? Read on...

Once you have created your website, the next thing you will want to do is drive targeted traffic to it. There are two ways of accomplishing this. There is free, natural traffic or you can decide to pay for your traffic.

The biggest advantage to paid traffic is that you will receive almost instant traffic. If you need traffic quick and have the budget for it, then paying for your traffic is a good option. The most common method of obtaining paid traffic is through pay-per-click (PPC) listings with the major search engines. However, if you don't know what you are doing and don't have a good plan in place for your pay-per-click campaigns, you can lose serious amounts of money and get minimal returns on your investments. PPC has a huge learning curve.

Another form of paid advertising is to submit your ad to ezines related to your niche. This isn't as effective as PPC but you will see some good results advertising in ezines.

Let's take a look at getting free, natural traffic to your website. As the name implies, this is traffic your website will receive without you spending any money for it. There are several ways of obtaining free traffic. The most common way is using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Search Engine Optimization is a process used for obtaining top rankings in the search engines which results in targeted traffic to your website. Applying SEO methods to your website is a great way of ranking well for your chosen keywords.

Using SEO techniques to get the free, natural traffic to your website will be a great long-term strategy. As you will discover if you try the pay-per-click options, your traffic will stop as soon as you stop your campaigns. When using SEO strategies, your website will continue to receive targeted traffic for the long-term.

Another great way of getting free traffic is through article marketing. When you submit your articles to quality article directories, you will receive traffic to your website which lasts forever. This is possible by including a link to your website in your resource box.

If you visit forums related to your niche, you can receive backlinks to your website in your forum posts, which is another way to receive targeted free traffic.

Some people choose to use both paid and free traffic. If they have a special product launch coming up, they might opt to pay for traffic to see more immediate results.

If you use the pay-per-click option for receiving traffic, you will get almost instant results but there is a price to pay. And the traffic only lasts as long as your campaign lasts. The best strategy is to go for the long-term and use SEO strategies to help you rank well. You will continue to see returns on your investments long after your work is done.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5645025