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.

Websites use advertising for different reasons. A global brand such as Coca Cola would more than likely just be strengthening the brand whereas another site may be directly selling a product or building a list. It’s important to remember to track all traffic to make sure that it’s serving it’s purpose and valuable advertising dollars are being well spent.

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.

Pay per Click advertising is fine as a short term solution but careful control over costs must be kept and also conversions have to be tracked avidly or costs can outstrip revenue which then defeats the objective. The better but more long term solution to traffic is SEO or Search Engine Optimization which when done properly can get the website high up in the organic search results for relevant keywords. SEO means optimizing individual web pages for certain specific keywords using on page factors such as keyword density and off page factors such as inbound links. This is a more long term solution to Pay Per Click which is virtually instant. Initially a good balance need to be found between the two.

Its very hard to rank highly for more generic keywords especially in popular niches where competition is fierce so aim for long tail keywords or “low hanging fruit”. There are lots of good keyword tools to help you find these and they are much easier to rank for so if you can build a significant list of these and optimize your pages accordingly you will get ranked and also get significant traffic from these.

There are other forms of traffic generation including email marketing, article marketing and maybe doing joint ventures. Keep in mind your objective should always be to avoid paying for any traffic that fails to convert.

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