Why Free Traffic Is Much Better Than Paid Traffic!

An online business can only be considered successful when it gets large amounts of targeted traffic. That’s why driving traffic is so important. You need to use various methods like; On-Page & Off-Page SEO techniques, guest posts, backlinking, etc. to drive organic, targeted visitors who are actually interested in your site.

Having said that, many website owners take the easy option and buy traffic for their site. In this post, we are going to look at some negative aspects of buying traffic for your blog and why ultimately you should NOT be buying traffic to your site!

Non-Targeted Traffic

There are many sites online (I’m sure you’ve seen some) that offer traffic to your site in return for payment. The problem with this method is that many of this ‘paid traffic’ is from non-targeted visitors and in some cases even bots! This non-targeted traffic is useless as these visitors are not interested in your content at all. For example, if you are selling baby toys and the ‘paid traffic’ visitor is a college student, then they are not going to be interested in purchasing from you. Ultimately, that visit is not going to achieve any sales, so you have to think “Was it worth it?”

You want to be getting targeted traffic to your website, as these are people who are interested in your content. So, if we use the previous example of baby toys, that site should be focused on new parents, young moms, single dad’s, etc. You should be aiming for a specific demographic that are interested in your products, as they are the ones who are more likely to buy from you.

Another disadvantage of ‘paid traffic’ is that this has a higher bounce rates that organic traffic. This means that the visitors to your website will not visit any other page related to your blog or website, but will only visit one page before navigating away from your site. These people are not interested in your service or product, as they will only visit the page that they are getting paid to visit.

Insignificant/No Sales

‘Paid traffic’ may get you more initial traffic to your site, but you have to think about why you want that traffic in the first place. If you sell products on your site, will ‘paid traffic’ result in more sales? Well honestly, no! These ‘paid’ visitors visit thousands of websites to get a small amount of money. Therefore the chances of them buying a product or service from you are very low.

You should not waste your time on such insignificant measures if you are selling a service or product via your website. You’re better off spending money on advertising campaigns like Facebook ads, Google Ad Words, etc. or better yet SEO implemented content, rather that non-targeted ‘paid’ traffic.

No New Subscribers

If you run an email marketing campaign on your site, then you should not be buying traffic for getting email subscriptions on your landing page. This is because most of these visitors will not convert into subscribers. Instead, you should provide quality content to your readers and aim to get them to subscribe because they value what you are producing. These targeted subscribers are much more likely to convert into future sales, rather than paid for traffic that aren’t interested in your site.

Paid Traffic Is An AdSense Violation

Many websites are created by webmasters on the basis of high CPC (Cost Per Click) paying keywords. Traffic is either generated from PPC advertising or bought from other websites. This is considered a violation by Google AdSense and is also an issue with other advertisers like Yahoo Publisher Network. Your account will get banned by AdSense if you are buying traffic for your site. Therefore you should report to AdSense if someone sends paid traffic to your website or blog.

Since many businesses are not able to work online in a major way, they go for the option of buying traffic for themselves. Many websites online offer paid traffic to a business blog or website. This may enable the business to initially reach a greater number of people in the short-term, but long-term you are better off focusing on attracting organic free traffic.

But what do you think?  Have you ever bought traffic for your site?  If so, was it worth it?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!