subject: Organic Traffic Vs. Paid Traffic - Search Engine Optimization [print this page] Many different factors contribute to the overall success of a website.
When launching a website, one must consider such things as "Search Engine Optimization",
advertisement space, and website layout and the overall design. However, even the most brilliantly
designed websites can still lack adequate traffic. Why is this?
We can look at two different types of traffic, and why each one is vital to the continued
success of a website. The first type of traffic is referred to as "Organic Traffic".
Organic traffic is, simply put, traffic that comes from search engines and through links back to your site.
This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in to play. In addition to Organic
Traffic, "Paid Traffic" is something that every website owner needs to be familiar with.
Paid Traffic is any type of traffic directed to a website via payment. This includes "Pay-Per-Click" (PPC)
advertisement, as well as any other paid advertisement on any site other than your own.
With Paid Traffic, you can see results instantly. Also, with the invention of "Pay-Per-Click"
advertising, you can guarantee that each time you pay for your advertisement, you are actually
receiving traffic to your website. While it is relatively easy to generate traffic by paying
for ad-space, Paid Traffic does require minimal upkeep, including creating unique and
effective advertisements to entice viewers to click on your ads. However, the relative
simplicity of Paid Traffic does not mean that Paid Traffic is the best, or only way to boost
your website's popularity. Paid Traffic does next to nothing for your Search Engine Rankings,
which is ultimately where you want most of your traffic to be generated from.
Any "light" user of the internet has probably been subject to advertisements including the
phrase "Search Engine Optimization', or, "SEO" for short. This relates directly to the amount
of Organic Traffic that your website will recieve. When compared to Paid Traffic, Organic
Traffic requires much more time investment and patience, but when a website is ranked highly
on Search Engines such as Bing, or Google, it will recieve steady, consistent traffic. This is
the foundation of the success of a website. Because of the complexity of learning how to drive
traffic through Search Engine Optimization, it is generally easier to outsource the work, and
hire a company that specializes in SEO.
While neither Paid Traffic nor Organic traffic is necessarily "better" than one another, each
serves a purpose. New and experienced webmasters alike must rely on utilizing each tool to drive
the maximum amount of traffic to their website in order to see true results. The real decision
that must be made is whether to simply pay for advertising space and hope for the best, or to
invest time into generating Organic Traffic that will couple with Paid traffic to generate
