When people find your website as a result of using a search engine, they are said to represent organic free search engine traffic. The form of advertising known as pay-per-click today is another means of driving traffic to your website. When visitors land on your website because they click on an advertisement on another website, they represent pay-per-click, or PPC, traffic.
Most website owners understand that increasing traffic to their websites is a good thing. However, when formulating a plan to build website traffic, it is important to consider the difference between organic free search engine traffic and pay-per-click traffic.
Many people consider organic free search engine traffic to be superior to pay-per-click traffic for a number of reasons. First of all, there is the expense factor. When you have pay-per-click advertisements floating around on different websites, you literally pay a fee for each person who clicks through your advertisement to your website.
With organic free search engine traffic, however, you do not pay a fee when a person clicks on a link to your website from the results page of his or her favorite search engine. When people use search engines, they are looking for information. If your website pops up near the top of their search engine results page, the chances are excellent that they are in the market for the very type of product or services that you provide.
When considering which type of website visitors represents a better prospective customer, it is beneficial to think of the different types of website visitors in terms of a specific type of product. Lets say that you sell cheerleading shoes. Since cheerleading shoes are a type of athletic equipment, it is likely that your pay-per-click advertisements could be placed on a website for a baseball team.
Which website visitor is better? Someone who clicks on your advertisement for cheerleading shoes on the baseball team website because they wonder what cheerleading shoes look like? Or someone who goes to Google and types cheerleading shoes into the search box and then clicks through to your website because your company is near the top of the first page results?
This is analogous to asking a commissioned salesperson in a formalwear shop if she would rather have a customer who is searching for a prom dress or one who is just killing time in between appointments.
Organic free search engine traffic represents highly qualified prospects who found your website because they were actively seeking your type of product or service. Pay-per-click advertisements represent people who stumble upon a link to your website and are interested enough to click through. They may or may not have a need for what you have to offer.
You might sell something to anyone who visits your website. Pay-per-click today represents an effective means of driving traffic to your website. All traffic is good. Traffic that represents people actively seeking your product or service is even better, and that’s what you get with organic free search engine traffic.
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