Paid Traffic Vs SEO

11 years ago

Start learning and applying paid traffic methods. Keep up on Seo though like the guy above said half comes from paid and half organic so half that traffic he has would probably not be there if he had not been doing Seo. I have been out of IM for about 4 years and am just getting back in and from what I can gather Seo is not as big of a deal as it was back then but I am sure some Seo on top of other traffic generating methods can't hurt.

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Big Kahuna SEO

11 years ago

Paid traffic is completely fine with me as long as its profitable. Both SEO and paid traffic take time and energy but in different ways. SEO involves link building, relationship building, and......waiting for results..... Paid traffic is instantaneous, however, it does take time to split test, refine, and make profitable. I use both depending on the niche.

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CynthiaNataline

11 years ago

I focus more on optimizing my on-site SEO, then I use paid traffic.

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maxjpip

11 years ago

Since you are doing SEO for a long time, keep doing it. Combine with paid traffic and profit more.

I used seo before but I don't do it now because I don't want to wait for result after all the effort (also time and money, lots of them) I put in, I want to see immediate result so I can fix my site or page and get better conversion.

SEO is long term solution just like you said, so I might do it again depends on the niche.

But...I think I will stick with paid traffic cause it saves time.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 11 years ago

Hi Owen,

May I explain why I can't vote in your poll, and why many of the successful IM business owners I know couldn't vote in it, either?

The bulk of our traffic is neither SEO traffic nor paid traffic.

Paid traffic and search-engine traffic are not really "opposites" or "counterparts". Search engine traffic can be either free (e.g. organic listings) or paid (e.g. AdWords). Non-search engine traffic can also be either free (e.g. article marketing) or paid (e.g. media buying). Paid and SEO aren't really "the two distinct, mutually exclusive, alternatives". It could be said, though, that "search-engine" and "non-search-engine" traffic are a classification, and both of those groups then have various free and paid subgroups. Just saying ...

Personally, I tend to advise people not to put much time, effort and energy into trying to attract "organic SERP's" traffic, for two main reasons: first, it's very precarious and makes your business Google-dependent, and any business that's Google-dependent is no more than one algorithm-change away from a potential accident (or even a potential disaster), as so many Warriors have been finding out over the last year or two, some of them to their very great cost; secondly, for me, search engine traffic has been uniformly the worst-converting traffic out of everything I've ever tried in 8 entirely different niches over the whole of the last 4 years - search engine visitors to all my websites typically stay the least time, view the fewest pages, opt in the least often and actually buy anything by far the least often. I admit I do get tons of search engine traffic to all my main sites (just because of all the high rankings I've got, incidentally, from article syndication to relevant sites) but I'd certainly hate to have to make a living from that traffic! Google rankings, in short, are not really much of a "traffic-generating plan" at all: that traffic's very poor quality and often temporary, too. Just reading this forum regularly will convince anyone of that.

Originally Posted by owenprescott

Naturally SEO is generally more of a long term solution

On the contrary: all too often - as attested to in hundreds (probably thousands) of threads in this very forum - it turns out to be only a short-term solution. Until the next Panda, Penguin or perhaps Porcupine comes along. And - as the saying goes - "that only happens all the time"!

Thanks
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owenprescott

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Hi Owen,

May I explain why I can't vote in your poll, and why many of the successful IM business owners I know couldn't vote in it, either?

The bulk of our traffic is neither SEO traffic nor paid traffic.

Paid traffic and search-engine traffic are not really "opposites" or "counterparts". Search engine traffic can be either free (e.g. organic listings) or paid (e.g. AdWords). Non-search engine traffic can also be either free (e.g. article marketing) or paid (e.g. media buying). Paid and SEO aren't really "the two distinct, mutually exclusive, alternatives". It could be said, though, that "search-engine" and "non-search-engine" traffic are a classification, and both of those groups then have various free and paid subgroups. Just saying ...

Personally, I tend to advise people not to put much time, effort and energy into trying to attract "organic SERP's" traffic, for two main reasons: first, it's very precarious and makes your business Google-dependent, and any business that's Google-dependent is no more than one algorithm-change away from a potential accident (or even a potential disaster), as so many Warriors have been finding out over the last year or two, some of them to their very great cost; secondly, for me, search engine traffic has been uniformly the worst-converting traffic out of everything I've ever tried in 8 entirely different niches over the whole of the last 4 years - search engine visitors to all my websites typically stay the least time, view the fewest pages, opt in the least often and actually buy anything by far the least often. I admit I do get tons of search engine traffic to all my main sites (just because of all the high rankings I've got, incidentally, from article syndication to relevant sites) but I'd certainly hate to have to make a living from that traffic! Google rankings, in short, are not really much of a "traffic-generating plan" at all: that traffic's very poor quality and often temporary, too. Just reading this forum regularly will convince anyone of that.

You are being a little semantic as you knew what I meant but I get what you are saying

. I bolded the critical point that led me to my current post. I have heard so many negative stories and I the last thing I need is to put large amounts of time into multiple sites to all of a sudden get penalized. At the moment I mainly just working with on-page SEO however I have never really been great when it comes to backlinks etc, I am hoping I can learn more about paid content and then I can outsource the tedious SEO linking.

On the contrary: all too often - as attested to in hundreds (probably thousands) of threads in this very forum - it turns out to be only a short-term solution. Until the next Panda, Penguin or perhaps Porcupine comes along. And - as the saying goes - "that only happens all the time"!

My SEO pages have been growing consistently and I have not been touched by any of the Google animals, I never really bothered with backlinks though which hopefully is working out for me as Google starts taking SEO's down ha. I only get a few 100 visits per day though.

Also thanks everyone for contributing your thoughts.

[ 1 ] Thanks

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InternetMarketingSmarts

11 years ago

SEO has become a moving target now and heavily geared towards bigger brands depending on your niche or keywords. But it's still worth pursuing. Paid traffic is great because the results can come faster and you can use what you learn for SEO. So they definitely go hand and hand. Whatever method you use, you want to make sure you're capturing folk's emails so if any of your traffic sources go dry or you get screwed by some furry animal update, you have an asset that is controlled by you.

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dome

11 years ago

Paid traffic always cost you way more and seo cost lesser than anything

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CPAPJason

11 years ago

I hated doing SEO with a passion before, and I still do.
I use paid and self generated traffic from social nets mainly, with some trickle in from SEO. The effort I put in to each area shows by volume of traffic.
SEO I let build naturally, getting back links from those that want to link to my sites.
Paid as a quick infusion.
Social nets I like better, more fun, but it can trickle in at times too.

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Sarevok

11 years ago

Free traffic is fun and good, but I prefer paid traffic.

I love paid traffic.

The problem with paid traffic, is that if it's not profitable you'll be very displeased with yourself.

So, make sure you can make the paid traffic profitable.

I advise having a sales funnel in place (including an email funnel of course).

What I personally suggest, is to have an immediate sales page or OTO after the user opts-in, and then, have even more OTOs.

That's the best method to monetize paid traffic in my experience.

And, if you can successfully monetize paid traffic.. You've got the world by the helm.

So it's worth fighting (and optimizing) for.

Just my $.02

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vojohn33

11 years ago

why do i always feel that my comments dont even matter once Alexa Smith comments. its a straight check mate. LOL
i prefer to use seo though, havent really bought any paid traffic so i cannot comment.

Thanks
1 reply

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owenprescott

11 years ago

Originally Posted by vojohn33

why do i always feel that my comments dont even matter once Alexa Smith comments. its a straight check mate. LOL
i prefer to use seo though, havent really bought any paid traffic so i cannot comment.

How can you prefer to use SEO when you have not bought any paid traffic lol? I mean you have to atleast give it a try, to find out what works best. Atleast that is my plan. I think I will try out some Solo Ads first, I dont mind losing some money finding my way, I waste it all the time.

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mrgoe

11 years ago

Seo is free, seo is easy to learn, seo brings targeted traffic, what could you want more ?

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vojohn33 11 years ago

Originally Posted by mrgoe

Seo is free, seo is easy to learn, seo brings targeted traffic, what could you want more ?

agreed highly. when i first started IM my mentor told me that targetted traffic is way more important to have then just random traffic. they got me to learn seo and focus solely on basing everything i do around it. and with that, i converted alot of sales. i've never tried paid traffic and was told to stay away from it, but i might give it a shot one day.
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Bit Designs

11 years ago

Both have their advantages.

SEO will ensure your long term profits, but it takes a while before the investment pays off. Paid traffic on the other hand will give results very fast, but will not give increasing profits.

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bryan012 11 years ago

For me organic SEO traffic is the best.
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patco

11 years ago

Of course SEO. It could be done FREE of charge and of course it's valid for years (if done properly)... While PPC could cost you hundreds of dollars and NO results at all...

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svetod

11 years ago

I can definitely say PPC!

Real marketers/millionaire makers choose PPC as their first choice. I don't say you should exclude SEO, but PPC is the fastest the the safest way to generate quality traffic.

The key is to really understand how to build your campaigns, how write your ads and how to beat the competition. I am doing PPC in one of the most competitive niches and I still make $1.000 per day from ppc only.
Any questions, let me know!

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mota

11 years ago

Excused me,
Is PTC website traffic is good?I mean if i send traffic from Trusted PTC to a Page Rank 1 content page,then page rank can down to PR1 to PR0?

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yunoblog

11 years ago

Paid traffic definitely has higher financial risks but if you know what you are doing, it's a risk worth taking because SEO is seen as more of a long-term strategy. As many of the posters mentioned above, an ideal strategy would be to employ both strategies. Using paid traffic to supplement income until your SEO is implemented in full force.

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Gavan

11 years ago

SEO used to be great a few years ago. It was very easy to rank well in Google, even for competitive keywords. Nowadays it has become A LOT harder. I don't think depending on organic traffic alone is a good strategy anymore.

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Moneymaker2012

11 years ago

If you can pay for the paid traffic and SEO both then it's good. PPC plays a big role in developing initial leads before the SEO starts to work.

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vask

11 years ago

Both have it's pros and cons.

I make most of my money from paid traffic. I've hit 5 figure days with paid traffic, but those high number campaigns don't last forever, so once the campaign dries up, you're back to square one.

I have a couple sites making me passive income from organic traffic, which is awesome - I only wish that I would've gotten into SEO sooner.

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Arshaan

11 years ago

SEO > Everything.

Getting good at SEO is like a gods gift, you can rank for any keyword any time you want.

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PBScott

11 years ago

Free VS Paid?
Is this a real question?

I'll take as much of the free stuff as anyone can throw at me thank you very much. Too bad we don't get as much as we used to these days. We did build our business plan around SEO and when Penguin came we had to lay off halve our staff due to so little traffic, but the majority of our conversions are still via the free stuff, as well as the most visitors.

We pay for advertising to reach more visitors than what the search engine sends us, our campaign is profitable, but we do not reach enough visitors profitably from paid traffic to survive. The competitiveness of the online shirt selling industry is ridiculous as I am sure most people know.

Doing one or the other is a bad business plan, put all your eggs in as many baskets as you possibly can.

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webrankingservices

Banned 11 years ago

It all depends on which niche you are working on.

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svetod

11 years ago

The discussion here is getting very interesting. I am surprised that many people prefer SEO though. Although most of the successful internet marketers that I know, became rich because of PPC.

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streetpipscom

11 years ago

Paid traffic is inorganic then it's not look natural and unhelpful for the campaign.

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svetod 11 years ago

Originally Posted by streetpipscom

Paid traffic is inorganic then it's not look natural and unhelpful for the campaign.

Absolutely disagree!
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brucewayne123

11 years ago

For any business SEO is preffered over PPC.. I recommend both SEO & PPC because SEO will take time and patience to see results but with PPC you will get instant results. Its all depends on your budget!

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webprogramzone

11 years ago

I dont think paid traffic comes anywhere near to seo. SEO is the best way to get traffic to your site and among all quality one. So i would definitely vote for seo

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andy1234

11 years ago

Hi everyone
I prefer SEO and I still do good this way, even with new sites, but I agree with most in this tread, that we also need paid traffic. I would like to know more about paid traffic...any suggestions?
Kind regards
Anders

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owenprescott

11 years ago

Thanks for all the replies, I wanted to ask as a lot of the popular IM's seem to emphasize paid traffic and how SEO is a "waste of time". I guess this is because they tend to pump and dump their systems so long term might not attract enough traffic to quickly sell a product.

Thanks

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CPAPJason

11 years ago

It depends on the campaign really.
A limited time offer, or I should say time sensitive offer, would not do well on SEO alone.
For affiliate marketing of Azon, CB, and evergreen products SEO is a solid long term method that can be used.

There is also a third area that should be touched on, and that is free, or near free, social net traffic. Which, depending on how it is done, can be as long term and as solid as you want it, and can be as time consuming as doing good solid SEO.

I prefer most other methods over straight SEO, since there are a lot of people competing for the same keywords, and I can drive traffic with the other sources in both the long and short term and have active sites without even being near page one.

Thanks

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zoldusta

11 years ago

paid traffic is more suitable for those who know nothing about SEO and other free traffic sources, but if you know how to get free traffic from search engines you don't really have go for paid traffic.

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imeasysales

11 years ago

I have to say PPC.

If you know how to run successful ad campaigns, then you can't beat the conversion rates you get with PPC. SEO is good for free traffic, but the conversion rates compared to Facebook and Google Adwords traffic is pretty poor for me.

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ceenote100

11 years ago

SEO if you have the patience for it. But it will be worth the wait.

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shakil58

11 years ago

I think SEO is must needed. also you can spent money for traffic but you should optimize your web site for search engine.

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pinkgorilla

11 years ago

I prefer SEO traffic. Around 75% of the traffic I get comes from search engines, and it usually converts pretty well. I've began to rely a lot more on search engine traffic recently rather than traffic from ad campaigns. Both sources of traffic are good, but if you do your SEO right then it will be much more cost efficient in the long run.

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heavysm 11 years ago

SEO used to be my game and business but now I've floated over to a few specific areas of paid traffic. I'm guessing less than 20% of my business is SEO related now, and those are mainly older projects I'm slowly dissolving (or I may keep, depending on their long term profitability).

With paid traffic the results are nearly instant so i can split test and refine my sales funnels very fast compared to my SEO funnels.

It almost felt surreal testing out some of my first paid traffic because I knew what i did wrong almost instantly rather than setting up a new site with SEO and waiting weeks to months for the first decent traffic to test my funnels.

I'm not saying SEO is bad at all, for some the results are ridiculously amazing, but for now the immediate benefit of paid traffic looks more promising for my current.
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seonutshell

11 years ago

It all comes down to free over fast in my opinion.

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andishm

11 years ago

SEO is the best way to get traffic which converts more better than PPC my personal opinion

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longrobnc

11 years ago

I've always gotten much better results from PPC.

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timpears

11 years ago

I avoid paid traffic. I wasted some money on it a year or so ago and it was a complete bomb. Not a single conversion from it. It is too complicated for me to master. Picking the right keywords and wording my ads is more than my pay grad evidently as I completely failed. So I am not going there again. Social is driving me a considerable amount of traffic so that is where my main concentration currently.

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Rod Dinero

11 years ago

PPC, you switch the traffic on/off whenever you want. Its fast, consistent and scalable. SEO traffic is not really free, it involves a huge expense of time and sometimes money. Time = money anyways so, PPC is better for me

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Christian William

11 years ago

i think both are good,
difference in paid traffic save time,
seo save money.

so i prefer paid traffic.

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jobtardis

Banned 11 years ago

[DELETED]

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longrobnc 11 years ago

Originally Posted by jobtardis

I prefer only seo because it gives the stable results than any other...

In my experience, stable is not a word that I would personally use to describe SEO. I'm not sure that there is an argument to be made that SEO is more stable than PPC. I'd love to hear it.

Btw, in my business, I invest in both.
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dotspiders

11 years ago

i am totally agree with the search engine optimization.
we must need to work on-page and off page work so we don't need to do the paid version.

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jgant

11 years ago

Social, paid and SEO.

I used to rely 100% on SEO and now only for local clients where it's not terribly competitive.

This year I started social and it's great. Tons of traffic fairly fast, but I did invest in ads up front for Facebook fans, so it's kind of paid traffic with dividends. You need to continually update posts, which is labor-intensive.

I'm now finally doing some purely paid campaigns (testing 2 as we speak) and hope to soon have several profitable campaigns.

Being green in purely paid traffic, it's a bit nerve-wracking because money goes out the door pretty fast.

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svetod

11 years ago

I think only people that didn't put enough effort to learn how to build strong campaigns and make PPC profitable would vote for SEO.
SEO is good, but in my opinion the traffic coming from PPC is more quality and you can see results in both short and long term.

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kindarthur

11 years ago

I will prefer SEO as my first option and SEO as my second option too. PPC & PPV, Banner advertisement, affiliate programs, press release services ..etc would be my third option.

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