Long Term and Short Term Web Traffic

Since we are in the business of generating links for customers, I often get asked if getting links pointing at one's website will result in an immediate traffic boost.

Many link sellers will say "Absolutely!". But my experience is that the normal type of links we are talking about -- links from low to medium traffic sites -- will generate very little immediate traffic. Acquiring links is a long term strategy. You will eventually gain exposure, and therefore traffic, in at least these two ways:

1. You will get clicks on your links, but only in little dribs and drabs.
2. You will influence the search engines to give you higher ranking for your most important keywords, and therefore will get traffic from free searches.

But these will not happen overnight. They are long term strategies that will take months to have an impact. The truth, however, is that a few months on the internet is nothing.

If you want immediate traffic there is no better way to get it than to run Pay Per Click (PPC)ads. My own experience is that using Google Adwords is the most effective way to advertise in order to get immediate response.

Of course this depends to a large extent on your product. If nobody ever searches for your product even PPC ads will not get traffic to your site because there is simply none (or very little) to get.

On the other hand, PPC ads cost money for every click, so you'd better take advantage of the traffic when you get it. If you do not have a strategy for "converting" traffic to sales, you would be wise to develop one before spending money on getting traffic to your site. Among other things, this means:

1. Fine tuning your product so it appeals to site visitors
2. Develop a landing page that presents a simple, strong, and direct sales message
3. Set up an ordering and payment processing system to make taking orders and receiving payments as brainless as possible.

For more information, see the Linknet Marketing Resource Library.