Search engine traffic versus link traffic.

[newsguy]

I've always read (and it makes sense to believe) that search engine traffic is the best kind of traffic because it's very targetted--people are actively looking for what your site contains (usually).

But one of my sites in particular gets a lot of traffic from a link that's on another site with a similar theme. Would that traffic be just as good as the search engine traffic? What do you think?

[John Scott]

The best traffic is relevant, and recommended. Search engine traffic tends to be highly relevant, but it doesn't necessarily add credibility to your business. The best traffic, IMO, comes from links placed by happy customers recommending your products/services.

[Papadoc]

What makes sense is the more you diversify your traffic sources, the less dependent you are on any one source. If you get all your business from any one source and that source dries up, so do you. The most secure business plan comes from a fully integrated marketing plan and that includes, but is not solely dependent on search engines.

[temi]

Like Papadoc said its essential to get traffic from as many source as possible, you should get the organic search engine traffic, link exchange, paid link and if you can afford it adword ads, that way you are not depending on one source of traffic so it one of the sources should stop performing well you can still count on traffic from the other sources.

[Dave Hawley]

But one of my sites in particular gets a lot of traffic from a link that's on another site with a similar theme. Would that traffic be just as good as the search engine traffic? What do you think?

Impossible to say based on only that.

[rritoch]

When deciding how to get more traffic, I always think about the visitors first. If your selling candles for example, your target is just about anyone and any traffic is good. Search engine traffic is highly targeted but unless your targeting popular keywords, it isn't likely to meet much of your target audience. In the candle site example, there probably aren't that many searches done for candles compaired to the number of surfers who would want to buy from you if they saw your site. In this case, graphical links to your site from shopping sites would probably be the best traffic you could get.

Also, don't discount the use of banner exchanges. I wouldn't suggest throwing one up on your home page, but if you create some high-interest pages that are easy to find, but deep in your site, your likely to produce a significant amount of customers from the banners. Most banner exchanges produce about 1 clickthrough per 1000 impressions (even bcentral if you have a good banner and target it properly). To generate that many hits the pages with the banner exchange on them should contain information which is updated often, and provide your visitors with a very good reson to return often. Online games for example meet this criteria. One article I read suggested making an adult site with lots of free pictures (only a few per page), and placing banner exchanges on all your pages.

Lastly, if your target audience is small businesses viral marketing may be the way to go. Viral marketing is my specialty, and it's responsible for about 90% of my traffic. It took me about a year of doing viral marketing to develop a decent, and constant traffic stream from it, but now I use it to generate lots of banner impressions and other forms of click through traffic. The traffic generated directly by viral marketing is very low quality, but if you have a great deal of bandwidth to spare its a great way of building the brand awareness of your site. Viral marketing also boosts your alexa rank, which looks good when its time go out and find link partners.