Google Internet Traffic – Organic vs AdWords

By Sarah Giometti | Advertising

Apr 16

Why will I focus on Google for this article?  Quite simply, because it is the highest-ranked site on the Internet.  Who is the second?  Facebook.  Yahoo is a very respectable number 4 – behind YouTube, which is ranked number 3.  Consequently, YouTube is owned by Google – so the two highest search engines on planet Earth are owned by Google.  Where is Bing in all this?  They are ranked number 27.  In other words, if you want to do well in search engine rankings, you’ll start with Google.

Organic Search TrafficOrganic Search Traffic

Organic traffic is the traffic that comes to your website from a source other than paid search or referral traffic.  Referral traffic comes to your website by way of a hyperlink listed on another site that points to your website.  Basically, if a person visits Google (or another search engine), types in a word or phrase, and clicks one of the results, that person has just become part of the organic traffic to a website.  What you want to do is generate that sort of traffic to your website.

Why worry so much about organic traffic when you can use AdWords?  Because organic traffic is free – and we all love free!  Let’s say you make widgets and the editor of the authority in widget magazines (World’s Wildest Widgets) consistently mentions your company in her magazine.  In case you were wondering, her name is Wendy Westcliff.  People look to Wendy Westcliff’s articles in World’s Wildest Widgets because nobody knows widgets like Wendy!  Since Wendy consistently writes about your company, you would think her widget enthusiast readership would come to you for widgets – that’s called organic traffic – and it’s free.

Paid SearchGoogle AdWords for Paid Search Traffic

Google AdWords allows you to pay to have your website listed at the top of the Google search result pages for certain search words or phrases.  While that sounds like a great idea at first, remember that you must pay for this – and you may have to compete with other people willing to pay for the same words or phrases.

The trick is to develop the right strategy to direct the right traffic from the right paid search to convert at a high enough level to generate enough revenue to be profitable after paying for the traffic.  When you search for things in Google, do you skip over the paid results at the top of the page?  Most people do.  However, you don’t pay for people to skip over your paid search – you only pay for clicks.  Just be sure to attract the right clicks to your paid search to be profitable – it can be done – people do it all the time – but wouldn’t it be great to convert traffic from organic search – for free?

Best TrafficThe Best Google Internet Traffic

Now you’re asking – but what is the best traffic – organic or paid?  The best traffic is the traffic that gets you the most leads and, in turn, the most sales.  If you have a little cash, go ahead and jump start your search traffic with an AdWords campaign while you work on increasing your page rank to move you towards the top of the search results to get you even more free, organic traffic than you generate from your AdWords campaign.  Get both of these strategies right and you’ll have more traffic, leads, and sales than you know what to do with!

Let us help you increase your Google Internet traffic with a search engine optimization plan!

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