If you have a website, you need traffic. Unfortunately many people know this and also come to realize their lack of knowledge on how “Internet traffic” really works. There are lots of “opportunities” out there offering you thousands of “targeted visitors” to your website for just a few bucks, or a directory promoting your website on Google on your behalf.
If you do not advertise your business, your incoming flow of customers will be low. Nowadays simple word-of-mouth and referrals are not sufficient to sustain a business. Today, the average consumer is more informed before purchasing anything, once they see your advertising in any media, they will go to the Internet and compare product, services and prices. If you were not in Google results at the moment your customers were looking for your services, you are just losing business. This is why every business (those that are still in business) must follow the consumer’s trend which is the Internet, and nowadays, people are so desperate to get traffic that they are buying into anything.
Buying Traffic:
Don’t fall for these scams, most of those websites will have some form of script and/or bot to go on your website and emulate people browsing pages, affecting the counters and statistics of your website within a certain period of time, and then that traffic is gone and you had no purchases and/or leads. They will direct you to all the reports as “proof” of the traffic coming into your website, and it will be too late.
Online Paid Directory Services with Google Ads:
More constructive, are the listings on Yellow Pages, DexKnows and other paid directories and Digital marketing firms that advertise in bulk for all their clients under popular key terms. You pay a flat monthly fee (ranges between $200-$400 per month) and they will advertise and promote your website on Google (or so they say). You want to rank for “tile store Miami” so they tell you that they are advertising on your behalf on Google, great deal isn’t it? Really, I don’t think so.
They are only advertising their directory and bringing traffic to their domain. Once they click on the “sponsored link” from Google it will lead to their directory to then compete with a bunch of your local competitors. Most will see this as the new “online yellow pages” but the truth is that the priority of these directories is not to increase your brand awareness but rather simply “list” your site, while they promote theirs. They not only do not care about your results, but at the end of the day, what you pay them is only “renting” the traffic (if any) and once you stop paying them, you will no longer be listed.
Pay-Per-Click:
The internet has proven to be the most effective way of marketing, since you are able to create campaigns based on the demographics of your target market, by certain radius from a zip code, by gender, by age and even by what they do! And then you only pay for those who “click” on your ads. Try that with newsletters, radio and/or tv ads. This type of advertising is great but you do not own that traffic, requiring you to continually invest in pay-per-click campaigns.
Organic / Natural Rankings:
The last and most effective way of advertising on the Internet is really to invest into what we call “organic” or “natural” rankings. These are not paid nor sponsored, but rather “earned”. The more links leading to your site the better, the more trusted “authority sites” leading to your site, the more you improve your rankings among search engine results. This goes along with also the quantity and quality of the content and the relevancy to what people are searching for.
There are other factors that also take place, but content relevancy and links are the heaviest factors determining where search engines will place your website in their results. Once you have “earned” your way (and yes this does take a lot of time and effort) you should continue to invest in keeping your privileged spot for the keywords your website ranks for, because the Internet is now an ocean of hungry traffic sharks.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, the best way to advertise on the Internet is to do a combination of strategies that fit your budget and will be able to give you short term and long term return on your advertising efforts. The more you invest in organic rankings, the more you are securing the future of your business.