Traffic Generation: What’s The BEST Traffic Source For Your Website

Like, Follow and Share:

Traffic Generation:

What’s The BEST Traffic Source For Your Website

What’s the BEST traffic source for my website to market my business online?

This is a common question for many online entrepreneurs just starting out or those wanting more traffic to their website.

Website traffic, aka website visitors, is the lifeblood of an online business. If you don’t have any website visitors, you don’t have people to convert into leads and sales.

But what traffic source should you focus on? And what’s best, FREE or PAID traffic?

The truth is that traffic as such is not a problem. Internet traffic is abundant.

So if traffic is easy, what’s the problem?

The problem is that you don’t just want traffic, you want TARGETED traffic. That is, you want website visitors who are truly interested in what you offer. Otherwise it’s useless.

Since there are many different online traffic sources to choose from, let’s start with explaining some of them:

Free Online Traffic Sources

What exactly are free online traffic sources?

Free traffic sources are those you don’t have to pay anything for, to get visitors to your website. Here are some examples:

Social Media: e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn
Video Marketing: e.g. YouTube
Article Marketing: e.g. ezines in article directories and guest blogging
Blogging: it’s kind of free, although you have to pay for web hosting unless you have a free blog, which is not recommended. (Here’s why => Blogging Tools)
SEO: i.e. Search Engine Optimization, which when done right helps your website to rank high in the search engines, e.g. Google, when someone is searching for certain keywords

The advantage with these traffic sources is that they are free, or more precisley, “almost” free. Because they are actually not completely “free”.
Yes, they are free since you don’t pay for the traffic upfront. But you’re paying for it with the time and resources it takes you to create social media posts, to write articles and blog posts, to create and publish videos etc.

The disadvantage with “free” traffic is that it usually takes a long time to get lots of traffic from it. And the traffic you get, you can’t control or scale it. It just shows up.

Paid Online Traffic Sources

When you use paid traffic, you pay money to platforms to e.g. show ads that send visitors to your website when someone clicks on the ad, or you pay website owners to show your ad or content on their site.

Here are some examples of paid traffic sources:

PPC: pay-per-click ads on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube, usually sending the traffic to a capture page or a sales page when someone clicks the ad
PPV: pay-per-view ads are ads that pop-up on popular websites when you visit them
Solo ads: you pay someone to email your ad to their list
Banner ads: you pay website owners to place your banner ad on their website
Affiliates: you pay a commission to other marketers who sell your product

The advantage with paid traffic is that you can get lots of traffic FAST, you control it (you can tell the traffic exactly what web page to go to) and you can scale it.

The disadvantage is of course that it costs money.

So what should you choose: free or paid traffic?

Usually, the best choice is to have a mix of both.

You should however start with 1 traffic source and focus on it. When you have learned how to use it and you get a steady stream of traffic from it, you can add another traffic source.

And whether you should use free or paid traffic: Your goal should always be to OWN your traffic.

So what does that mean? What traffic do you own?

You own your traffic when you can reach your target audience whenever you want and send them to whatever web page or offer you want. You control the traffic, but without paying for it.

Traffic you own is e.g. your email list, your followers on social media, your subscribers on YouTube, your blog subscribers – and your customers.

That’s why it’s so important to convert your traffic, free and paid, into followers, subscribers and customers.

You can then easily reach all these people by sending them an email, posting on Social Media etc, without having to pay for it.

This is how you set it up => Sales Funnel Creation

WHERE does your target audience HANG OUT?

What’s REALLY important though before you choose your traffic source, is that you do some research to find out WHERE your target audience hangs out online.

If they e.g. are mainly on Facebook, then you have to choose Facebook as your main traffic source.

If your research shows that they are on Facebook AND Pinterest, then you can choose the platform you prefer.

But here’s something you have to keep in mind:

No matter what traffic source you choose: Untargeted traffic is USELESS

Untargeted traffic is a complete waste of time and money!

Imagine paying for thousands of visitors to your website, but none of them actually buy anything from you.

That’s no good! Yet it happens all the time.

And it’s basically because many marketers make the mistake of approaching traffic generation with a “shotgun” mentality.

This means that some marketers and business owners think that the wider and broader their marketing, the more people they reach, the more potential customers they’ll attract.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Trying to sell to a broad market is increasing the amount of competition they’ll have to fight through in order to stand out from the crowd … long before even thinking about closing a sale.

And all too quickly, this “spray and pray” approach will burn through their budget, keep them broke, and wind up killing their businesses.

To be a successful online marketer, you need TARGETED traffic

>> Click Here To Tweet This <<

Targeted traffic is accomplished through focusing your marketing and content towards a targeted, specific, and highly responsive demographic.

And once you do this, you’ll have a MUCH easier time creating ads and content that will truly resonate with your prospects, grabbing their attention, and peaking their interest…

So they’ll actually want to find out more about you and your products or services. Only this way can you produce more leads and sales from every dollar you spend on marketing.

The simplest way to focus your efforts to attract a specific audience is by creating a customer “avatar.”

Be crystal clear on WHO your PERFECT customer is

Your customer avatar represents the characteristics of your perfect customers. Think of all key characteristics and all traits shared by the people who are most likely to buy from you, and write them down. This is your customer avatar.

Make sure you know the following:

What problems of theirs can I help solve?
What specific questions of theirs can I help answer?
How am I uniquely positioned to help?
Where can I find them and how do I speak to them?

Now when you have this clear, you have a much better idea of how to connect with your most profitable audience. You’ll know what headlines that will get their attention and you’ll know what content they are interested in, what language to use, etc.

Download FREE Worksheet => Your Perfect Customer

So…what’s the BEST traffic source then?

As you probably have figured out by now… there is no single traffic source that is the BEST for all online businesses and websites.

First of all, you have to start with knowing your target audience, and where they hang out online. This is the first and most crucial step you must take to know what traffic source you should choose.

And keep in mind that whether you choose free or paid traffic: Your goal should always be to OWN your traffic, so that you control it without paying for it.

To own your traffic, you have to build a list of subscribers and / or followers.

This is how you do it => Build your list

If you’re looking for some tips how to grab the attention of your target audience, I have a FREE resource here for you!

As always, I hope you’ve found value in this post about TRAFFIC! Please Like and SHARE! And comment below or send me a message if you’d like some advice on suitable traffic sources for your business.

This blog contains affiliate links for tools I use and recommend which means at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission if you decide to make a purchase.