The Wrong Kind of Traffic
Yesterday I mentioned that my fence had been hit, again. Here are some pictures to show you what I mean. The picture on the left was taken in December, 2004, and is featured on my Electronic Pet Fence Guide on the page describing what I had to do to repair our Invisible Fence system. The picture on the right is the latest crash. Both pictures feature my daughter making faces in the foreground, just to add the human touch…
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Anyhow, on to the topic at hand…
Bad Traffic
Traffic is the lifeblood of any website. No traffic, no visitors.... No visitors, no clicks... No clicks, no AdSense earnings! I was reminded of this recently when my AdSense earnings dropped because I lost a lot of traffic.
The quest for traffic sometimes leads people to sign up for "traffic exchange" programs. AdSense publishers should be careful, however, when doing so. The AdSense program policies state:
These prohibited methods include but are not limited to repeated manual clicks or impressions, using robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software. (emphasis added)
As you can see, Google doesn’t like “autosurf” type programs. And in general they don’t like low-quality, non-converting traffic sources, which is what these traffic exchanges end up being. If you use such programs, you stand a good chance of either getting smart priced (very likely) or else getting kicked out of AdSense altogether.
In other words, stick to the usual means of traffic generation:
- Search engine optimization
- Submitting to article directories
- Web 2.0 techniques including videos
- Blogging and RSS feeds
- Signatures in forums posts, comments, and similar user-generated content sources
You can also use legitimate paid sources of traffic like AdWords. Just stay away from the programs that “guarantee traffic” or compensate you for visiting other sites. It’s just not worth the risk.
PLRSiteBuilder Customers: If for some reason you’re not on my customer mailing list, you’re missing out on updates and such. I’ve started a blog for the product, but you also need to be on my list. Contact me for details.
Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.<
Keyword of the Day: forex, short for “foreign exchange currency trading”. Approximately 1700 searches per day.
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Comments
6 Responses to “The Wrong Kind of Traffic”
I have been working on traffic for a number of sites and am always looking for new sources. So I search and end up with those “traffic exchange” sites which are only sign-up sites harvesting email addresses with no real traffic value. For fast, reliable traffic I do the following.
I have immediate traffic results with:
- Squidoo
- HubPages
- MyBlogLog
(all three of these sites can also increase your PR).
Also use:
- stumblr (this continues to blow me away with the amount of referrals I get).
- technorati
- digg, reddit
- article marketing
Also, have some realistic goals in mind for traffic.
Eric, I just checked the site as usual these days, and I have version PLRSiteBuilder 1.2.0 that you sent to me, any chance of getting the updated version? Thanks, Kim Adair
Kim, all customers should have joined a mailing list for updates. If you didn’t, send me a note and I can add you to the list.
Eric, I thought I joined your mailing list yesterday, will send another email to you asap today! Thanks.
Eric, I just checked my subscriptions from you, I am subscribed to all of them, if not, can you add me with my address(email),thanks!
Hi, Eric I see that I am on the PLRsitebuilder update list, received the last info, have you sent out the latest PLR Version? Thanks.