Paid For Traffic Vs. Organic Traffic

Paid for traffic, or organic traffic; which is better?

The short answer is, it depends on many factors, like your product, goals, niche, and budget.

What is the difference between paid for traffic and organic traffic?

Paid for traffic, also known as PPC (pay per click) is just a fancy way of saying ads. Paid for traffic is traffic you buy through an ad vendor, such as Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Pintrest ads, or any other advertising network.

Organic traffic, on the other hand, is free traffic that comes mainly from search engines and social media platforms. Using a process known as search engine optimization (SEO) many website owners are able to drive thousands of website visitors to their website every month. People searching Google or scrolling social media find these websites organically because it contains certain keywords, or is linked to by a high authority site.

So which is better, paid for traffic or organic traffic?

At the end of the day, each form of traffic has its advantages. The advantage of organic traffic is that it is free, and it increases over time. The downside of organic traffic is it can sometimes take a few months to get a new website off the ground and getting traffic. Ads on the other hand (paid for traffic) can drive as many visitors to your website as you can afford nearly instantly, however it is usually very expensive to do so.

Ultimately, we recommend organic traffic for small businesses and those with a limited budget. We recommend larger companies use a combination of organic advertising and paid for traffic. However, a business should never rely on ads alone. The problem with relying on ads alone is that if your budget dries up, so do your leads, and therefor sales.

Learn more about organic advertising here