There are two different types of web traffic that your site can gain; organic and paid. What we’re interested to see is which of these two is better than the other. Take a look at both traffic sources down below:

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic refers to any web traffic you gain from ‘natural’ sources. In essence, a natural source is any source that you haven’t paid to get traffic from. So, this includes things like organic search engine results, social media, link building, etc.

The main benefit of organic web traffic is that you really don’t have to pay any money for the traffic you get. Sure, you could pay for a marketing agency to help you out, but the payment stops there. You don’t have to pay any money everytime someone visits your site, which you do have to do with many paid traffic sources. Plus, if you work on improving your organic traffic then you’re certain to use SEO which improves your search engine visibility for relevant keywords. As such, whenever consumers search for keywords relating to your industry, they’re met with your site near the top of the results. Therefore, you start to gain a reputation as an authority source within your industry, and you’re seen in a more positive light.

The downside is that gaining organic traffic can be a long and arduous process. Plus, the traffic you gain might not be entirely interested in what you have to offer, they could’ve just stumbled onto your site.

Paid Traffic

Paid traffic refers to any web traffic you gain via a paid service. More often than not, this can be narrowed down to paying for adverts to boost your traffic. If you pay for an ad, then that ad gets displayed on other websites, social media, search engines, etc. People can see the ad, click it, and get taken to your site. Largely, most businesses will use Google advertising to get their paid traffic. With Google Adwords, you can bid on certain keywords to display your adverts in search engines for keywords relevant to your business. With on-site ads, you’re bidding on advertising space on various websites and are looking for sites with traffic that’s relevant to your business.

What are the benefits of paid traffic? Well, for one, you can definitely get a lot of web traffic through adverts. Secondly, the traffic you get is more likely to be targeted to your business, which means conversion rates can be a lot higher. Think about it, someone can easily stumble upon your site organically without really caring about it. But, if you click on an advert then you’re most likely to care about what you’ve clicked on.

The only real downside is that it’s paid traffic. You have to spend money bidding on adverts, and there’s a lot of competition which can drive the prices up and be very costly.

So, which is better? In all honesty, they’re both great, but they’re even better when combined with one another. If you bring in both organic and paid traffic, then you’re catering to everyone, and your site will be flooded with lots of traffic every day.