Why I Prefer Search Engine Traffic

There are hundreds of different traffic sources online. Some free, some paid, some great, some not so great. They all have their pros and cons. In this post I am going to show you why natural search engine rankings is my preferred source of website traffic.

Search engine traffic is passive.

In other words, if you know what you’re doing, you put time, energy and money in once, but continue to reap the benefits from it for many years.

Sure, the search engine algorithms change all the time. Everything online does though. It’s the nature of the beast we call “the internet”.

Because search algorithms change so much, I always lead with this caveat: It is important that you do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) properly.

If you do it wrong, any major algorithm update will affect you negatively. If you do it right however, algorithm updates will 90% of the time work in your favor.

Paid traffic is temporary.

Paid traffic can be great to instantly tap into an existing audience. The biggest problem I have with it though is, as soon as I stop paying for it, it is gone.
In other words, you can’t really build it up and walk away from it. Unlike SEO, it is not a set and forget traffic source.

The argument always is: I don’t have to worry about algorithm updates with paid traffic.
Truth is, if you do SEO properly (like I show you), you won’t have to worry about search engine algorithm updates either.

Let’s face it, even paid advertising platforms change. Heck, if the network one day decides they don’t like what you’re promoting anymore, they can shut you down without an explanation. I have seen this happen so many times I’ve lost track.

What happens to all the hard work you put into finetuning that source of traffic? It’s gone!

As a paid ad buyer, your whole operation is under a lot more scrutiny than when you’re tapping into free search engine traffic. Why? Because 99% of all ads (in every paid network I’ve seen) get manually reviewed before they go live.

That doesn’t happen in SEO. SEO is all about a pleasant user experience, and assuming you provide that, Google wants to see you in the top of its search results.

Heck, the only time a website gets a manual review is when its user experience sucks or you’re doing everything wrong with SEO.

The big drawback of course is: SEO is not instant. It does take some time before you can drive significant traffic with it. Even then you’re somewhat limited how much traffic you can drive.

Which is why – if you choose to make SEO part of your traffic strategy – it is important that you get very specific on the keywords you want to rank for.

SEO isn’t complicated.

Lastly, contrary to what gurus would like you to believe, SEO is easy. It basically breaks down into three parts:

1. Keyword Research: Figure out exactly what keywords you want to pursue. This is probably the most important step. You can’t guess this one and expect to make a profit within 3 – 6 months.
   A good tool I use and highly recommend is: Long Tail Pro.
2. Good User Experience: Believe it or not, Google now uses your user experience to help determine where your sites should rank. So make sure the content (be it images, videos, text, etc) on your site fits your audience. Don’t pull a bait and switch on them. Give your visitors exactly what they want – and make it easy for them to get it.

   In other words, make sure your site is easy to navigate (on mobile and PC) and don’t make the user strain themselves to consume your content. Keep it simple.
   All around, make sure your site gives visitors a positive user experience.

3. Become Famous: If you do step #1 and #2 properly, this step will take on a snowball effect after you get to the top of Google, which will greatly help you in staying on top.
   To get to the top of Google though, you will need to start building high quality links to your site. Ideally you would get these from other high ranking sites in your niche, but since they are hard to come by these days, use the next best thing: Private Blog Network (PBN) backlinks.
   My preferred network when linking to my money site is Lightening Rank (LR). They are not the cheapest, but are the best from what I have found to date (aside from my own PBN network).
   I occasionally use PBN Success (PS) as well just because they are quite a bit cheaper, but they are definitely not as good. In other words, I would not use these alone. Occasionally mixing them in with my monthly LR links is proving to work well though.
   Once I get the report with the sites/pages that my LR or PS links are on, I add them to a spreadsheet I use to track all my PBN backlinks. Every month I take the collection of URLs and promote them through Rank Authority PBN (RAP) or this 600 bookmark fiverr gig. The sole reason for this is to push more link juice through the PBN links that are pointing to my site.
   RAP is ideal for this, but if you’re on a tight budget, the fiverr bookmarks will do. Something is better than nothing.

Rinse and repeat the above – month after month – always targeting different variations of your keywords for each piece of content and backlink.

You will need a small budget for this but if you’ve done each step properly and have monetized your sites properly, you should start making your money back within 6 months tops. After that it’s gravy.

The trick is to continue creating valuable content and continue building those strong backlinks until you get to the top of Google. Once on top, you will notice other sites start to randomly link to you and random strangers start sharing it on their social media outlets.

Once that starts to happen on a regular basis, it gets easy to maintain top search engine rankings.

Meaning, build it right, and you will have yourself a set-and-forget source of free search engine traffic.