Why should you pay to get web site traffic, isn't SEO enough?

It's a fair question - after all most businesses on and offline have tight budgets to play with and need to make each and every penny count. So why should you as a business pay good money to drive targeted traffic to your site?

Perhaps there's a clue in the last question.

What other options are there?

You have 3 basic choices to get traffic to your website:

1. You pay - using PPC, ezine ads, banners etc...
2. You borrow - constructing Joint Ventures and endorsed offers with partners
3. You grow your own - with natural search engine optimisation

So which is the best?
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Well they all do a different job and have different characteristics, perhaps the best information source you could hope to find on the subject is found here:
http://www.trackingandtesting.com/dystatic/TrafficGeneration.php

But why PPC?

You need PPC because you can:

* Control the flow of traffic to your website
* Target buying customers and those most likely to buy through correct keyword targeting
* Test different offers

The last benefit above is perhaps the most important. Remember a page on a website doesn't have to stay recorded online forever...

Just because you've completed your site in terms of the pages you want to add (although in truth you'll never be finished as you can continually add more related content), this does not preclude you from testing other pages...

The value of testing
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Simple scenario: You want to test 2 price points for a product/service. (Yes you can do this and people don't have to know about it so don't be worried).

With a PPC campaign you can have your normal web page (Page A) sitting as normal at the well known web address with all of your normal links pointing to it.

Your 2 price point test pages (Page B & C) are a different kettle of fish - they sit off to the side and you push traffic to them using PPC to quickly determine which is the winner.

You can do this for any test you dream up, the bottom line is you can quickly determine what is working and what is not in your marketing.

Knowing what's not working is more important than what is (particularly if you are sailing close to the wind) because you SAVE money you would otherwise have thrown away.

The Affiliate Advantage
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When you have a website that is converting well, you will be able to attract many affiliates (and even super affiliates if you are doing a good enough job and providing a good enough incentive package).

Affiliates can make your business explode overnight if you have done your homework and have the site converting well.

If you have not you may attract them, they may pump some traffic and then they will disappear to pastures new when they see you are not doing a good job.

In summary
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If I could give you one reason why you should use PPC and in particular Google Adwords as part of your internet marketing campaign it would be this:

"Feedback fast, feedback cheap"

Yes you may spend a little money up front, but you can save yourself a whole lot of heartache on the back end.