Should you buy traffic to your website? It can be very difficult for site owners to get enough traffic to their website, especially if you set up your site recently and it is fairly new. While organic SEO and investing in content will pay off in the long run, buying paid traffic is an interesting option if you are interested in significant website traffic right from the start. So what exactly does buying internet traffic mean?
As the article’s title suggests, paid traffic is traffic where you pay money in order to attract visitors to your website. This can be done in many different ways. A common method for purchasing traffic to your site will include Demand Gen campaigns (formerly Discovery), Display campaigns, and also regular PPC ads. When you buy targeted online traffic, it is a great way to reach your target audience directly, and since it is quite a targeted audience, it can improve conversions. However, it is important to avoid buying the wrong type of traffic in the wrong way. In this article, we will talk about the right way to buy paid traffic, how to do it, and what you should avoid.
How does the option of buying paid traffic work?
Before you start paying for sponsored traffic to your website to integrate with the organic traffic coming from SEO work, there are several steps you should take before launching a paid advertising campaign.
1. Know your audience
The first essential step before purchasing paid traffic is targeting your audience. It is important to know whom you are trying to reach and what the best way to connect with them is. So before you buy targeted paid traffic, spend some time understanding your target audience and their desires. Audience targeting will increase your click-through rate (CTR), and the amount of paid traffic that arrives relative to the price you pay will grow. The information that is important for you to know about your audience includes:
- Demographics (age, gender, geographical location, education, and more)
- Interests
- Behaviors
You can get audience insights and segment your audience through native platforms with advertising on Taboola and Outbrain. This will help you create more effective paid traffic campaigns, so you can spend less money and improve the return on investment (ROI) in your campaigns.
2. Choose the right advertising channels for you
Choosing the relevant advertising channels for your business is critical when paying for paid traffic to your website because it impacts the effectiveness of your campaigns. It is important to identify the marketing channels that are already working for you so that you can decide where to focus the budget. Look in Google Analytics for traffic sources that are already driving traffic to your website; these will be a good starting point for paid traffic campaigns to reach people interested in your product or service and to avoid wasting money.
3. Define goals and objectives in advance
Before you start buying paid traffic across various advertising platforms, it is important to define in advance the marketing goals you want to achieve in your campaigns in order to optimize the campaigns to reach these goals. Usually, marketing goals will focus on 3 stages where you want to lead your audience:
- Awareness – Helping people get to know your business or brand.
- Consideration – Getting your audience to think of your business as a solution to their problem.
- Decision – Selling the solution to the audience.
Within these three goals, break them down into more specific targets such as: the number of new visitors to the website, the number of leads per month, and more. Setting concrete goals makes it easier to track your advertising performance. This way, you can ensure that you are spending your advertising budget wisely.
4. Track your performance
Running a campaign on one of the advertising platforms to achieve targeted traffic to your website is only the beginning of the process. The next step is to make sure your campaign is achieving the right results. This means monitoring the campaign, measuring performance and results, evaluating what works well, and changing what doesn’t work well. In other words – campaign optimization. A campaign optimization process includes: understanding the purchasing process, understanding user behavior, calculating costs per impression, per click, and per conversion, and more. You may need to change keywords, content, calls to action, or the landing page to generate better performance.
Why should you be careful before buying paid traffic?
When paying for paid traffic to your website, it is very important to be wary of available options on the web or offers that seem a bit suspicious. Follow these three principles to avoid mistakes when buying paid traffic:
1. Don't pay for paid traffic without knowing what to do
Depending on your business and goals, purchasing paid traffic through one of the advertising platforms can take up a large share of your monthly budget. This is the main reason why you need to do it right without wasting money. Whether you run campaigns on native content advertising platforms, or PPC campaigns on Facebook and Google, it is essential that you consult with a marketer or a digital advertising agency familiar with this digital arena in order to receive the best guidance.
2. Don't fall victim to click fraud
A few years ago, it was very risky to market your website with paid digital campaigns due to click fraud in campaigns, and even today there are bots and individuals who carry out such fraud in order to harm competitors’ results. A very common type of such fraud is click fraud, which artificially inflates the clicks you receive in your paid campaigns. In such click fraud, you essentially spend more money on low-quality traffic or even on no real traffic at all, which severely hurts your budget and can also lead to a suspension from the advertising platform on which you advertise. It is recommended to use the ClickCease system, which connects to some of the advertising platforms and prevents this type of fraud.
3. Don't ignore platform advertising policies
Most advertising platforms have policies related to working on the platform and running campaigns. For example: Google Ads and Facebook have a strict prohibition against ads containing racist content, sexual content, or content related to gambling. Operating on these advertising platforms in a way that does not comply with the platform’s policy will lead to ad disapproval and ultimately the suspension of your advertising account if policy-violating content is published repeatedly.
In conclusion - Is buying paid traffic worth it?
Purchasing traffic to a website using the various advertising platforms is a great idea depending on what your site needs and depending on the quality of the traffic. Before running a paid campaign on any platform, it is important to define your goals and what you actually want to achieve from paid traffic, and it is also important to beware of pitfalls and scams that exist in the digital age today. A great option for buying high-quality paid traffic is working with one of the famous native platforms, Taboola or Outbrain, which serve billions of people every month with in-depth audience data and tools to help you optimize your campaigns on these platforms to achieve the best results.
About the Author
Dvir Naaman, 27 years old, graduate of the Digital Marketing course at HackerU College. Experienced in building WordPress sites, paid advertising on Google, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok platforms. Specializes at Fialkov Digital in organic search engine optimization (SEO). Has rich experience in eCommerce and dropshipping, and is the owner of Merchant Center – a website aggregating information about eCommerce systems and advanced marketing systems to increase business conversions, with an emphasis on eCommerce store sales.
