Some info on popular traffic sources…

I came across this summary from an old manual I wrote some time ago. Alot of it is still relevant today, I’ll get round to updating it at some point:

Traffic Sources Summary

SEO

• Little to no cost – Free Trafic
• Long term can take six months to rank
• Requires large volumes of content
• Massive potential
• Becoming harder to manipulate
• Backlinks are becoming less effective
• Social signals are becoming more effective
• Niche sites and large content sites.
• Google algorithm looks at:
• On site seo / meta tags
• Latent semantic indexing
• CTR in SERP’s
• Bounce rate
• Domain age
• Backlinks
• Social signals

Adwords – Search Network

• Paid search from 0.02p / click
• Text ads – No images
• Can’t direct link
• Landing page needs content & good outgoing links
• Highly Competitive for popular terms
• Massive potential

Adwords – Content Network

• Paid search from 0.02p /click?
• Text and Display ads – text & images on Adsense sites
• Lots of fraudulent clicks
• Keywords matched with content on site
• Always separate from search campaigns

Yahoo / MSN Search

• Less competition than Adwords
• Far less volume
• A lot of Yahoo searches by 3^rd party sites > Fraud/Crap > Block the crap

Facebook

• Massive volume and international traffic
• Domestic traffic expensive starts at 36p click
• High CTR can bring this down to…
• Very dependent on CTR for successful advertising
• Cleavage and weird images for the win
• Can direct link
• Ad size 110x80px
• Very good targeting by:
• Age
• Sex
• Location to city level
• Interests – Category or Specific (topics liked/groups etc.)
• Single, interested in
• Education level (untested)

Plenty of Fish

• Extremely good targeting, religion, postcode, hair colour, smokers etc.
• Can target or ignore mobile users
• Low volume, images need replacing quickly to avoid banner blindness
• Standard size 110x80px       Larger IAB sizes for the win 300×250 etc.
• Can direct link

TrafficVance

• Best PPV network
• Bids from $0.011 per pop up
• Can direct link to offer / load cookie
• 775 x 400px viewable window
• Massive arbitrage potential

Lead impact

• More expensive than TV min bid $0.028

MediaTraffic

• More expensive than TV min bid $0.02
• Low volume

Adon

• Cheap from $0.005
• Low volume in UK

Other Sources: Media Buys, Big Display Networks (Adsonar, Blade360 etc.), MySpace, E-mail