Blog Traffic Exchanges
Blogging June 26th, 2007
This is one of those subjects that needs to be addressed by giving it the correct attention. Blog traffic exchanges are tools that can be used to gain extreme amounts of traffic, right? These tools can get traffic to your website, but they’re not as efficient as they may seem. There are better ways to get traffic to your blog.
The hardest part of starting a blog is getting those return visitors to your website. Return visitors are your most valuable asset. The first thing you must do is find the right visitors and find out what works best for your blog. How do you find those right visitors? One of the tactics you might use is to join some blog communities. You might also try to visit small to medium sized blogs that are similar to yours and provide comments, fostering discussion in their community. By doing this you could get the attention of other readers, not to mention the attention of the blog owner who just might take notice of a new readers blog.
Blog traffic exchanges don’t send you the targeted traffic that you need, unless you like visitors that will never return. A traffic exchange is nothing but a bunch of people wondering aimlessly through a traffic exchange trying to click on as many sites as possible in order to get the same type of visits back. Are those the type of visitors you want? Your time will be better spent trying to connect with bloggers through blog communities. The only thing a blog traffic exchange is good for is possibly putting a spike in your Alexa ranking and that doesn’t prove anything.
June 26th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
It’s good to see someone else that questions the value of blog link exchanges. I wrote about this back in May in an article entitled ‘Why I avoid blog link exchanges‘
- Martin Reed
June 26th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Martin, it’s good to see someone else that agrees with me on this one. I understand what they’re trying to accomplish, but the business model is not a good one for quality targeted traffic.
June 26th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
As I look at your post Martin, you are actually referring to link exchanges whereas I am referring to blog traffic exchanges. Different topics here.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
You hit on every reason why I’ve always avoided this type of traffic building idea. Sadly, I am beginning to find that even some of the social bookmarking and community sites end up sending trash traffic my way - the worst seems to be stumble upon, while it gives a lot of traffic when someone stumbles your site, there is no lasting effect - I get no comments, no feedback, no subscriptions, and no ad revenue, despite the hike in traffic. I guess there is a large “bounce rate” and that 1 in 100 may stop and read something, and that is a little bit of progress, but sometimes it’s hard to notice.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
I agree social marketing is not perfect by any means. If you’re not already involved in the different groups at stumble upon you might try this route. You could see a little more activity this way.
July 4th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I can’t say I like traffic exchange traffic…it’s not targeted at all. Stumbleupon traffic is something else tho :)
July 5th, 2007 at 6:36 am
We both agree on the exchange traffic. Stumbleupon can be nice if you get a good post out there.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I couldn’t agree more with this article. Visitors are worthless unless they are targeted visitors.
- Martin Reed
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
“I couldn’t agree more with this article. Visitors are worthless unless they are targeted visitors.”
I wouldn’t go that far. I’d rather take 10 targeted visitors than 100 non-targeted, but 10000 non-targeted would be something completely different. A larger share of targeted visitors become readers, but given a high enough number of non-targeted ones, some will be interested.
That said, I must agree that traffic exchanges are not very useful in general. However, if the cost of joining one is not great (in time, not only money), they can sometimes be a useful tool.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Sutocu, that’s something you would have to run numbers on, the outcome might be similar. I just don’t like traffic exchanges, I think they’re a waste of time, no matter how you look at it. Tools like Blog Catalog can be much more effective, they’re free too.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:37 pm
One could argue any side in whether Blog Catalog is a traffic exchange or not, but I agree that it is much more useful and effective than something like InstantBuzz.