The bad news about traffic exchanges - my opinion ~ traffic-exchanges-explained

Saturday 30 May 2009

The bad news about traffic exchanges - my opinion


This post is concerned with the issue of how useful surfing a traffic exchange is for your overall visibility on the Net. Many believe that the increased number of hits to their websites is good for their ranking on search engines. I am cautious of such assumptions. Firstly, such assumptions fail to understand the sophistication of search engines such as the all powerful google. I believe that google actually tracks the IP addresses from which you are receiving traffic and if a large percentage of traffic is coming from one single website - and at the end of the day any traffic exchange is nothing more than a website - then it gets suscipious and can flag your site.

I equally believe that the same holds true for most of the large search engines today - they are not easily tricked and it they think you are cheating (in their eyes) you will be punished in your search engine ranking. Basically the only advantage yo have form having your site on a traffic exchange is that you have an inbound link. Mind you the value of an inbound link from a or multiple traffic exchanges is very questionable in my eyes.

I always come back to the same painful truth, attracting visitors to your site with good content, frequent updating, good search engine optimization is the key. And that, dare I point out, is work.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes it's really very hard to avoid joining traffic exchange sites. I tried that one time and my traffic got very low. Immediately I joined traffic exchange again.

Trooper Thorn said...

So it's all about the product once again. Damn you free market - you can't be cheated!

Blog and SEO tips said...

What about links on forums, it shouldn't be bad idea to get traffic from any web. Not sure if all things you say are true.

cube said...

Your content can be great and frequently updated, but if nobody sees it, it doesn't do you any good. The more eyeballs that pass through your site, the higher the likelihood that people will become regular readers.

Slapinions said...

I agree with you, BUT I also agree with cube's comment above.

Mr. New Dilemma said...

And here I go and find you on blogclicker. I guess you can't live with them and you can't live without them.

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carrie said...

if you use traffic exchange sites to find new blogs, leave comments on those blogs, yes, you might find new readers. you have to network.
search engine optimization? how does one do that? can you give some info?

Peter A. Clay said...

And yet I found this site on a traffic exchange!
Be read- Be Seen, do your best. Let your mind go and the rest will follow.

Michelle said...

Traffic exchange is useless when it comes to ranking in the search engines. However, if it's a "niche" market (for instance moms selling to moms) then it does get some business. However, it doesn't get the IP logged and banned. I know, I've been on a mom selling to moms site for years. My sites all come up #1 for their key words.

Link exchange, on the other hand, can do damage these days. Google doesn't care for it.

DARG said...

Eh, I found your site on blogexplosion.

nexy said...

Not sure what to think about this post when I found this site through BlogExplosion.

Dee said...

Ditto. Wouldn't have seen you or been able to hunt you down otherwise. I publish a small blog about sociology. I analyze my content regularly, and my traffic is roughly split even from traffic exchanges and from an internet forum I have been on for years. At this time, I just see it more as, you know, more eyes on my writing equals a higher change of getting interested readers coming back or subscribing to my feed.

It's that, plus trying to leave comments that are legitimate, plus trying to network with bloggers of similar interest -- that makes the traffic, I guess. And until we're all at that Gizmodo caliber or Slashdot, we just gotta do what we can do.

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Skinny R said...

.. i found your blog thru blogexplosion.

Michelle said...

I also found this site through blog explosion. I agree that TE sites will not affect your SE results, it will help get targeted traffic, and hopefully return visitors.