What IS valid traffic?

{ …. in context of the Pinoy Top Blogs Project. }

Valid traffic should be organic. They could come search engines, referral links, features, newsletter/email footer links, etc. They are organic because it requires the visitors to initiate an event — click on your link from some other site, search thru the search engines and found your blog, subscribed to your RSS feeds or newsletter or typed-in your URL on a browser.

These visitors should not have been fooled into visiting your site/blog (thru spamming or phishing) or be compensated to do the same (StudioTraffic, Blog Explosion, BlogMad). These methods do not constitute valid traffic because they do not directly add value to your blog nor they represent organic behavior of visitors.

As a matter of fact, I’d consider it cheating (in the context of PinoyTopBlogs) because the amount of traffic you get from it does not reflect the quality and the performance of your blog. (A quality blog attracts repeat visitors and referrals from other sites while a performing blog fetches good placements in the search engines). The visitors you get from it are merely a product of your diligence in visiting other people’s blog in the hopes that others will visit yours thru the same system. It’s almost the same as you yourself repeatedly refreshing your browser to pad your own blog’s pageviews.

But isn’t going to blogs and leaving a comment in the hopes that people will click on your link practically the same? Not exactly. Leaving comments on blogs do not neccesitate traffic. You may get tons of it, you may get none. There is no guarantee of traffic there. Likewise, it requires a conscious and direct action from the visitor as a result of their curiousity or interest.

How about advertising? Programs such as Google Adwords are a good source of targetted traffic. However, if we go back to our definition of a valid traffic, direct advertising can still be considered a valid traffic because they are targetted and the visitor is required to execute an event (click on your ad) without expecting compensation for it.

How about aggregators or portals like PinoyBlog? Again, basically the same as bove. Only this time, it’s free advertising.

At the end of the day, it’s a simple matter of asking ourselves if the actual traffic we say we got from our blogs is really worth it.

Ok, why do I need to bring up this issue?

The very first line of text above explains it all. I suspended over a dozen of blogs listed in PinoyTopBlogs because they do not represent what I would call “valid traffic”. (Besides, it’s part of the rules when signing up.) I know I will get emails from them anytime soon so I prepared this explanation ahead of time.