by Jane Fazackarley

Created on: August 02, 2011

Traffic Exchanges offer a way of getting guaranteed traffic to your website at no cost. Some people have learned how to maximise the potential of traffic exchanges to get traffic to their sites and earn some money and these sites may seem ideal for some people, especially if you have a new website to promote and you don’t have a huge advertising budget, but there are a few negatives to using traffic exchanges that you should be aware of.

Perhaps the most important thing you should be aware of is the problem of viruses or malware on these kinds of sites.  A lot of these sites advise that you not to begin surfing them without having an anti-virus running.  Given the damage that a virus can cause and the potential a virus or malware has to compromise your personal information, this is something you should take into consideration.  Only use trusted sites, consider using Firefox and a Linux system which is less prone to viruses and run the No Script add on for Firefox if you absolutely must use these sites.

You should also be aware that the kind of traffic you get often isn’t targeted.  If you view sites, you’ll get your sites viewed in return. People are simply surfing sites in exchange for credits and page views. Some do offer more targeted traffic but you are likely to find that the kind of people who are viewing your site will not be the kind of people who are interested in buying your product or using your service.

The other thing to take into consideration is that they can affect your Google ranking if you are not careful.  Some people could find themselves being penalised for getting traffic to their sites in this way and there are many sites that have banned their members from using traffic exchanges to get visitors.  These sites don’t do much for your bounce rate either which could mean you are further penalised by Google.

Another issue with traffic exchange sites is that they are time consuming.  With some sites you have to view sites for at least 30 seconds, other sites have options of between 10-20 seconds.  Sometimes you have to surf two sites to get one credit.  You can reduce the amount of time by surfing multiple sites but you might find that your time could be better spent finding other ways of advertising such as advertising on free classified sites or by buying advertising on suitable sites, if you look around this type of advertising does not have to be expensive and cold net you much better results.

If you learn how to use traffic exchanges work for you then there are many positives to be gained from using them but they are many more time efficient, cost effective ways you can find to get traffic to your site.

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