Traffic is the term used to describe visitors to your site and one of the ways for your page to move up the rankings in web searches is to generate a lot of backlinks. The option of using these free traffic sites is one way of possibly getting a few backlinks and a means to make your site more visible. There are paid options in getting traffic for search engine optimization (SEO) but there are many programs out there that offer free traffic. Basically the way it works is that you have to surf the sites they have in return for credits which translates to how many hits you have earned for your own site.

Some sites offer a rotating view of sites or in some cases you can view by doing a search of topics which interest you.At the end of the surfing session your accumulated credits can be assigned to your site of choice and then you sit back and wait. You can monitor which of the programs are working for you by installing Google Analytics on your site and then monitor the traffic sources. You need to check out the site navigation,the reward structure in terms of referral,the ratio for surfing. For example some sites offer you 1:1 which means for every site you surf you receive 1 hit in return but others offer you a 5:3 ratio which means that for every 5 sites you surf you receive 3 hits in return. There is quite a bit of surfing involved in these free options but I would suggest registering for free on all the sites and then monitoring which ones work. After that you can explore the paid options with the best performing sites. Some ask for $1.95 for 1000 views and some can go up to $6.95 for the same amount of 1000 views. There is no surfing involved for you for those paid-for 1000 hits.Some free traffic sites offer a community-based service so your final choice all depends on what suits your needs the most. Most of them have a wide variety of extras on offer which can make the surfing experience on those sites quite enjoyable.

One thing to warn you about though is that your bounce rate is going to increase. The bounce rate is calculated by Google Analytics and counts the number of times visitors access your site but do not link through to another page on your site. A bounce is also when a visitor comes to your site and then clicks on one of your links and goes through to another site and does not return to your site within 29 minutes. Do not be alarmed by this as if you are advertising another product it just means that your visitor has gone through to see what it has to offer. Also a bounce could be if a visitor just stays on your homepage for 30 minutes and does nothing else. If you have a lot of reading material on your homepage a bounce rate would not be giving you accurate information.

For a list of some popular free traffic generation programs please click here

Getting traffic and generating some backlinks is just one of the many ways to perform SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Getting free traffic as detailed above is quite effective and gives you quite a bit of control over this process. As a beginner it will offer you many more avenues and opportunities to learn more about the internet and its inner workings.