Ad Swapping: An Effective and Easy Way to Generate Traffic and Boost Link Popularity

As taxes are the lifeblood of a nation, traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. Every business in the online industry needs traffic as this keeps their business competitive and profitable, thus it is a must for online marketers to make sure that they get lots of traffic. Some marketers spend thousands of dollars to pay for a particular ad, while small time business prefers to get traffic for free. In this article, let me introduce to you a simple yet effective way of generating traffic to your site – Ad Swapping or Ad Swaps – and the good news is – it’s absolutely free.

What is Ad Swapping?

Ad swap or advertisement swap is an internal agreement with other websites to exchange ads in each other’s sites. This is basically done to gain website exposure and lead traffic to one’s website with the help of the partner’s site and vice versa. The main goal of ad swapping is to expand your market by getting the necessary exposure in other sites and blogs for free. The link value that you are getting is irrelevant as you are not after the improvement of your search engine rank. Though this will in some way help in improving your search engine rank, the effect is on the number of visitors that are being led to your site. In other words, this is a way of getting quality traffic for free without any help from search engines.

Types of Ads

The types of ad you can set up for an ad swap includes banners, RSS feed ads, text links, and email newsletter opt-in forms.

The success of ad swaps can be gauged with tracking links and analytics. That way both parties can measure the amount of traffic they are receiving.

In a nutshell, the number of visitors that the campaign leads to your website is the yardstick of its success.

Things to Consider for a Successful Ad Swap

1. At least two websites with steady flow of traffic – It doesn’t matter if its 200 or 1,000 hits per day as long as the site has regular visitors, then it is fine. To be fair it is best if the websites in which ad swapping will be done has a very similar, if not equal, number of visitors per day.

2. Ad Location – Make sure that the ads are located in readily visible area. It helps a lot if the ads swapped maintain equivalent formats, which means that swapped ads should be placed in an area where both of the sites will be getting the same number of visitors.

3. Common Business Niche – The advantage of being in the same niche is that the visitors of both websites have an established interest in the nature of the content being viewed. Ad swapping will give better result when ads are placed in a site or page that is relevant to your blog or website.

4. Avoid Conflict in Content – This is corollary to item 3. It only makes sense to avoid engaging in ad swapping with a website that contradicts your brand or service. This will only lead to customer confusion which would not benefit you in any way.

5. Maximize Swapping Opportunities – Since ad space is a limited resource, you have to make sure that you carefully select your swap partners. Getting the right website to swap ads with will provide you with maximum exposure. So, how are you going to do this? How can you make sure that the ads you’re swapping with are the correct ones? Simple – use a keyword research tool that will not only show you ads belonging to the same niche, but will also give you a peak on those that are targeting the same or similar keywords. KeywordSpy can do all of this as it will not only give you the information above, but will also help you determine which among the ads using your keywords are generating traffic and income. KeywordSpy will give you all the information that you need and all you have to do is to analyze them and then swap ads accordingly.

Ad swapping is a cost-effective means of increasing internet traffic. However, establishing sustainable and productive partnerships take a long time. Communication is the key to ensure that your prospects understand the benefit of undertaking an ad swapping campaign with you. As with any other business, maintaining your integrity will get you a long way.