Benefits (or not) of visits via PPC

I know that a few people here have talked about the benefits of the amount of traffic that goes to a site and how google may use that to determine popularity.
Some have suggested that by using PPC, it will boost (obviously) visits to the site and that will help to show your site as a busier one.

Just a gut feeling, but i think google must be onto this one.
Surely its technology says that any visit via ppc is not a natural visit, but one brought on via suggested keywords and very possibly ( in some cases) a false promise in the wording??

a site with fewer visits to the site but a longer visit time- must be worth more than a site with lots of vists and a shorter amount of time on the site?

Hi there buddy!

I understand what you are trying to point out. Length of time spent on a site from natural (but fewer visits) as compared to traffic gained via PPC. IMO, visitors you get from PPC are more targetted and PPC brings it to your site at a shorter amount of time - works best especially for aggressive campaigns on selling. It can be a very powerful tool (aside from good seo works) to bring in good results if you know how the system works.

Here is how I see it, SEO is excellent specially in the long run at getting targetted traffic. PPC is great for yielding faster results.

Google does dig PPC as they are making a lot of $$$ from it ;)

IMO, you shouldn't use ppc just for the sake of getting traffic, although there may be some merit to what you are saying, it is an expensive venture. If you have a purely informational site and have money to burn then go for it.

Look at ppc as any direct response advertising you would do for a business (even if your business is small). If you track it correctly, you will be able to tell for every $1 you spend on ppc you get $XX or even $XXX (depending on how good you make your follow up sales).

Too expensive.

You can buy meaningless traffic very cheaply if you are looking to test your theory.

IMHO Google is looking at your site over a long-term basis as well as where the traffic is coming from, how long they stay, and whether the return to their query and navigate through another site.

I go for the more traditional approach and build content, do SBM and work on your organic seo.

Im not saying that there are people out there who purely do ppc to to tell google it gets more traffic than it neighbour, but that doing the PPC supposedly serves a dual purpose.

I just wondered if people had thoughts about this and how google views clicks via PPC and if it gives any importance to these visits?

Google makes sure to separate PPC and organic. They won't let you rank well simply because you have spent money on Adwords. They will rank you by how relevant your site is. That's were the efforts should be directed.

There is no effective alternative to intensive SEO.

Over the years I see one of the benefits using PPC to get more traffic to my sites. If your site is new and not ranked well yet, then PPC is the only way (beside traditional advertisement) to bring targetted traffic to your site. If you get visitors to your site and they like what they see, if they find your site useful, then you can expect them to bookmark your site and make regular visits, which will create organic (free) traffic. These return visitors could recommend your site to other people directly or through social bookmarking sites, and they will be part of your organic traffic as well. More organic traffic to the site will result in better ranking on the Google and other SEs.

If you get visitors through PPC but you don't notice any increase in returning visitors' rate, or decrease in bouncing rate using web analytics tools, then your site probably offer little or no value to visitors, and you most likely waste your time and money on promoting it.