I've always read (and it makes sense to believe) that search engine traffic is the best kind of traffic because it's very targetted--people are actively looking for what your site contains (usually).

But one of my sites in particular gets a lot of traffic from a link that's on another site with a similar theme. Would that traffic be just as good as the search engine traffic? What do you think?

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I don't think it matters where your visitors come from as long as you're getting the right kind of visitors. If you have an e-commerce site and get tons of paying customers via external links, does it matter if they come from a search engine or somebody else's site?

edit: Also remember that links from other sites increase your search engine popularity, and visitors coming to your site from a search engine and having a positive experience are more likely to link back to your site. Think of search engines vs. links as a symbiotic relationship, not an adversarial one.

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vinnie garcia - web guy

Exactly. Every link that points to your sites is a good thing on more then one level.

Every webmaster's plan should be to drive targetted traffic to their website. Whether it comes from a search engine, link on another site, newspaper ad, radio ad, The Force, it doesn't matter. If that visitor comes to your site with certain expectations and you meet them (because you've targetted them) you've just made a customer.

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John Conde
Marketing Clueless...but trying

Personally I don't target getting IBLs for the traffic those generate. I get them to help me place in the SEs. 95% of my traffic comes from them and I will be increasing my saturation as much as I can.

It's easy, free, and is a great feeling when you hit #1 for a keyword.

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Image Freak