Hey folks,

Just wanted a rough idea of what people are using to get their traffic.

Organic SEO or Paid advertising (such as Adwords)?

Or a mixture of both?

If you choose one method over the other, why?

Believe me I am no expert on the web.

But I do write the copy for clients' websites and leave the technical stuff to the experts.

Clients tell me (providing it's done accurately) that Pay to Click brings them the best results.

You must make sure there is a limit on the budget you are willing to spend.

When that "proves" to be very cost effective - you can then add to the budget.

Although I can't see any harm in doing SEO as well.


Steve

I've got a couple of sites with PR4 rankings...all organic traffic. No PPC.

That being said, have niche sites that use AdWords to drive traffic.

The difference between them is that the former are for professional services and the latter pitch products.

YEMV.

-Mike

I think you should go paid first, and then find out which keywords are converting and are worth attacking in the organic results first.

PPC is a gem for all kinds of testing, and it's sorta pointless to go after organic phrases before you know whether or not they'll convert into sales.

Sorry to have to ask - but I genuinely don't know...

What is an "organic phrase"?

Thanks

Steve

Purely PPC.

I don't even think about organic-- if I get good rankings fine, if not, no big deal. Many of my niches are ultra-competitive and with the ever changing algorithms used by the search engines I just can't spend the time altering pages to a search engine's whim. I need methods of traffic flow that I have some control over.

Paid, period!

I posted this sometime back and I'm posting it again

That is such a damn good article. I wish more marketers would read this, and pay attention before thinking they are saving themselves money by being a cheapskate and cutting corners.

The only thing they are usually cutting away are precious years of time. And I personally will trade time for money all day long.

I won't be able to sleep tonite - until I know what "organic" means (I'm guessing it's not food...)

Someone please tell me.

I thank you.

Steve

Steve,

All "organic" or "natural" means, when used in conjunction with the search engines, is how your page ranks as compared to other pages pulled from the same search word or phrase. In other words you aren't paying to rank high on the page, like you do with pay-per-click. You're letting the particular search engine's robot search your page and then the search engine ranks your page based on a series of factors that are used to evaluate all pages.