I think many webmasters place too much emphasis on SEO and I think it is why alot of Internet Marketers give up... They spend so much time on SEO, depend on SE traffic and do not see results for a long time. The search engines are becoming too competative and they are not patient enough too focus on other methods and give SERPs time. You need to go into Internet Marketing not depending on SE's and having a marketing plan that will allow for your sites to thrive without SE traffic. My mind set has been doing what you can do with SEO and then just focusing on content and other methods of promotion. Diversifying traffic sources is really the key. Eventually your site will pick up enough backlinks on its own and move up on the SE in due time. I have owned a couple of different sites that I did not really do any SEO at all and after a year or 2 they dominated my main keywords on all 3 of the big 3 SEs. But the traffic the from search engines created was all gravy becuase I allready had steady streams of traffic from other sources and was allready earning decent ammounts. Agree or disagree on my 2 cents?
Naturally if you were doing well before you got good SERPs, then in your case search engine traffic wasn't completely necessary - but in the context of every website I've ever developed or managed (more than 400), search engine traffic has been by far the biggest traffic generator. One site I manage gets around 1000 uniques a day - one day it got mentioned on a major US television network - which led to a barely significant total of around 100 type-in visits that day. Another UK real estate agency I manage has literally hundreds of "For Sale" boards, many of which are next to major roads - and still more than 80% of its traffic comes from either Google or Yahoo. Edit: Clarification, the "For Sale" boards have their website address prominently displayed.
I guess it all depends on the niche and how the site makes its money. Can you look at a niche though before you create a site and know for sure whether or not you will be able to get enough organic SE traffic to have a profitable site?...and know exactly when the SE traffic will start coming in? I guess my point is you can not controll SERPs, you can only do what is nesessary and hope for the best. Why not focus on traffic sources that you can controll and start earning immediately? I am not dogging SEO at all just discouraging noobies from depending on it.
that really depends. diffenret people have different ways of promoting their site. some do SEo and get their traffic 100% from SEs, and others do PPC campaigns, and there are other ways to market. its based on webmaster's comfort zone. webmasters who developed the skill of getting ranked high on organic results make way more than those who run PPC campaigns. but i see webmasters making a killing running PPC campaigns as well. i guess it depends on what you are good at. idea is to generate traffic and revenue so whichever way it owrks out
Nice post, but one thing you have left out: Examples of these other sources of traffic. I've done pretty well from stumbleupon, but of course it doen't seem to convert. Personally, I'm going to focus my efforts on SEO, it's just so targeted.
If you can boost traffic and have the budget to do so in order to make more money, then why not? I agree that a multi-pronged approach is good because if you rely purely on one source of traffic, there is always the possibility that it could dry up; "don't put all your eggs in one basket" as they say. But I still believe strongly in good free SE traffic and that comes from well-crafted and optimised articles etc so good content = good SEO anyway.
PPC is the main one... but again diversification is key. Yes social bookmarking, article marketing, blog and forum marketing ect. I create sites in niches where the PPC is still lower but there is still high earning potential in the products or services sold or promoted. I then not only use adwords but yahoo, msn and other PPC programs. Of course alot of research and pre testing is involved before creating the sites but atleast you know exactly how much traffic you can get and the CTR (with PPC) and ROI. Therefore going into creating the site with a good number of realistic earnings... Instead of just hoping for SE traffic. BTW targeted PPC with targeted landing pages converts multiple times better than organic SE traffic... in my experience.
SE traffic is one of the most common things people believe will get them traffic that actually matters, when infact it matters not. You will get more traffic for being a member of facebook and getting lots of friends then you ever will from se.
They are all interconnected- doing SEO, having quality content, and promoting your site via other methods online. You have good content- People will link to you naturally. But to get those people to link to you, you need to do a little bit of work. Once some people have visited your site, the rest will follow. SE traffic is very much necessary IMO. If they vanished, a considerable chunk would fly out of the window. And it is not simply a matter of traffic, but targetted, quality traffic. Since people who come from the SE's are actually looking for what they search, the chances that they will convert are much higher.
Search is the dominant source of traffic. If there's an online channel that comes anywhere it for volume or low cost, I haven't seen it.
Some facts - Search engines, all put together, account for less than 5% of the route people use to get to destinations - From the Alexa/Compete.com charts (or Hitwise if, like me, you have lots of money), you'll see that the top three social media sites get more traffic than the top SEs - That's even more astounding when you consider that the social media sites are still growing exponentially - If search is still your dominant source you likely need to smell the coffee. Digg/Stumbleupon/Youtube, even Sphinn can take your server down. Day after day - Quality/Conversions: I get more signups to my lists from Digg traffic than I do from Google traffic - Targeting: You've got killer targeting with SN that you'll never have with Adwords (or SERPS). In FB, for example, you can show your ads to only those people working at Microsoft! Source of my figures: I own several hundred thousand dollars worth of sites and get combined uniques of many, many million a month. I've done a lot of experimenting with SM. I've bought Diggs, Digg accounts, Propeller accounts, tons of bookmarking services and lots more. Some were bought here, others elsewhere. Some accounts got banned, some got viral, I've learned a lot of lessons, I've made a lot of profit. If you're already a successful social media marketer in any way, shape or form drop me a PM and we could maybe work together for our mutual benefit (All others please don't PM me on this, I don't run classes)
I think that search engines themselves are using traffic patterns and usage to rank different sites. Therefore, content and the ability for content to get a reader's attention (e.g. bounce rate), and click-thru patterns seem to be becoming more important. I wrote a blog about this the other day, and have received quite a few comments on it. Google, Google Analytics, and the Changing Face of SEO Because of this, I am also focusing completely on content and retaining users. Appropriate marketing, as you suggest, is also important. Adwords anyone? Rich