Hi all, I was interested in whether people believe SEO or PPC is the best way to generate traffic for affiliate marketing? Appears to me PPC is alot more expensive, but SEO is very slow for a new site with the sandbox and site maturity etc. Whats your thoughts?
Seo is the best way because it does not cost as much and delivers traffic for as long as site is ranked good. PPC is fastest way but it also takes work.
If the SEO is done right you can see results pretty quickly. Article marketing through Ezinearticles is probably the best way to get your site indexed fast fo the keywords you want and attract some traffic along the way. Using PPC for affiliate marketing requires a whole lot of research BEFORE you start pouring money into the account. You can lose a considerable amount of money if you don't know what you're doing.
Definately SEO, i really hate to think what PPC would have cost me for the same volume of traffic for my keywords.
If I am doing affiliate marketing then I will definitely do both. I can't just wait for SE to rank me and send traffic to me. I will do SEO and PPC both. If I am not selling anything then i will just go with SEO.
Thanks everyone for your advice. I've been adopting SEO to date, but thought it might be worth trying some PPC for affiliate based sites. I thought a good model might be to try PPC for a new site to see how profitable it is and then SEO if your getting close to break even with PPC.
Gosh PPC is not easy to use...it look like it at first but takes a lot of testing and money before you see result. I tried it and did make only a little from what I nput into it. I haven't used it since...just too much work require. I will use it later but just need to worry about making some money to invest for now.
You always want both, of course, unless you rank in the top 3 for all of your targeted keywords without fail.
Word of warning: if you go with ppc make sure you are only bidding on highly targeted keywords and not things such as "lose weight" That was an example if you were in the weight loss niche.
Since there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands also doing the exact same SEO, which isn't rocket science to do, it is the luck of the draw being on page one. It is literally a street brawl, or, in this case, an online brawl in getting to the top, combined with hoping you are one of the lucky ones. Also, being on top or near the top of page one isn't necessarily a good thing at times. Most of us, if not practically all of us don't shop at the first, second, or maybe even the third site we visit. We shop around first. With that said...ADVERTISE!
There are tens of thousands doing the same thing. Which is why you need to do something special. It's not random; it's ingenuity. And as for the question that started this topic: SEO definitely. Affiliate marketing is pretty much what I do, and it's not hard. Just don't target ridiculously competitive words. Pick a few products every time, make a dirt cheap kinda nasty page, and promote. Or make a blog, and promote the products consistantly on there. For example, it's much easier to hit #1 for "Star Wars Legos" than it is to hit for "Legos", or "children's toys". So promote a few every day, do it proper, and you'll hit the top.
There are sites on pages one and two that have had no SEO done to it. Yes, I am afraid it is random, and it is always the luck of the draw. One should do the SEO, but don't dwell on it. Then move on to advertising. ... CHEAP advertising, brother! Also, study up on such sites as DIGG. There are a lot of free or cheap ways to advertise. Focus on those methods instead.
Domain/Page age is weighed heavily in the Google algorithm, and even more heavily in Live/MSN. If they didn't, people like me would exploit the living crap out of them. That's how a lot of them get in there(age). Also, sometimes they have good in-content SEO without noticing it. Beyond that, 3rd page really doesn't help much. Page 1 or bust. Definitely not random.
No, sorry. That's not it. You would think so, but.... They just happened to land on page one. It happens a lot. Many times computers have no rhyme or reason to them. And for the ones that do know how to do SEO, not all of them can be on page one, so.... Anyway, that's just the way it is. RAH! RAH! RAH! ... GOOOOO, GOOGLE! ~
PPC for quick traffic if you know what you are doing. SEO along with blogging and article marketing for long term traffic. That is what has worked for me.
Seo. It will be for the long haul. Consistent targeted traffic is always the best. In the long haul, its cheaper to.