Just came across a good article where the personal experiemces on what actually worked for him to grow traffic and orders. I liked the discussion; in brief what has been mentioned: Google AdWords: not so good as his target word was too popular and expensive. Keyword stuffing: absolute no as he prefers 'natural articles' Blogs: Good for traffic but not for conversions. It appeared that his direct customers were too serious people to busy to spend the whole day browsing blogs. E-newsletter: Bad for traffic but great for targeting and building email list/fan club Articles: Better when they are posted in "a strong publication site", e.g. mpdailyfix.com (not on reprint sites; though this is not bad either). Public speaking: "So-so for traffic" but great for targeting. URLs in print ads: N/A Direct mail: good for traffic Any additions? Suggestions? Personal experince? I would add press releases and social bookmarking but have not tried either myself yet...
I suggest working on CONTENT. Content is KING! If someone has great content, and a proper advertising strategy, things should be just fine. I don't know what kind of site your speaking about but I am assuming that a product is for sale. If that is the case, keyword bidding can be profitable even if the clicks are high priced. One way a friend of mine fixed his keyword bidding problems was by adding the price of the product in the ad. The conversion rates went through the roof. All too often, a website owner will not have very good content or content which confuses the reader, or place ad's that TRICK a user into clicking to the site. The best bet is to put together an honest ad campaign that truly delivers exactly what the user expects when they click an ad.
Content is king but backlinks is queen. No backlinks? You're dead. And in e-commerces I think we need links more than usual websites. Because you are looking for money, not for fun.