Lee Odden (TopRank SEO Blog) has a nice post about how to generate traffic without relying on the search engines (it’s called 5 Website Traffic Alternatives to Search Engines, and you can read it here). Among Lee’s ideas are the following (I recommend you visit his blog entry to understand fully each of these ideas):

1) Creating a social network with influential bloggers and marketers
2) Taking advantage of social media sites (such as Digg.com)
3) Intelligent use of tags
4) Creative use of press releases
5) Links for traffic sake (as opposed to their search engine value).

As Lee mentions, there are other ideas (such as e-mail marketing, participating in blogs and forums, etc.) which can also provide quality traffic. He wasn’t trying to make a comprehensive list.

All this, though, raises an interesting question. Given all the new and interesting ways of marketing our sites online, how can I determine which methods to pursue, which ones to save for later, and which ones to skip altogether [note: I personally found all of Lee’s ideas to be worth valuable]?

I think that there are five questions that you can ask that can help you answer this question. They are the following:

1) How much traffic will be generated?

2) What is the quality of this traffic (i.e., will the people visiting your site be interested in your products or services)?

3) How much it cost in terms of time, effort and money to generate this traffic?

4) How long will it takes until you see results?

5) What is the long term value (for instance, will you see a short burst in traffic which quickly trickles away, or a consistent, long-term stream of traffic to your site and which is more valuable to your particular goals)?

The web is constantly changing and there will always be new marketing opportunities. The key is to remember what your goal is when marketing your site, at which point you will be in a good position to know whether or not a new marketing method is for your site.

Technorati Tags: new media pr, social media, search engine optimization, social networking, tagging, marketing

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