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When it comes to getting traffic to your site, there are pros and cons associated with every traffic generation method.

There are also costs. Some are obvious, such as the monetary cost of paying to run an ad in a newsletter or on a search engine. Some are not so obvious, such as the time and possibly monetary cost of harnessing search engine optimization or viral marketing.

As discussed in yesterday’s feature article, it’s important to be aware of all the relevant costs and make choices accordingly. Otherwise you could end up paying much, much more for something than you first expected.

In particular, there is often a large, yet not-so-obvious cost, associated with relying on seemingly free traffic generation methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) and article marketing. Many Internet marketers are attracted to these methods because they don’t necessarily involve any hard costs (unless you hire people to help you). But, apart from the time taken to do them – for example, the time taken to optimize your website, write articles, seek back-links, etc – there is another significant cost.

It’s the opportunity cost associated with not knowing how appealing your product or service offer is, or how effective your conversion tactics are.

There is often a lag between when you begin SEO and article marketing and when you start generating significant traffic. That being so, days, weeks, months – even years – could go by while you wait for enough traffic to be able to assess how appealing is your offer and effective are your conversion tactics.

Given that you didn’t pay anything while you waited, you might be content with that. But what if, after all those days, weeks or months go by, you discover that no-one wants to buy your product, or that your current conversion mechanism is an abject failure?

Not only did you waste time on doing SEO or article marketing… but you missed the opportunity to spend time on alternative offers or conversion tactics that WOULD have generated results.

So what’s the alternative? It’s to aim for FAST rather than FREE. It’s to pony up some money to invest in advertising – such as (but not just) pay-per-click advertising with the objective of TESTING your product or service, your offer, and your conversion mechanism (e.g. landing page).

Sure, this may cost a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. That may sound scary… but if it ends up SAVING you weeks, months (or more) of wasted time and ignorance about what does and doesn’t work… it’s actually very cost-effective.

None of this is to say that you should neglect SEO, article marketing or other (seemingly) free traffic generation methods, or that you should just focus on paid advertising to test what does and does not work. It should be noted that there ARE ways to generate substantial search engine traffic in a relatively short amount of time WITHOUT paying for advertising… In this case, it may be possible to generate traffic FAST and (somewhat) FREE.

The point is, however, to fully assess the costs AND opportunities involved in each traffic generation method available to you BEFORE choosing one or the other.

Recently, we’ve heard a lot about the economy. How banks have gone bust, people are buying less, tech companies are laying off people, how we’re in (or headed for) recession, and so on.

If you’re like me, you can see the opportunity in all this. I firmly believe that this is a time when the pretenders will fall away, and only the strongest will survive and thrive.

But what about another kind of economy that really does doom Internet marketers? In fact, it’s the kind of economy that dooms us in good times and in bad.

It’s the ‘false economy’ i.e. the circumstance where you aim to save in one area… without realizing that what you save actually COSTS YOU MUCH MORE overall.

A great example of this is someone who drives across town to find the cheapest gas station… but ends up paying MORE in fuel costs (not to mention time) based on driving the car to find the cheapest gas station!

Unfortunately, I see the same phenomenon among small businesses and, in particular, Internet marketers. Actually, I’ve been guilty of it myself.

There seems to be, for example, a common tendency to try to avoid anything - whether it’s information, software or traffic generation methods - that costs money.

Now, there’s NOTHING wrong with looking for low-cost or free ways to do things, but the question is: is there a false economy in doing so?

Will the time you spend trying to cobble together your own website really be time well spent? If it takes you 6 weeks of struggle as you try to learn how to put together a website… is that really cheaper than enrolling in a web design course and learning how to do it properly? Or than paying someone to design and develop the website for you?

Even if you ARE an accomplished web designer… is your time better spent designing all your websites, or doing something else that has much more value (such as marketing)?

Or if you insist on using only free traffic generation methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) or article marketing… are these really free?

Or is there a price to be paid in terms of the TIME you must spend on SEO and article marketing to generate meaningful results?

And could you have learned what does or does not work much FASTER and ultimately more cheaply had you invested a few hundred dollars in pay-per-click advertising?

In some cases, the choice to take the ‘free’ option may entirely sound. But, as the saying goes, nothing in life is free. There is always a price to pay, whether it’s in terms of time, money or both.

On that basis, I would urge you to consider the obvious and not-so obvious costs of everything you do… and decide, on that basis, which is actually a false economy… and which will genuinely be cost-effective overall.

William Flaiz has written an interesting article in Search Engine Watch. He suggests that the days of compartmentalizing search engine optimization (SEO) are over and that a holistic approach is now what’s required to win in the new environment of “universal search”.

Argues Mr Flaiz:

“An integrated approach across multiple disciplines is the only way to address the diverse nuances of the new SERPs. We can tame universal search if we address it from all fronts: SEO, paid search, social media, Web development and user experience design.”

The article is aimed at SEO agencies but the principle remains the same for SEO departments or individual search engine optimizers. A holistic approach is required if we’re to achieve optimum results.

For instance, we’re currently working with a client to:

1. Optimize some new product pages;
2. Prepare press releases for those products; and
3. Write articles related to those products and website pages.

By understanding the underlying keyword strategy and taking an integrated approach we can ensure that each of these items work together to enhance our client’s search engine ranking for the terms it’s targeting. After all, although the methods are seemingly disparate, the objective is quite singular: a higher listing in the organic results.

And given the (growing) number of Internet “assets” - website, press releases, images, videos, pages on social media sites, and so on - the demand for a holistic approach is only likely to grow.

Bottom line: rather than approach any given SEO tactic in isolation, approach it as one component of an overall effort where your main aim is to optimize your presence on the search engines for the keywords that deliver you the maximum number of targeted, qualified prospects.

Source: William Flaiz, “Universal Search: The (War) Elephant in the Room”, Search Engine Watch, November 10, 2008

What should you do when the top few search engine results for your company include one or more listings that are blatantly negative? Articles that are wrong, biased, misleading or worse?

One approach is to contact your lawyer. If the person behind the negative listing has lied or defamed you or your company, you may have a case for defamation. But litigation is costly. Moreover, the culprit in question may not necessarily have defamed you in the legal sense. They may have simply published an item of ‘free speech’ that is negative, but not strictly defamatory.

Another approach is to complain to the search engines. But they’re unlikely to do anything unless you can show them that the negative listing is unlawful or the result of ‘gaming’ the search engines.

A more practical approach is to beat the negative listing at their own game: use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to push down their listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Now, as with anything to do with SEO, you can take a ‘white hat’, ‘black hat’ or ‘grey hat’ approach. A ‘black hat’ approach is to try to game the search engines; a ‘white hat’ approach is to follow the ‘rules’ i.e. the rules of relevance and authority; and a ‘grey’ hat approach is somewhere in between the two.

The problem with black and grey approaches is that while you may be able to get rid of the negative listing in the short term… in the long term you run the risk of losing your own listing altogether and damaging your reputation among the search engines.

This is rarely a risk worth taking when dealing with your company and/or brand name and main website.

On that basis, a ‘white hat’ approach is the only approach I recommend for optimizing your main site AND for defending against threats to your search engine positioning and/or reputation.

And what if you actually rank highest for your company name anyway, and are simply trying to get rid of a negative listing that sits BELOW your listing? In that case, it’s not so much a matter of optimizing your main site or page any further… but to get other favorable listings to rise above, and push out, the negative listing.

One way to do that is to build and optimize alternative websites… but that’s likely to take a long time and a lot of effort on your part. This is because, among other things, the search engines tend to be slow to rank brand new domains highly in the SERPs.

Here’s a much easier - and more effective - way suggested by Aaron Shear: build a presence on various popular social media sites.

The search engines tend to rank the popular social media sites highly. Therefore, by establishing a page on all the major social media sites - Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and so on - you’ll have a shot at getting those pages ranked… and ranked higher than the negative listing you’re trying to get off the first few pages of results.

The key, of course, is to put some unique, compelling content on those pages, and attract in-bound links to those pages from authoritative sites. But it may not be as difficult as you think. Placing videos on YouTube, for example, is something you might be interested in doing anyway, and will likely to have many benefits (in terms of traffic and conversions) other than ousting those negative sites from the top listings.

Indeed, building a presence on the popular social media sites is a recommended traffic and SEO strategy and, by including links to your main site, can also aid in achieving or maintaining a high ranking for your main site.

It’s certainly your best bet in terms of getting rid of those negative listings that just don’t seem to go away.

Source: Aaron Shear, “Maintaining Your Company’s Image in the SERPs”, Search Engine Watch, November 4, 2008

Google recently added a tool to Webmaster Tools that shows links directed at 404 pages on your website.

Running the tool will generate a report that lists the links pointing to 404 pages. Useful, since (among other things) links to 404 pages don’t pass any ‘authority’ from a search engine optimization (SEO) point of view.

Armed with your report you will be able to contact the sites linking to those 404 pages and ask them to redirect or change those links. Alternatively, you can use 301 redirects to effectively pass the link authority over to one of the ‘real’ pages on your site.

Source: Frank Watson, “Google’s New Tools for Site Link Strengthening”, Search Engine Watch, Oct 17, 2008