Once upon a time I held an opinion of SEO that wasn’t too flattering.

I believed it was a waste of time, and that you’d be better off using your time and money generating traffic using methods that were a touch more “scientific.”

My view was that any efforts you undertook were hard to track, it was often difficult to scale and that in the greater scheme of thing that it accounted for the 80% of your effort that made up the 20% of your results.

That you were beholden to the fanciful whims of Google, and how it could, in an instant, decide to banish you to oblivion on account of some transgression, whether you realised you had done it or not.

As to what those transgressions might be, well, while one can guess, none of us can hand on heart say for sure what exactly they might be.

And I still believe that all of those things to be true.

While paid traffic is something of a science, SEO still remains a dark art.

While we can say with *some certainty* that if you do this, and then this, you will have a high chance of success and your content will rank. But there’s still a chance it won’t.

And that was my original beef with SEO.

My logical, by-the-numbers, scientifically-trained mind hated its nebulous and somewhat “woo woo” nature.

Nevertheless, as the years have progressed I’ve softened my stance, somewhat.

I’m willing to concede that while SEO isn’t always the perfect way of generating traffic, it has some obvious benefits ahead of anything paid traffic has to offer.

Like it’s permanency for one.

I run some paid traffic tomorrow but if my credit card happens to be declined, or I happen to run out of money *gasp*, then the PPC provider will cut me off as instantly as if I am 5 years behind on my electricity bill and have no intention of paying.

And while Google can still do the same thing to your site via it’s regular updates, chances are once your site is set up according to best known principles, the odds of it being vanished to oblivion are small.

You do  still need to worry about competition, but contrasted with what’s required to maintain a paid traffic campaign, the effort you undertake is little.

More:

If you are creating a niche site (or any other kind of online asset) it’s valuation is determined by how much monthly revenue it generates, which is proportional to it’s organic traffic.

Now, how easy is it to create an asset like that with paid traffic?

I’m not saying organic traffic is the best thing since sliced bread or anything.

Nor am I telling you to ignore paid traffic and concentrate solely on organic.

Just know it can be a useful tool in your traffic generating arsenal.

And while it might ‘suck’ understand it has its place, like all means of generating traffic.

For example:

Say you’ve spend the last few months expertly crafting a website educating the world on the latest methods of high intensity interval training, but every time you check your analytics it’s lonelier than a graveyard at midnight?

Perhaps you could do with an injection of interested eyeballs, foaming at the mouth dying to learn the latest techniques in high intensity training?

Maybe you believe the learning curve with paid traffic to be far too steep, or you simply don’t have the budget to pay for a traffic specialist and/or the traffic itself?

Well then, I’ve some good news for you.

I stumbled across this great article from the guys over at dublinseo.co, where they outline some awesome traffic generation methods you can use right now to bring a cascade of people to your door, eager to learn more about what you do.

They are all simple to implement, can be done quickly and easily, and best of all won’t stretch your budget should that be a concern.

It comes with a caveat though – that these techniques should be viewed as one part of your traffic generation arsenal, not the arsenal itself.

The famous direct response marketer Dan Kennedy has a saying, “one is the most dangerous number.”

And that especially holds true when it comes to traffic.

It is a mistake to rely on organic traffic alone and ignore all others.

But, as a means of getting started, or even to try some new, unexplored methods of generating traffic, I highly recommend taking a gander at what the guys at dublinseo.co have to say.

Take a look here:

Stay hungry,

Keith