Some months ago I heard someone claiming that you don’t need search engine ranking optimization in order to make money with affiliate business. This idea grabbed my attention and I started to think about it.
It is technically true. You can drive all the traffic to your site from other places different from search organic results, such as PPC and other kind of ads, mailing lists, and links in other websites (especially social media sites, blogs and forums). But would this be enough?
Let’s assume you are starting out, so that you don’t have a list yet, and paid advertisement is not in your budget, so that you can only use free traffic methods. Would you be able to drive enough visitors to your web without search engine ranking optimization?
With effective SEO, people will visit your site basically because it is listed in the top search results of whatever search engine they are using. If you are not optimizing your web for them, you do not expect this to happen, but you still need people to find your site. There are basically four ways to be visible for users without the help of search engines:
- By posting in forums and blogs
- By participating actively in social media sites.
- By writing articles
- By having a link to your web in other people’s sites.
As you can see, all these methods have something in common: they are content-based methods.
When using search engine ranking optimization you need to grab the attention of search engines. With alternative traffic generation methods, you need to attract people, not robots, and this is done basically writing good and useful content (in your own site and in the sites from where users will reach yours). Don’t get me wrong here… Writing good content should always be a must. The difference is that if you rely on search engines to get traffic, it is indispensable to optimize your site for them. If search engines don’t like your web, you will not even have a chance to please your visitors (because you will have no visitors at all). When not using search engine ranking optimization, the first step is to write great content outside your site in order to grab the attention of the readers and generate traffic to your web.
I have tried this approach with one of my websites. I was trying to drive visitors to a site selling a couple of products in a very competitive niche. I decided to pretty much forget search engine ranking optimization because in a so crowded niche I didn’t want to depend on Google for traffic.
From data analysis of my other sites, I realized that many of the highest quality traffic came from other places different from search engines (lists, forums, blogs, social media sites, and articles).
For that new web I could not rely on email lists, because it was my first site in that particular niche. So I figured out a new strategy to get traffic. I decided to focus just on writing good content (in my site and outside it). And guess what? In three months I accomplished my goals in terms of visitors and sales, with no traffic coming from Google or any other search engine.
I started by creating a blog with quality content. Basically, useful information in the form of tips, how-to, and product reviews. I designed the site and wrote the content without thinking about search engine ranking optimization at all, just about readers.
In order to promote the site I started to daily post in one forum and two blogs. Again, focusing on writing quality content. Only that way people will click the link to your site.
I also wrote six articles every week and submitted them to a couple of different article directories.
The last, but not less important, part of my strategy consisted on attracting social media traffic. The key to success in social media is, again, quality content. Write good content in your site and outside it. If people like your content they will spread it. And getting viral is exactly what you want.
And the best thing about this content-based method is that you build trust. If you ask them, many of your visitors will become subscribers, so that it is easy to build a mailing list. And this is an asset you want always have, especially if you want your business to not depend on Google, or any other search engine.
Even though you can get traffic from other sources different from Google, knowing a little about search engine ranking optimization is still a good idea.
