If you make the most money - in terms of time/effort-money spent - out of SEO traffic, then that's right.

For me, it's the exact opposite: across all of my niches, over the last 4 years, Google traffic is the kind of traffic (compared to every other kind I've ever tried) which stays least time on my sites, views fewest pages, opts in least often and buys anything by far the least often. It may be that none of this is true for yourself at all.

It depends a lot on the traffic demographics you want to attract. And possibly on the niche itself, too.

For me, there's no comparison at all - one successfully syndicated article can produce for me hundreds of times as much income as the sort of keyword optimized articles I used to publish before I switched to content syndication. That may not be true in your business, though, and without knowing anything about your business and your skills and experience, nobody can predict this reliably.

I can offer you one observation, though: the SEO side-benefits from getting your content syndicated to relevant sites in your niche should be far, far better than any you can get from using "keyword optimized articles" on your own site and/or in places to which you can submit without approval. The value of backlinks is determined largely by relevance, and only relevant sites will be interested in re-publishing your articles anyway. As explained in the last paragraph of this post: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

None of that means that it'll necessarily work out well for you, however - but nobody can promise you that: it depends on a large variety of factors, including how easy it is to get content syndicated to such sites/ezines/magazines/newsletters, how many of them there are, how easily you can write for syndication, how you find syndication partners, how you approach them, whether SEO traffic is really worth much to you anyway (it isn't, to me), and other issues. Like any potentially hugely successful business model, of course it has a big learning curve.

You can perhaps even "try both"? (Doing that has advantages, though admittedly it can have some big disadvantages as well, which aren't always immediately apparent).

Lexy hit the nail on the head (as usual.)

SEO traffic is often hit or miss, which accounts for higher bounce rates and such.

Having a HUMAN-oriented (as opposed to robot-oriented) syndicated article acts as a presell tool. Not only does it attract your target market, it often positions you as the 'expert.'

Since you've warmed them up, they're more likely to buy.

But I'm a fan of "don't put all your eggs in one basket," so why not try multiple traffic methods and see what gets you the best conversions?

If you're in the local space, search engines work. I've done very well promoting a few local companies with organic search. But my model may be a bit different than yours - I actually create sites under a client's logo (I retain ownership of the sites) and I track contact form inputs and telephone calls. I receive a percentage of sales and/or flat rate per sale (affiliate marketing if you will, but at the local level).

I used to own a local offline business and did SEO for new business. It worked like gangbusters for traffic and conversion. Many new clients would come in saying "you're number 1 in Google so you must be good." Top search engine rankings in Google equates credibility.

THAT SAID, I believe syndication on the right local sites could work as well. I'm only starting this for my local marketing (have no results to report). There aren't a ton of local sites to syndicate with as I'm in smaller towns, but it's worth trying because the local space is so lucrative. I suspect for Vegas there are tons of syndication opportunities.

If you're targeting a particular industry (as I do) that offers additional syndication opportunities.

Keep in mind that SEO can be unreliable. I take that risk. I've had some local sites go down the drain with Penguin. The upside is because I'm local, it's not all that hard to create a new site and rank it. It's a cost of doing business, but still well worth it as my little local biz marketing generates a great deal of revenue with not much work.

For me, SEO for local marketing is excellent passive income for months or years and it converts in the local space so it's well worth it, even if I have to rebuild a few sites a year and rank them again.

Number one in what? That sounds like a search ranking, so SEO is your goal.

For all the talk about SEO being unpredictable, so is "syndication" and expecting (1) for your articles to be used by anyone but spammers, (2) for your articles to stay on those websites and not be removed down the road, (3) for there to be website partners that want your articles and want their existing traffic sent off to your website.

Since these are apparently affiliate / CPA sites, you're going to need to work really hard on the quality aspect for anyone to link to your sites.

I might be wrong, but I suspect you will find others more receptive to including your articles on their websites if you have established authority and credibility, and having visible SEO rankings is a step in that direction.

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If you want to rank #1, then SEO is definitely what you need to do.

Syndication helps, however, others have already said that you need to have quality articles. If you want people to link back, then quality is top priority.