Why I Hate SEO...

by Banned 10 replies
12
Hey guys,

So I did the SEO game for just over 7 years. And in that time I had a lot of success.

But you know what? Now that I've won my stripes I've discovered how much easier it is to get your traffic from offline sources. I'll show you what I mean.

It used to take me 3 months or more to get my site good traffic in my chosen niches. A whole lot of work too.

Driving traffic from offline sources I can have enormous quantities of traffic hitting my sites within 1 week.

I noticed how the search engines kept changing the game. I'd get a site to number 1 or 2 over a multi month period. Then I'd celebrate about all the sales. Then after some time I'd notice the sales stop and realize my site was now on page 6 position 8. What? The search changed how they rated sites and my hard work was burnt.

With offline based traffic I get incredible consistency. There's so many ways to get traffic from offline sources it's amazing. It's just a different skill set.

But the thing that really sets apart online vs offline derived traffic is the quality. I've noticed through real life testing that offline traffic is roughly 4 times more profitable. Everyone who's done offline properly will tell you this. But nobody seems to listen.

I'm telling you, if you don't believe me, just go and generate 100 leads with seo, and 100 leads from an offline source (direct mail, trade publications etc) and see for yourself. I've done it more times than I can count. Every time the offline leads win. Both in terms of profitability as well as overall customer quality. (ie, fewer refunds, less demanding, nicer, more willing to buy upsells, etc.)

I don't know why this is, but it's true in my experience.

If you haven't tried offline sourcing of traffic yet, you should. I'm telling you. If you do it right, you won't be disappointed. You can PM me for my suggestions of where to start. I'm happy to help, but please keep your messages short because I'm very busy.

Bill
#search engine optimization #hate #seo
  • Maybe one of us is confused.

    Leads have nothing to really do with SEO.

    Leads are a sales conversion based issue.
    • [2] replies
    • I'm not sure but this seems like the type of thing where he posts here to advertise but to make it "relevant" so that it doesn't get deleted, he made it about how he doesn't like SEO and instead he likes lead generation.

      That way it's "about" SEO and he can post it in the SEO forum.

      Just a hunch.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • Yep! I totally agree with that as well. In addition to that, online and offline marketing must go together. It is not about choosing one of the two really. Everything helps!
  • Banned
    I'm not going to flame OP even If he's driving traffic to his forum sig (dead links) but I do agree that trade publications are so niche focused it's something that should be considered as a prime traffic source. To be honest I'd be interested in hearing more of what OP had to say on the subject.

    There's an expo for niche software that happens each year in my local area that I've considered sponsoring & handing out free product samples (downloads). I just never took the time. I'm sure it would generate both direct traffic & new backlinks.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      What they mean with "trade publications"? Just ads in newspapers or...?
      • [2] replies
  • This is encouraging to read as I've got my offline marketing plan figured out, but haven't really delved too deeply into my SEO plan.

    If you were starting from scratch, are there certain SEO practices you would still carry out? For example the ones which earned the highest reward for the least amount of work (and the least chance of a penalty). I feel you'd at least need to rank number 1 for your company name in Google (as quite a few people will search a company rather than adding the .com at the end, but I guess a lot of that can be down to creating a unique company name.

    Also out of curiosity, I see that people have forum signatures on their profile pages, but I don't actually see them on the forum. Is that the same for everyone, or is there a setting somewhere to change whether they're visible?
  • Yeah give us some offline tips for local businesses
  • Good idea. The key to being successful is building relationships with people or showing proof what you are doing works. This can be done in multiple ways such as YouTube, business cards ( people you know) and flyers in busy areas etc. The possibilities are endless if you think about it

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