This is an interesting article in the NYT about Google Adwords. LaGrande Dame’s experience with using Adwords is fairly typical, in my experience. I personally don’t use Adwords, and I cringe every time I hear someone is spending thousands of dollars on pay per click every month because I think there are much better and possibly cheaper ways to get traffic to your site.
When Josh Landsberg and I began working together a year ago, I had already developed my LinkedIn strategy, which is how Josh and I connected. However, Josh had all the rest of the SEO stuff figured out, and he taught me a lot about how to use social media. Together, we grew the Foreclosure Industry site’s traffic thousands of times in under six months.
The way we grew the site’s traffic is an even better story, which I will tell in later blog posts. It has basically turned out to be a bankable strategy for SEO that will make anyone money who is committed to work at it on a consistent basis. We are launching several new businesses based on this strategy, which is a blueprint for success.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean to criticize Google Adwords, because I think Adwords has its place in some SEO strategies. It seems to me that it’s the most useful to people who don’t know where else to start with SEO optimization, and if that’s the difference between making some money versus none, well…some is better than none.
We generated a LOT of traffic from writing a blog. I started out blogging about legal stuff that I thought people would be interested in and sure enough, those people showed up. I don’t think you can beat a basic, clean WordPress blog for lead generation, and it takes time and consistent effort. If you are posting relevant content on a consistent basis, the leads will show up. What you do with them once they show up is another blog post. (Stay tuned.) I know it works because I did it.
As Josh says, I started my social media experience selling one of the most obscure and difficult things that you could possibly ever sell: forensic loan audits. Nobody knew what they were, let alone spend hundreds to purchase one.
However, most of the people who purchased an audit from me were 90% sold by the time they called me because I had educated them on the blog.
Simply put, good content + consistency = traffic.
Got questions? Send me an e-mail: christine@linkforsuccess.com
Tags: social media; Google Adwords; SEO; blogging for lead generation; wordpress;
0