Balancing SEO and Other Forms Of Advertising

Search engines are by and far the largest supplier of traffic toyour web site. Moreover, its targeted, meaning the visitors thatarrive at your site were looking for information that you aredelivering. At least this is the goal of the search engines: todeliver high quality results to web surfers.Recent major changes in Google, Yahoo and MSN have put theinternet market however in a frenzy. As the search engines battleit out to be the one producing the highest quality results byfrequently altering their index algorithm, search engineoptimization has taken an almost obsessive importance.The problem I see is that the battle is not going to end soon andrepeatedly trying to stay ahead by optimizing after each re-indexing is truly a never ending battle. A balance must be struckbetween search engine advertising and other online venues.Starting out with an online home business business isintimidating. There is pressure to build a quality site, offervaluable information, promote, build subscribers,...and the listgoes on and on. Having a few different forms of advertising thatyou slowly utilize can payoff big in the long run. With a marketthat can change on an hourly basis, you musn't focus too heavilyon any single form of site promotion.Think of it as your advertising bag of goodies. You reach in andpull out one method and give it a try. Don't dump all of yourresources into it. Spread them out. Reach in and pick another,until you have a few in the works. Now pause and see which isworking. Tweak a bit here and there and sit back again.Continuously re-evaluating your advertising campaigns, you willbegin to grow a deep feeling as to which works for your onlinebusiness.Here are a few types of advertising for your home business youshould consider:(1) Classified Ads - cheap and short to write.(2) Article submission - write an article and post for free.The rewards reaped can be enormous in the long term.(3) Paid ads in E-Zines - hit those seldom used small nichemarkets!(4) Link exchange - can you bring in traffic from anothersite? You betcha!(5) Newsgroup and Discussion lists - join in on discussionsand pass out a small blurb about your business at the end.(6) Sig files - after all your online! Make use of all of theemails you send out daily.(7) Flyers - yep, offline!The bottom line here is not to stagnate. Search engines areimportant but not the only way to promote. Its better to balanceyour site optimization with other promotion strategies. If onemethod fails you at least have others to fall back on.