There are many ways to drive traffic to websites, but the most cost effective, in the long run, is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization allows websites to rank well on certain keywords that are being targeted. SEO is beneficial for anyone with a website needing more traffic. I first came into contact with it several years ago when my husband started marketing a local internet retail company. They had a limited budget, but needed to market the products they were selling online. The most cost-effective way of marketing was using SEO to drive traffic to the website. The results were not as immediate as PPC, however, in the long run it paid off because they didn’t have to worry about paying for each click in the organic results like they would with PPC.
Another benefit to SEO over PPC is people tend to trust the “natural” results more than the “paid” results. Whether this is logical or not doesn’t really matter - people just tend to believe that because these companies show up first in Google, Yahoo, or MSN, they must be more trustworthy. This isn’t to say don’t use PPC - pay per click has its many benefits, which I’ll discuss in another post.
The ROI with SEO has been proven time and again. Once the campaign has been around for several months, and websites are ranking well for targeted keywords, it’s a great investment that will continue to pay off. The key for website owners is patience - sometimes SEO can take months (or even years on very competitive terms) to see good results, but once those results are showing up, the traffic will only increase with time.