airpal - 7:36 pm on Feb 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

There needs to be a clear distinction between SEO and other methods of getting qualified traffic over the web, even though the end goal may be the same, which is to generate sales/leads. Unfortunately, the vast majority of self-professed "white-hatters" (which is just manipulating websites less than blackhatters, but still manipulation for the sole purpose of SEO benefits) mix the two together all the time. SEO, in my mind, has one core goal: ranking high for targeted keywords/phrases, period! That is not the same as writing good articles, creating a useful blog, being an active and helpful member in a forum, or buying links based on only the traffic generated from them (which is really just a media buy/PPC if you calculate the cost/clicks), or any of the various "New" methods mentioned.

The "New" methods mentioned above are good guerilla tactics to scrape together extra traffic that can potentially convert into leads/sales. However, if one's main objective is improved SEO as defined above, a lot of the "Old" techniques mentioned are exactly what top-ranked sites are using to dominate the SERPs and rake in the money.

Maybe it makes more sense if we use a situation where someone is paying a company for SEO services. They're not paying for various tactics to potentially generate qualified traffic, even though that may be another viable marketing method to try out. The client is simply paying to rank as high as possible for their targeted keywords. Anything else is not truly SEO.