dertyfern - 11:22 am on Nov 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

Easier said than done to generate substantial amounts of targeted traffic via organic site referral from blogs, forums, social networking sites, etc. and hence many people's continued focus on SEO.

But clearly it's a prospecting avenue that has huge opportunity for the right type of business.

For smaller organizations with limited funds/manpower there's a massive opportunity cost on where to place efforts to maximize returns and SEO has always offered the best cost/return ratio--even today with Google pushing down organic results in favor of PPC and maps/local listings.

Search attracts people that are more likely to be in a ready, willing and able to buy mindset. Meaning they land on a search results page, scan for what they need and quickly click out of the SE and onto your site...ready to take an action.

Visitors to blogs and social media are in an entirely distinct frame of mind: they are seeking entertainment, want to kill some time, socialize, etc. and as such are much less likely to click out of a site to be sold on something.

The most effective marketing reaches a particular group of people in a particular state of mind. That said there's still way more "good" traffic to be had optimizing your websites for search than for site referrals.