[Advice] What is the best way to grow web traffic without SEO?

Hey guys, just answered a question over on Quora

This question was asked:

"I run a 5+ year old website that generates 175k monthly site visits. To date, we’ve relied almost entirely on SEO from Google and realize this is an outdated strategy.

We don’t have much of a marketing budget to speak of and instead rely on email marketing, guest blog posts on higher traffic sites (i.e., HuffPo), social marketing via FB+Twitter. These are all growing but not providing the “pop” we need.

What are some other effective ways of growing our traffic? lol”



I see a couple issues with your question.



1. SEO is definitely not and outdated strategy. It’s generating 175K monthly visits to your site! lol As long as there is a search engine and a #1, there will be SEO to be done.



2. You don’t have much of a marketing budget. It sounds like you need to rethink your business model. Those 175K visits should be generating plenty of money for a marketing budget. It’s important to remember that marketing is not a cost. It should NEVER cost you a dime. You only market to increase profit. If you spend $1 and get even just $1.01, your marketing was a profit of $.01, not a cost of $1. So try not to think in terms of budget but in terms of return on investment.



You are definitely smart to be looking at other ways besides just SEO to generate traffic.



There are a ton of ways to do this and some are mentioned here, however, without knowing the actual business, no one can really tell you what other methods you should try.



For example: I have clients that use PPC and have amazing results and I have clients that I would never let use PPC again. Same with Social Media, those who insist that all companies should be using Social Media are just Social Media band wagoners. It does NOT work for all businesses and can be a complete waste of time for some.



It would take more than just some guesses to help you further. Only someone who has spent some time going over your business would be able to provide better help.



Hope this helps you out though,



- JR

JRGriggs.com || RedWallMarketing.com