Lead generation from SEO has the allure of plentiful prospects that have qualified themselves already by using specific keyword phrases. And when search engine optimization is working, the lead generation strategy proves its worth.  There is a real sense of accomplishment seeing fresh prospects come to your web site each day knowing you’re keeping expenses down without pay per click advertising.  But like any single source supplier - it can put your business in a choke hold over night.

The major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN - offer well over 80% of the search traffic out there. And depending on your market, local search terms could represent over 50% of your own traffic. So devoting resources to SEO can be well worth the return on investment. But only relying on search engine optimization for traffic creates a potential for loosing large segments of that traffic overnight. Like the Boy Scouts - be prepared, and like any sound business owner - be diversified in your lead generation sources.

I can testify to this, because I’ve seen it occur - even been a victim of it.  Years ago I had several sites that had hundreds of pages indexed by the search engines that brought thousands of visitors every month. This visitors would click on Adsense ads or optin to an educational email series that offered affiliate products. At the time, SEO was easy and took a few tactics to bring traffic overnight. Those were heady times. Overtime, I lost interest in adding content or acquiring more links to these site - and the traffic has dried up.  But there were noticeable traffic drops - often over a 60% drop in traffic in one week. Looking at server logs, it was easy to see when the changes in the search engine algorithms occurred.

Is Your Business Only Dependent on Search Engine Traffic?

Relying on search engines only for traffic is a flawed business strategy because it’s putting your livelihood in the hands of third party that you have no control over. While there is more than one search engine, odds are you are getting the majority of your traffic from only the major search engines. And losing your placement in one SE can signal the decline in the other search engines. Having a diverse source of traffic is the key solution to being able to handle search engine algorithm changes while you make attempts to recover your keyword phrase rankings.

What Are Traffic Options?

This is the question most businesses start out asking themselves when considering putting up a web site:

Where will the visitors come from?

There are multitudes of traffic possibilities, but pay per click advertising can offer a reasonably consist controlable cost with immediate results. Your business has the flexibility to turn on advertising campaigns to bring visitor traffic when the budget allows- and turn it off when advertising funds are depleted. As your conversion tactics improve, this allows an increase in the pay per click budget. Ideally, the ROI will allow your business to expand its advertising impressions and therefore increase your sales.

When it comes to lead generation, pay per click also provides that potential for overnight results for research and to boost sales. Here are just a few considerations for having pay per click campaigns to compliment your SEO efforts:

• Quick set up vs. SEO taking months for full impact
• Easy Analytics vs. Server Logs - keyword campaigns will show most clicked keywords
• Budget limits easily enforced

There are SEO tatics that can make an overnight impact, but if you’re dealing with highly competitive keyword phrases - you run the risk of raising a “red flag” and potentially having your site hand edited out of the search engine’s index. Or just as bad, being too successful with social marketing media. Taking your time to create quality content that users want to link to creates credibility and sets your business apart - and brings visitors from those potential linking sites. Most importantly - this should bring you qualified traffic generating the leads your business needs.

Remember - having traffic diversity keeps your business from being a slave to search engines and every rankings adjustment. Continually attracting visitors because of your unique content provides a more sound business model for your lead generation tactics. Which means you can continue to compete in your market for the foreseeable future.