A client I have been working with yesterday expressed to me that he was going to spend $5,000 on making his site SEO friendly. I asked him why. He said to get more traffic to his site. Fortunately he caught me at a point in the day when I had the energy to get on my soapbox.

Just driving traffic to your website will not equal success and sales. In fact, driving the wrong traffic to your website could have the opposite effect. A company needs to stop and think about who their market is and how they get their information. The days of sending out a press release for a product launch has gone away. Campaigns need to be much more integrated and wide-spread. This causes fear in some marketers because they don’t know how to sell or track it within the company. If you can’t do this, then most times you can’t get the campaign approved. Stop focusing on ROI and focus on the market. Start a blog, comment on blogs, make podcasts, send out emails, see what Facebook/MySpace have to offer, partner with other companies … do not just make your website SEO friendly and send out a PR.

If you build a website they will come. Not the whole story.