Is Search The Right Channel For You?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Rand Fishkin wrote a great blog post in answer to this question posed by someone, “If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you choose?”

First off, Rand and I both agree that’s a ridiculous question, but it’s useful in that it opens up a philosophical jar of worms that most search marketers aren’t willing to explore. He answered the questions much the same way I would have. Which Internet marketing channel is right for you depends on a number of factors, including your own internal resources. But what about search specifically? If you could spend any amount of money and choose any number of Internet marketing channels to market your business – in other words, no limitations – would you choose search?

A better question might be, why wouldn’t you?

Search marketing doesn’t cost as much money as other Internet marketing channels. It does require a lot of time. And if you do it well then you can see a huge, huge pay off in the end. The ROI on effective search engine marketing is very high. But you have to be committed to making it work.

The way I’m using search marketing for this post is limited to search engine optimization. I understand that PPC is typically considered a part of search engine marketing, and that’s normally the way I’d use it. But in terms of marketing organically through search engines, if you had unlimited resources and time, you’d be a fool not to use every channel at your disposal. I’d start with search.