In a fantastic post today about various internet marketing channels, Rand Fishkin broke down the various merits of different online advertising strategies. He wrote the post as an answer to the question “If you had a million dollars to invest in one Internet Marketing Channel, which would you choose?”

First off, this well organized post included the first comprehensive list of online marketing channels I have ever seen. Search Engine Optimization was only one of the channels listed. I suddenly realized there’s a lot more to online marketing than I, as an SEO specialist, thought. As I read further, however, I realized my opinion turned. Of the following list of online marketing strategies, there was not a one that did not involve some element of SEO:

• Display Advertising (putting banners and adds on third party sites)
• Email Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
• Online Public Relations (press releases etc.)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Affiliate Marketing (paying other people to drive traffic to your site)
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Viral Content Campaigns (creating content that spreads quickly)
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

To gain the most value from Display advertising, Email Marketing, Pay Per Click and Affiliate marketing, specialized landing pages are needed. In order to create these landing pages that direct users toward your ultimate goal, you need to optimize them.

Though your main purpose is probably not to make these pages more visible to the search engines, you still end up doing everything you would do if you were SEOing them (especially in the case of building landing pages for PPC): Keyword research, SEO copywriting, general page tweaking etc.

Social media marketing- (which Rand defines for his purposes as leveraging existing social media sites, but which can actually include creating a corporate blog etc.) involves keyword-rich writing. Viral marketing involves the same kind of link building and syndication efforts you’d use to disseminate keyword rich articles.

As for Conversion Rate Optimization, this process typically streamlines your site, making it easier to use and more relevant to what your users want to do. That’s what SEO does. Usability and Search Engine Optimization go hand in hand more often than not.

What would I spend a Million dollars on?

Shoes. No, just kidding. Really.

Personally, I don’t think the question that sparked Rand’s post is realistic, even from a hypothetical point of view. There is no way that I’d invest all of my money into one marketing strategy. I think if I had a million dollars, I would spend 2/3 of it on Search Engine Optimization. What could result in a larger return on investment than bringing in people who ALREADY WANT WHAT I HAVE? The rest would go to a mixture of conversion rate optimization (including a site redesign if necessary) and Social Media Marketing to build my brand and increase awareness.

In my opinion, everything involving your online presence eventually boils down to how many people find you in the first place. Whether you’re marketing yourself through videos, blog posts, Facebook comments, article syndication or email, the objective is the same: get targeted traffic to your website and then convert it. These are the principle goals of SEO and everything is built around that.

Still, Rand’s answer “it depends” and his breakdown of exactly what it depends on is pretty brilliant. Hat tip to SEOmoz.org

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