Last Sunday, a bunch of copywriters shot the breeze on the Nuts & Blogbolts talk radio show. At the end, Mike Sansone asked if we would individually respond on our blogs to this question:

"Writing for the visitor is more important than writing for the search engines. Can both requirements be met without sacrificing quality?"

Ryan Healy posted his answer on the subject. I agree with him, but only in part. This is not because I disagree with anything Ryan said, because he makes some great points. But because I think there are ways around it.

So my answer is both "yes" and "no." Here's why…

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Search engines change all the time and many of them now charge for the privilege of including your website. So, people often ask me how to generate traffic, beyond the search engines and with little to no cost.

Let me be candid by saying that I am not a search engine expert, nor do I play one on TV. But there are two methods that I’ve used consistently to attract thousands of qualified hits to my website at virtually no cost and with very little effort.

Granted, everyone’s different. And these techniques may not be appropriate for all people. However, let me share what works for me and what I do.

The two biggest traffic builders I use are: 1) posting on message boards, forums, blogs and discussion lists; and 2) writing, syndicating, publishing and submitting articles to ezine publishers — including my own (such as my blog, my newsletter or my website’s archives).

Now, let’s take a closer look, shall we?

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John Reese gave a fascinating talk in Los Angeles. His topic was how to create a profit network. A lightly different (and probably more marketing-related) version of Michael Campbell’s “Revenge of The Mininet.”

In essence, John talked about creating a series of specific, standalone websites for content only, based on categories. Search-engine-wise, it’s good for link pop, PR, rankings, etc. While I’m not too sure about that, the concept in and of itself makes total sense to me.

So here’s what I did…

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