If you are an online marketer, you have been told that search engine optimization (SEO) is the most effective way to get free organic traffic to your website. I disagree!

Although I believe that SEO is an important component of your online marketing plan, and it is certainly worth your time to properly structure your website to maximize SEO, it no longer is the “holy grail” of online marketing. In today’s online marketplace, you will draw visitors from a variety of sources, not just from the first page of Google.

This is exciting if you have an online business, because it means you don’t have to be on the first page of Google to succeed. You just need to be wherever your prospects are congregating online.

Here is a tidbit of marketing advice that I received from Internet Marketing guru David Frey: “If you want to succeed online, be where the people are.” Another way of saying this is, when you stand amongst a crowd; some of the group will stumble onto you. If enough people stumble over you, you can make a huge income from your online business.

Five years ago, Google was the only game in town. To get free organic traffic, you had to be on the first two pages of Google in the search results window. Today more people conduct searches on Social Websites than they do using the Google search engine.

Don’t get me wrong, you can get a huge amount of free traffic if you are on the first page of Google, but you can do the same thing using Web 2.0 websites like MySpace and YouTube.

Today’s online marketing strategy is best described by a term I first heard from Internet Marketing guru – Jeff Johnson. He coined the online marketing term as ‘Breadcrumb Marketing’. This process is one where you leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to your website by participating in blogs, forums, and other Web 2.0 mediums.

If you follow this strategy and promote where your niche market congregates, you can drive huge amounts of free traffic to your website. Today people search on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Technorati, Hubpages, Squidoo, Twitter, and many other Web 2.0 websites.

The bottom line is this: because of these trends, Google no longer controls your online success, you do. You only need apply an internet marketing strategy to take advantage of these new trends.

Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing strategy, online business, traffic, traffic building