How does guest blog posting stack up to other traffic-generating methods? Which is better in terms of results to effort? Which methods are more likely to bring in targeted traffic? Which ones make the most sense for your business?

Let’s take a look.

==> Guest Blogging versus PPC

Guest blogging usually precedes PPC. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

In order to succeed in PPC, you need to have a very streamlined conversion funnel. In other words, you need to know that for every $1 you spend on PPC, you’re earning $1.20 or more back from the lifetime value of that customer – even if you lose money for the first few weeks or months.

Guest blog posting will allow you to generate the initial traffic you need to figure out your lifetime customer value.

Guest blog posting won’t get you as much traffic as PPC. It won’t be as consistent either. However, the traffic you’ll get will be targeted and it’ll be free.

One great strategy is to use guest blog posting to fine-tune your funnel and make sure you can convert before you move onto paid traffic methods.

==> Guest Blogging versus Article Marketing

This is one of those rare cases where there’s a clear winner. There’s just no question about it: guest blogging beats article marketing, hands down.

Guest blogging will get you on some of the top blogs in the industry. It’ll help build your reputation and send real people to your site.

Article marketing will get you into article directories and perhaps a few small, low-authority fringe sites.

Guest blogging will help you build massive PageRank, while article marketing won’t do much for your PageRank at all.

If you’re going to go through the trouble of writing articles, you might as well do it right and go the guest blogging route.

==> Guest Blogging versus SEO

Should you focus your attention on SEO or on guest blogging? The best answer is to make guest blogging part of your SEO strategy.

It’s true that guest blogging may not be the fastest way to build backlinks. It’s much faster to blast out your site to a backlink-building service to build 500 backlinks overnight. You could even use various tactics to land PR 3 to PR 5 links quickly.

By contrast, landing a great guest posting gig and writing the post could take you a whole week.

However, the guest blog post you write will bring in real traffic, while the links you generate purely for SEO probably won’t bring you much traffic at all.

This real traffic could result in both sales and additional backlinks. Furthermore, people often underestimate Google’s ability to figure out what a real backlink is.

In short, you don’t have to make guest blog posting your exclusive tactic. Use it as part of your SEO strategy to bring in real traffic. Use it to test your funnel before running PPC traffic.