PPC vrs link buying ?

In people humble opinion which yields the best long term success in attracting new visitors to the site ?

pay per click with overture and google?

or hiring links to up your serp poisition?

or spending budget on paid directory inclusion to create more backlinks which are perminant?

I am having to create a case for seo budget and evidence for best ways to optiomise spend on web marketing.

Traffic from PPC is measurable and quantifiable in terms of ROI.

Traffic from a link is also measurable and quantifiable, although possibly a bit more work.

Ranking benefits from a paid link is not measurable nor quantifiable.

Peronally, I perfer to think and work for long term success, so I prefer any opportunities to get permanent exposure. But if you can demonstrate a reasonable ROI, there is no real reason not to go with PPC exposure - it should pay for itself or stop doing it.

very well said Bernard.

Attack from both directions if you have the resources.

Get traffic from wherever you can until you have enough traffic and enough conversions to find out which is best.

As with everthing in life it will follow pareto`s law and you can then just focus on the 20% that is bringing the $$$

mick... you're getting all smart on us here with "pareto`s law." Well said though, It doesnt make any sence to put forth your full effort untill you've experimented and learned what works best.

PPC is good, I believe, if you can get keywords for cheap, under .07cents. I honestly just run a campaign that costs me .05 cents per click on a lot of my sites. It brings in about 50 visitors a day per site, and the cost is off-set with my adsense revenue. I found a balance with cost / revenue, and you should be able to do the same. It essentially means Free traffic.

-Scott Fish

Work it out from you stats and your income earned verses time spent on your sites.

20% of your sites will bring 80% of your income.
80% of your time will be spent on 20% of your sites.

http://home.alltel.net/mikeric/Misc/Pareto.htm

If you work out that imbalance and focus your efforts in the right direction that you have pinpointed by you analysis you will earn 80% more income in 20% of the time it took you previously.

This will give you Punctuated Equilibrium

The time you spend on cutting back the wastage or energy and time in your business will enable you to focus on the bit that brings the money that you have identified from your constant effort from stopping the 80/20 principle reassert itsself.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PUNCTUEQ.html

See? Simple

I agree you should try the two together at the beginning and then wich is more suitable for your needs and possibilities ;+it might be fun to discover yourself the good&bad parts .