Do you ever wonder when you should be using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and when you should be using PPC (Pay Per Click) to generate traffic to your (or an affiliate) Website? Is it really a matter of whether you should use SEO vs. PPC, or should you always be using both? The right answer is...it depends.

The good news is, it's not as complicated as it may sound. There are definitely times when your SEM (Search Engine Marketing) strategy will require you to use SEO alone, other times PPC, and more often than not, both SEO and PPC combined to generate the most targeted traffic to your site. By the time you finish this article you will know...

Before you can decide on the most optimal SEM strategy, you must first determine what your site's goals are!

• Do you own a retail Website looking to sell products?
• Are you a lead generation site?
• Is your Website simply informational and your goal is to have someone download a PDF or something similar?
• Are you selling directly to the consumer or wholesale to retailers?
• Is the end goal a phone call, email, live chat, download?

Once you have a clear idea on the conversions that make the most sense for your Website, you can then determine the best strategy to accomplish your objectives. In some cases you may start with PPC, evolve into SEO, then turn off your PPC campaign. Other times it might be the reverse, and, as mentioned before, most of the time you'll be using a combination of both.

Here are some perfect examples of when to use SEO:

• Budget is more important than time.
  Optimizing your Web pages for your keywords and building out a successful SEO campaign takes time...and sometimes, a lot of it!
  It also takes time for search engine bots (i.e. spiders) to crawl, index, and then rank yo...