If there’s one thing every blogger and webmaster needs, it’s traffic. We want tons of it. It doesn’t matter how much we have, we want more, more, more. We dream of the day when our little blogs and sites get to 100,000 visitors per second.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I should be spending all of my time on. Should I really be focusing on the SEO of my sites? Should I be chatting with people at MyBlogLog? Should I be commenting on blogs? Talking in forums? What is really going to pay off the most?

If you try to monetize your blog, I hope you know about John Chow. I reviewed his site last week for those of you who are regular readers. For the purpose of discussion, I’m going to talk about two different approaches to building traffic.

Here you have it: John Chow vs. SEO.

SEO
I started in this business at an SEO firm, so this is most definitely my area of expertise. Let me tell you what you would do if you approached traffic from a pure, SEO standpoint.

You would be focusing tons of time and energy on building links. If you were a full time blogger, you would probably spend one hour per day writing a new post. You would spend the rest finding new ways to get links. You would search for sites that you could exchange links with. You would find some good forums to post in. You would submit to directories. You would be writing articles for article directories.

You would also focus on your onsite SEO. You would ensure that your categories had proper names. You would obsess over keyword density, meta tags, and would probably sacrifice your readers’ experience quite a bit.

What Would Happen
Over a period of a few months, you would start to build up a little traffic. About a year later you could make it so that you had substantial traffic, assuming that you stuck to it for that long. You would have been able to aqcuire a few thousand links, and you’re site would do pretty well in Google and the other search engines.

John Chow
What I believe John has done is simple. I’m not saying that I could do it! I’m just saying that I think it’s a little bit less complicated than people think.

I hand it to the guy. He is a freaking genius…. definitely a lot smarter than I am! He has been able to create an unbelievable buzz. Everyone talks about how and why he has been able to do it. Here is what people think:

• His blog is super easy to read.
• He had a tremendous amount of success on Digg.com. (especially in the beginning.)
• He is really good at SEO.
• He is easy to get to know since he’s so open in his blog. (shows pictures of meals, cars, vacations, and so on.)
• He is a better writer than most bloggers.

Here’s What I Think
It’s funny because all the things people think are true! He is a great writer, he dominated on Digg, he is probably great at SEO, and he is really easy to get to know. I’m sure that all of these things have contributed, but they’re not the reason his blog dominates.

The #1 factor that contributes to John’s success is his monetization. I found John because of a paid ad. I was reading ProBlogger, and saw a paid ad that said something like, “Why John Chow Loves Darren Rowse.” I thought what the heck, I’ll make Darren a few cents and see who this guy is.

I checked out John’s site. Why do I now check his site a few times a day? Because I was amazed that he was able to create that kind of income in such a short period of time. That’s what brings people back.

Now I’m sure that John gets plenty of search engine traffic, it just isn’t the reason for his success. John Chow is a story of branding at its best. He has created an unbelievable brand and I don’t believe that it has much to do with SEO. I believe that he created the buzz by making more money per visitor than the mere mortals like me, and by telling us about it. Again, I’m not saying that he’s bad at SEO!

After Thoughts
Most SEO professionals obsess over getting more traffic from search engines. John focuses on creating a brand that impacts people. Because of this, John will be able to take his blog far above what an ‘SEOmasterblasterabsoluteGooglefreakinggenius’ (If you search for that keyword in Google I bet I’ll come up first in a week or two! LOL) could do. SEO has all kinds of limitations.
The winner is easily John Chow. If you haven’t read his stuff I would highly recommend it.