EQUTE — John McCarthy has an interesting article over at Adotas, and it makes one think about what SEO has become — a buzzword for cheap traffic.

McCarthy provides an interesting anecdote about a client of his who sought to use SEO to drive more leads to his technology company. A few competitors said they were getting good results with organic SEO, so he thought of trying it himself. He hired McCarthy and asked him to get the SEO train going.

But instead of leading him on with false promises, McCarthy told his client that SEO was not right because of the sparse content on his site and the long road to organic rankings.

So when should marketers tell their clients (or themselves) to try something else?

Simple, when time and money is of the essence and there is nothing for the search spiders to crawl.

Unless you or a client is prepared for a long wait for results, paid search rankings are a much better way to get things moving — while getting the SEO train moving as well, McCarthy said.

Ideally, sites are created and build up SEO either naturally or by design, but many sites are simply better designed for paid search. But with SEO becoming the buzzword it is, there is a slew of people looking to capitalize with little investment in the down economy. Site owners and business owners should think about whether or not they really need SEO help. With some examination, many people will find that SEO isn’t worth the money, and paid search or other tactics could get them over the recession hump without all the mess.