Jason is “feeling the love” of SEO.

 ”Looks like Neil is doing an OK job so far of increasing the search traffic to Calacanis.com over the past two weeks. He’s only been able to push about 10% of the changes he wants to do…but the results are solid so far: a 21% increase according to Niel.“

Jason makes some good points: is he getting real ROI, is this just a quick hit, will this be sustainable, and aren’t other ways of promotion more effective.

They’re all true, but present something of a false dichotomy. SEO is not redundant because there are other options available. If you use only one method of promotion, SEO or otherwise, then you’re probably not going to last very long. There is long time ROI of SEO. We’ve all seen it. It all depends on how it is done.