Well, the summer has flown by, and with it, the conviction that SEO certainly pays off as a long-term traffic and audience development strategy.
At my day job, the site is booming, thanks to appropriate keyword research.
And because it is appropriate, and matches the searchers expectations as to what they wish to read, it also makes them much more willing to buy from us.
In addition, as our SEO has started to succeed, we appear to be paying less for PPC. The goal with PPC is eventually to be able to turn it off, because you will have so many people coming from organic search that you will use PPC to buy traffic for other keywords, and again, eventually win the SEO game and be able to turn off those keywords, and seek still more niches.
Patience and persistence really does pay off!