Warning: This blog post expresses writer’s own views. Digest it or Spit it. Your call.
Yes, SEO is a miraculous cure to all the receding businesses. Yes, in a marketing meeting you’ll hear this word as much as you hear ‘targets’. Yes, army of SEO experts viz-a-viz the SEO demanders are increasing incessantly.
Still, however surprising this may sound to you- we’re doing SEO all wrong. The way we assume SEO in our plan is what’s diverting us all from the very purpose of SEO. A good SEO is the outcome of a disciplined, coherent marketing and technology strategy. It’s not an activity. Nor any tactic. Definitely not a strategy.
*My whole life was a lie*
Relax, it’s not as bad as it sounds. We just simply need to rectify our perspective of what SEO is. Let’s peel off the truth swiftly.
Do Not Take SEO as a Tactic.
Marketing moguls describe tactic as a a specific action step required to deliver on a strategy. Basically it’s a single, atomic thing you do to reach a goal. Tactics are what you do, and for every strategy, there are a number of tactics. I bet, you still got the tactic wrong. Meditate on what is Direct Mailing is. It’s not a tactic for reaching your audience. It’s merely a channel to get there. Ok. Let’s try another one. What do you think is Link Building Wrong again. It isn’t a tactic to spread your word around, it’s a result.
Don’t lose hope, tiger. Let me explain what I’m intending you to understand.
If you’re familiar with Followerwonk and you use it to find influencers for your business. Bang! It’s a tactic. (There I told you one great tactic if you already didn’t know about it.)
But, why isn’t SEO a marketing tactic. Because it’s a collection of tactics. A pile on of your efforts. Your writing pieces, server fine tuning, site performance tuning, code cleanup, canonicalization, online PR and not to miss your Social Media activeness.
Just like a faster site means better conversion rates or you can do it with your better writing skills. A better UX means that your user is delighted, which is a good sign that you’re doing well. A mention on a well- known blog is a good boost to your business. It’s best to remember that most SEO tactics influence other parts of marketing.
Also, SEO is not a Strategy.
You can’t have a SEO strategy. *What What What!*
In SEO you execute or as they say act out on details. One detail at a time. For SEO, you simply target and streamline your activities. You should really be strategizing as per client’s itch and then do SEO. Typically, what you should be doing right in SEO :
- Make sure the client’s business, message and other relative content is visible
- Use the words your audience uses.
- Don’t build slow, lousy websites.
Getting these details right isn’t a strategy. SEO will work on command and cease when it’s not properly tracked and maintained.
So, did we ruin it Well, almost.
Remember there was a feature of Meta Keywords Tag that used to help search engines what is the topic of the page. It played a small but important role, until Google decided to stop using it, mainly because we stuffed the tags with wrong words disabling search engines to work just right.
Hope nothing goes wrong with SEO. Though it’s on the verge of it. Yes. it is. We are trying SEO to become a discipline with specific but unique tactics for ‘manipulating’ the page rankings. I am not barring those white- hat SEOs from these tactics.
To the extent, we have pulled out an elongated Job Description. We have even put it alongside corporate goals of branding, architecture infrastructure development and what not. You also freeze on ‘zero room for error’- it’s like ‘higher rankings or nothing’.
So, will we ever be able to fix it. Yes. At best, don’t treat SEO as a department or even a goal. Take it in the mix of your marketing. Treat it as one benefit of a truly smartly executed marketing strategy.
I lied and I like it. SEO is JUST fine.
Notice it’s just fine. Not pretty safe from endangering. Here’s some food for thought: there are only conversion rate optimization experts but why not a conversion rate department Because these experts run parallel with the marketing decision makers and their efforts align and upheld marketing numbers.
Similarly you only need to assimilate all departments that help accomplish best practices to mold up a superbly performing SEO.
Let me reinstate it: The result of doing a lot of things takes shape into many outcomes- quantitatively and qualitatively- SEO is one of them. To sprinkle some relief in this post, I’d say that SEO is a fantastic driver of revenue and value. You’re doing tremendously well with SEO. Well, some of us. Only our elementary understanding SEO is a little shaken up.
If ranking is on the top of your to-do list, just remember to prioritize it differently with deeper parameters and only then SEO will bring magic to your marketing numbers.
How will we make it right?
It’s never to late to make things right. Do mind these changes:
- Treat SEO as a multi-team goal, not a person’s job.
- Push your companies or your bosses to apply tactics on SEO, instead of treating it as one. Embark on tactics that lead to a good SEO across all departments and teams
- No tactics in terms of ranking or site traffic point out the simultaneous benefits of each of your target. There could be more attributes beyond these two, explore them out and work on them.
- Understand and make others understand where SEO expense fit into the whole paid media world.
Don’t discount on your efforts and activities. Just slick them to an impressive SEO that contribute widely to your marketing goals and open up new opportunities for you.
Happy SEO-ing!