Kissing SEO Good-Bye As A Stand-Alone Marketing Strategy
Russ Henneberry | Jan 12, 2010 | Comments 6
I hate to break the news but SEO (search engine optimization) isn’t enough to succeed online anymore.
Whether your selling frisbees, lip stick or debt consolidation services you will need to do more than just optimize your web pages for some keywords and get a few good inbound links.
How much more? I’m glad you asked
You will have to find ways of engaging with your customers and prospects. You will need to find ways for your customers and prospects to engage with each other. You will need to start monitoring and (more importantly) participating in the conversations that are going on about your industry, products, services, brands, etc.
Search Engine Optimization is an absolutely critical piece of your online marketing strategy — however, it is no longer a viable stand-alone strategy. In 2010 and beyond, businesses will become more savvy than ever before, realizing that more web traffic doesn’t necessarily equal more profits.
Smart/Successful businesses will realize that a strong, loyal and active community of customers should be the goal of all online marketing plans — not just the #1 spot in Google for the phrase ‘buy red lipstick.’
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Filed Under: Marketing Articles
Good post Russ! SEO has never been a real great stand alone marketing strategy. It has always worked better in conjunction with Pay Per Click or something. Now, with so much communication going on in social media sites, seo is working well with these tactics.
Russ,
Well done. I had been thinking this myself. I think SEO gets a lot of attention because in comparison to building and engaging your community, SEO is fairly easy.
In my industry (office supplies) I compete with some very big, deep-pocketed companies. I can not win the Pay per click battle or out-rank them…but I can compete on price and kill them on service, if only people knew about that.
So right as you are posting this, I find I am thinking a lot more about ways to build and engage my customers and prospects, and just a little about SEO. It’s like you read my mind or something…
@Greg — Thanks Greg! So much of SEO is about building links — and short of doing some shady things — it is difficult to get links without first building something worthwhile and giving people a reason to link to it — I guess my point is that SEO is just part of a larger “ecosystem” of online marketing tactics.
Hi Russ,
Great post! For me, SEO has always been a cornerstone of a good online marketing communications plan. With new social monitoring tools available (I like Spiral16 and Social Radar for specific reasons — but, there are a number of free tools — we were a bit disappointed in Radian6) it is imperative that marketers listen and participate in the marketplace. I feel social media is the world’s best and most cost effective focus group. It’s important to monitor your company/brands, but I encourage marketers to also look at your competitors and marketplace issues. These insights will also help your SEO efforts to be more relevant and improve ROI.
Keep up the good work!
@chriskovac
@Chris Kovac — Love it — re: I feel social media is the world’s best and most cost effective focus group. — so many talk about listening to their market but very few are doing it.
What is one of Dale Carnegies rules in his timeless book — How To Win Friends and Influence People — Be a Good Listener. Too many people are talking and not enough listening going on. I will definitely check out these tools you mentioned! Thanks Chris!
Russ,
I have never personally recognized SEO as a stand-alone Marketing Strategy. Although I have worked hard on optimizing websites for SEO so that in the long haul there would be organic traffic coming thru. SEO simply is not enough for a website to survive although should not be overlooked as well.
I think that as search engines refine their algorithm we will see new implementations and will have to keep up with new strategies to succeed with SEO.
@ivan_temelkov