I guess, in a way, this is more of a rant than an actual question, but I have been thinking lately, that forums especially seem more geared towards SEO than anything else...
Is this because of all the SEO companies out there that are trying to find work? or the rogue SEO's trying to make more money from people that don't understand what SEO is all about? Or is marketing genuinely not a serious issue when it comes to an online business?
See, the way I think is that seo is a small slice of a bigger picture and that you only need to take care of the basics, and then start with marketing campaigns to start building reputation and trust in the company and the product/s that are being offered, and even I realise that there is a little SEO in that as well, it just seems more geared on the SEO part of it all and hang the reputation and trust part. Oo or is it just me seeing this?
What would be more important to you?. Getting links strewn everywhere your niche is online, or building a reputation for yourself and your company and letting that lead to others helping you build links back to your site?
Maybe I'm just an old goat, or medieval, as I mentioned in a previous post, but it seems that SEO is the shortcut people are using most because it can be done quickly, and marketing is on the backburner somehow. I can understand though, I mean it takes a lot of effort to get campaigns off the ground and to keep at them all consistently. Maybe you can help me change my mindset on this, show me why SEO should be relied on more than marketing, or vice versa.
I think it depends on the industry and the type the business is on. Most small business owners tend to think that once they do SEO on their website, more people will be visiting their sites(though keywords or links from directory etc) and will call them or buy from their websites. And for a lot of them, it is enough. Also for most small businesses, that works at least in very small scale. Marketing(online) for small businesses is not cheap and if not done properly, is not that effective. They don't have budget or don't want to spend a lot for proper online marketing campaigns. New small businesses want to spend as little as possible for marketing their site and that's when they choose SEO and to reduce the cost, they outsource them. That's when you see the rivers of low quality link building through directories, forums, blog comments etc. Larger companies do marketing campaigns(they can afford) to boost their businesses and establish their brands and carry on both SEO(to stay in the search competition) and marketing(mostly for brand establishment and finding new customers from different channels) with huge slice of budget go to marketing. If you want to live from your business, SEO will be enough. If you want to grow and grow big, you have to turn into marketing at some point. Thanks, fourth-monkey
Later this year, there will be a seismic shift in marketing practices as Googles knowledge graph gets more data and more people start implementing structured markup. SEO in the basic form and structure as we know it is moving into the final chapter. When SEOMoz dropped the SEO from their name, it's time to pay attention. Semantic Search Marketing & Structured Data will be the new marketing battleground. On page SEO will remain, but as structured data takes precedent, in theory the mickey mouse crap keyword obsessed, and link dumping SEO'ers will fade into history. I genuinely believe it's going to be that big. May be in months/years to come I got may dates a little wrong, but I think by the end of 2013, everything will be about Semantic Search Marketing. I've started a new forum and done one high level post, but as I dig deeper, I want to share some resources and ideas, and hopefully get some serious discussions going on how people are implementing it, or how it affects small business. At the moment, a lot of the Semantic Search forums and communities are very indepth and technical, which is great, (plus some just full of rubbish) but it would be nice to break down some more complex debates and maybe get some coal face feedback. I think marketing is always changing and re-inventing itself, and genuine marketeers who have a thirst for knowledge will always be there. Unfortunately online marketing credentials were destroyed in normal peoples minds with those 3 little letters... S E O 
This is more or less what gets me everytime. Google may be trying to stop them getting more search results than they're supposed to, but the minute they release a new version of an algo or they focus on something other than seo, they figure out a way around it. I think it will work eventually, depending on all the tweaking involved, but they are still going to find a way to abuse this IMHO. And until that happens, forums are still going to be overrun with profile spammers and those trying to make a fast buck out of people that aren't as informed as the rest. I understand that marketing isn't the cheapest out there, but a lot of networking can be done with just one's time invested and that in itself is a good thing. If I think about how much money these underworld seo'ers walk away with at the end of the day, it makes me cringe, because its a genuine marketing opportunity wasted, money they could have invested in something more stable than links that are only going to be around for 24 hours, if that. Another thing I've been thinking about, is maybe finding a way to shift focus from SEO somehow, and I know thats going to be an impossible task in itself. but maybe focusing more on marketing, giving out reliable information to folks new to it all could in some way help. I guess that's all a dream for now anyway. Thanks, Dreamraven |
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