We celebrate Ian Lurie’s WTF is SEO? because he wrote about what has always set Cre8asiteforums apart from all other SEO forums.
When Lurie stood outside the SEO wagons that circle each client, it dawned on him that whatever happens inside that circle for the client is not enough to finish the job.
Lurie wrote:
After 17+ years of beating my head against walls like IT departments, branding teams and disbelieving CFOs, I’ve figured out why: SEO isn’t an activity, or a tactic, or a strategy. Good SEO is the outcome of a disciplined, coherent marketing & technology strategy.
He goes on to explain why SEO is not a tactic, nor is it a strategy.
Strategy is an approach that includes all roles in an organization. All of the components of SEO should be part of an organization’s growth strategy.
And of course, we all know SEO is its own bubble, both in-house and as sold to clients. The entire point of Search Engine Marketing has been and still is “Get pages into search engines. Get pages and sites ranked high. Get searchers to click into pages.” That’s all they have to do. This is all they are taught to do.
Look at the Agendas of search engine marketing conferences. What’s taught is a limited approach to marketing for clients and the rest is how to keep up with Google’s latest antics.
iamlost jumped on this article. His discussion, A Portent Epiphany! brought Black Knight out for a welcome visit.
Wrote Ammon Johns,
“Yeah, that was my first thought: “Where was Ian when we were combining UI, SEO, conversions, design, and customer service every single day in the Cre8asite forums from 2003 onwards? In London, at SES this year, I was on the panel “Integrated Marketing: What does it mean?”, and this is precisely the issues we were discussing. But you know what? It is not one tiny iota different to what we called the Holistic Marketing approach way back when on Cre8asite. SEO hasn’t changed, and it doesn’t need a new title. What has changed is that it now needs to be integrated with so many other things and all tie into broader marketing. And the only thing that is new there, to you and I, is the word ‘needs’. It was always the smart approach, and the one we advocated, way back.”
What I’ve been saying, teaching, writing and doing all these years is a holistic approach to anything we put on the Web, whether it’s a web site or software application used on the Web. The people who are the most difficult to convince the need and logic for a 360 degree approach are the SEO’s. The search engine marketing industry doesn’t teach anything but strategy. By tradition the industry has refused to see the value of adding the human part to marketing.
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