One thing that never ceases to amaze me, is the disparity that some people seem to have between the concepts of SEO and Marketing. Its time for us collectively as an industry to wake up, smell the coffee and realise that we are all infact, MARKETERS. True, we may be a sub section, a splinter group if you like (and in the black hats case a militant splinter cell!), but we are all fundamentally involved in MARKETING pure and simple!
In a conversation with Will at Distilled a few months back he mentioned that as SEOs we are in a technical marketing discipline, which is a great description, but it only serves (for the purpose of this post at least) to further prove my point that we are involved in Marketing.
Now at the risk that this post is starting to sound like one heck of a rant, let me explain. Every day here at the forums I get people asking why they dont get as much traffic as they think they should, and why they arent making as much (if any) money from their online efforts. Well, the problem 99% of the time comes down to a lack of marketing expertise. You might be able to rank #1 for the search term “poker” (and if you can, well done, you are a certifiable genius) but if you dont market your SITE well then its not going to serve you any good.
So, lets collectively as an industry, whether you are building your own sites out, or working for clients, lets start looking at the big picture – you can rank #1 for anything, but it wont mean anything unless you get the rest of the marketing picture of your website/business right. SEO is just another marketing channel, albeit with certain technical aspects not seen in other area’s, but marketing it is.
