Let’s give SEO its due

The last few years have seen a number of changes in terms of how websites are marketed. Marketers now have a numbers of ways of reaching and attracting traffic to their websites.

I keep getting questions and concerns about SEO. Mostly about the path forward, and marketing websites without SEO since most people have assumed that in a few years SEO will be no more!

My answer to most of them is,

SEO like any other form of marketing has metamorphosed into an even more powerful set of techniques for web marketers to use in their marketing mix.

Here is why SEO is and will remain an integral part of the marketing mix:

1. Be it a web page or a website, the concept, content, and the navigation of the page needs to carefully thought out and designed keeping in mind the target customers. SEO comes into the scheme of things right from the conceptual stage. For any medium, be it the print, television, audio, or the internet, there are a set of best practices that have evolved over a period of time. The application may vary depending upon the strategy but the core practices remain the same.

2. In order to market on the internet, SEO techniques will need be applied, and will always be referred to, especially to ensure that every little content, element, post, and page meets the eligibility threshold in order to be internet ready.

3. For instance, what should be the title of a page? How much content is enough? Is the content optimized? Does this page need a relevant image? What should be the size? Where should the visitor head after this page? Do we add any relevant links here? How else should a page be made useful, attractive, and persuasive?

Do you see what I mean?

Each and every element of a page needs to be carefully thought out and executed. SEO plays a critical role in deciding each and every element of a page.

4. After a website is launched, one of the main functions of SEO is to let the search engines and other relevant traffic sources on the internet know about the existence of this page. Pure organic search results  is due to SEO efforts alone, and still accounts for a decent chunk of traffic.

5. A lot of online promotional effort today is executed through Social networking sites. Broadly, networking sites such as, Twitter,Stumble upon, Pinterest, Delicious,Digg, send a lot of traffic to websites, provided the content is optimized, relevant, and networked well (SEO again!). HubSpot, a slightly different concept also drives useful traffic, and since it is content centric SEO plays quite an important role here.

In my opinion SEO has got bigger and better in the current scenario and going forward it  will continue to play an important role because the best practices are ingrained in every aspect of internet marketing.

I look forward to hearing about your thoughts and concerns on SEO.