{"id":5461,"date":"2022-08-08T12:50:02","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T12:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/seo-is-marketing\/"},"modified":"2022-08-08T12:50:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T12:50:02","slug":"seo-is-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/seo-is-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO is marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SEO often exists on an island of its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Still.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Getting buy-in for an SEO investment is already difficult enough. But we also face the challenge that many companies still question where it fits in with their overall marketing budget.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019d think we\u2019d have this figured out by now.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are there technical aspects to SEO? Absolutely. But is technical all SEO is? Absolutely not. Not even close.<\/li>\n<li>SEO isn\u2019t advertising. Most companies have PPC budgets in their overall marketing budget. One client I\u2019ve worked with for several years gets about 60% of their traffic from organic search, yet they spend approximately 7x-10x more on paid search efforts which is driving 20% of their traffic. I don\u2019t think this is an unusual case. I think this is more likely the norm.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Website \u201cstuff\u201d is still typically an IT expense, not marketing. But, creating content for the website might fit into the IT, PR or social (marketing) departments.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While SEO has come a long way and developed legitimacy, I think until company leaders see SEO as \u201cmarketing,\u201d we will not have earned the due respect that the field plays in a digital marketing effort.<\/p>\n<p>Until SEO is solidly considered a \u201cmarketing\u201d function, we won\u2019t realize the requisite budgets to do this stuff right and have an appropriate amount of time\/budget invested, considering the potential value\/ROI of a solid SEO effort.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_81 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/seo-is-marketing\/#What_is_marketing\" >What is marketing?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/seo-is-marketing\/#What_encompasses_an_SEO_effort_in_2022\" >What encompasses an SEO effort in 2022?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/seo-is-marketing\/#SEO_is_not_just_technical\" >SEO is not just technical<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/08\/seo-is-marketing\/#More_often_an_SEO_effort_is_truly_%E2%80%98marketing\" >More often, an SEO effort is truly \u2018marketing\u2019<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_is_marketing\"><\/span>What is marketing?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Do a Google search and you\u2019ll find the following definition of marketing, or something similar:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.\u201d\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could stop the argument here. That\u2019s exactly what SEO is here for: to promote a company and to assist in the sales of products and services, including market (keyword\/competitive) research.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_encompasses_an_SEO_effort_in_2022\"><\/span>What encompasses an SEO effort in 2022?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Everyone has their own approach to SEO. Some might say SEO involves meta data. Some might say \u201ctechnical,\u201d including things like addressing page speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While those things are certainly true, they\u2019re small pieces of an all-encompassing approach to SEO.<\/p>\n<p>Put simply, SEO is the process of building your business\u2019s web presence to connect with consumers.<\/p>\n<p>This process may begin with keyword research, but even that small task\/deliverable is an involved process.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How do we want to position the business, its products and\/or its services?\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Which competitors seem most aligned to our aspirations and appear to be performing best against those keywords which we\u2019ve identified?\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Have we identified keywords \u2013 from all of our analysis \u2013 which we deem \u201cvery important\u201d, yet we have no pages\/content relevant enough to Google\/searchers to fulfill the intent of the search?\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>If so, how do we intuitively build new pages\/content into our website to provide for a better user experience and gain organic search presence?\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>How do we cross-promote (link) content, so that it might perform (rank) better?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Do you notice what hasn\u2019t been mentioned?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anything technical.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"SEO_is_not_just_technical\"><\/span>SEO is not just technical<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Certainly, there have been many instances of stepping into a new SEO engagement and addressing a technical glitch and having this be \u201cthe thing\u201d that has been preventing success. Those instances are few and far between. The commonly found \u201cyou have a disallow: \/ in your robots.txt\u201d comes to mind.<\/p>\n<p>The technical elements of a new SEO engagement will certainly involve a technical audit (or should). And this isn\u2019t just using one tool to tell you everything that\u2019s broken.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the technical elements that should exist in an SEO effort might include items such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Technical crawls via any number of tools (Semrush, DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog, etc.).<\/li>\n<li>Mobile-friendly checks, to ensure that your pages are displaying correctly across multiple devices, loading correctly, content recognized, etc.<\/li>\n<li>URL reviews, making sure that, when possible, your URL structures are aligned with the keywords that you\u2019re targeting for any given page and don\u2019t have oddities that may impact a page\u2019s ability to rank.<\/li>\n<li>Canonical reviews.<\/li>\n<li>Page speed.<\/li>\n<li>Schema.<\/li>\n<li>JavaScript usage\/reviews.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Technical SEO is still important, but it\u2019s certainly different than 20 years ago when there were many hand-coded websites. <\/p>\n<p>Nowadays, many off-the-shelf content management systems do a decent job of delivering a \u201csearch engine friendly\u201d platform. And, aside from that, there are many plug-ins that can help you to keep things in check.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"More_often_an_SEO_effort_is_truly_%E2%80%98marketing\"><\/span>More often, an SEO effort is truly \u2018marketing\u2019<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>You are working to align pages\/content of your website to address known searches performed (and the intent of those searches) based upon a lot of marketing research.<\/p>\n<p>Do we want our \u201cmoney pages\u201d to rank? Of course, 100% of the time, if we can manage it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But is that the content we often identify as being \u201cwhat Google\/searchers like\/want\u201d? Not always.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Google often groups keywords with intent and groups them as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Informational results<\/strong> (We may need to create some resourceful content and\/or a blog post to address a question that searchers may be asking)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Transactional results<\/strong> (These folks are looking to buy something\/convert; are our pages informative enough, content-rich, etc.?)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Commercial results<\/strong> (These folks are researching brands and services; do we have strong category pages?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A larger share of time is being spent on those things \u201cnon-technical\u201d in an SEO engagement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More often, we are seeking ways to optimize:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Information architecture.<\/li>\n<li>Taxonomy.<\/li>\n<li>Content.<\/li>\n<li>User experience.<\/li>\n<li>Conversion rate optimization.<\/li>\n<li>Video content\/YouTube.<\/li>\n<li>Local organic presence.<\/li>\n<li>Items related to online reputation management.<\/li>\n<li>And more.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Using Google Analytics, other tools and measurements, we then optimize our efforts toward specific goals that we\u2019re trying to reach. <\/p>\n<p>Ideally, at the start of an SEO engagement, we\u2019re able to address many of the large technical roadblocks.\u00a0Often, new \u201cthings\u201d will pop up that will require a technical review. <\/p>\n<p>But what will drive the SEO engagement more than anything is a strategic approach to content and helping clients better position their website (and other assets related to their organic presence) and \u201cdrive the action of promoting a business\u2019s products or services, including performing market research.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which is\u2026. marketing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/seo-is-marketing-387001\" target=\"_blank\">SEO is marketing<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Search Engine Land<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SEO often exists on an island of its own.\u00a0 Still.\u00a0 In 2022. Getting buy-in for an SEO investment is already difficult enough. But we also face the challenge that many companies still question where it fits in with their overall marketing budget. You\u2019d think we\u2019d have this figured out by now. Are there technical aspects to SEO? Absolutely. But is technical all SEO is? Absolutely not. Not even close. SEO isn\u2019t advertising. Most companies have PPC budgets in their overall marketing budget. One client I\u2019ve worked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-seo-blogs"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":false,"author_link":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/author\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}