Don’t be anonymous

(Continued from Homepage)

Today, the prevailing sentiment is not that this is brain surgery.  It’s almost reversed course and is seen as ‘table stakes’, a fundamental skill, digital marketing needs and is easily applied.

As an example, in 2017, a manager eliminated his SEO team.  When traffic dropped over 25%, the reason given was that “up until now, SEO was a no brainer”. Guess not!

Here’s what’s happening. SEO has been around since the mid-1990’s, but it’s grown up. Once thought of as a niche industry, SEO firms have blossomed and collectively the industry has become big busines with solo practitioners and publicly traded companies working together.

SEO has been woven into traditional marketing strategies. Many medium- and large-sized companies have an in-house SEO expert or use specific agencies to handle their work. Its become a pervasive marketing strategy.

Although search engine optimization drives most of the traffic, it’s not the only game in town. Pay homage to paid search, social networks and networking, email and affiliate marketing and the list will grow.

What those just listed (not including organic search) offer is speed of results.

SEO lacks the immediate thrill of instant gratification. A change made today may not bear fruit for several months or until Google makes the next major update. However, with paid search, social media marketing or even good ‘ol email marketing, results can be seen and the ROI readily known. This slow, if not painful, response time makes SEO troublesome to say the least.

And another problem for all of us to contend with is Google.  They are forever making changes to their algorithms! Some are minor and fairly benign, but there are those that can change the game. Some, specific to certain industries, some to various types of searches, others address relevancy and performance issues.  Even with an in-house team, keeping up and overcoming major Google updates may be a daunting task. Nevertheless, without a dedicated SEO, chances are the company will wait even longer since bringing in outside agency help to “fix” things requires more time, i.e. you lose money while trying to save it.

In conclusion, a full or almost full-time, SEO expert who is well versed in current, best practices, and has an idea of the future direction of search, is on top of algorithmic changes in real time, is your best bet.

It’s easy to tapped into thinking fast and cheap tactics can win the day. But if they go counter to Google’s terms of service, new directions, etc. this will prove detrimental.

So if you still think SEO is table stakes, you’re at the wrong table…And you can lose more than your shirt.