The Changing Importance Of SEO

The importance of SEO is still with us, my webmaster friends. But it's changing. Let's explore why that it is.

As a stand-alone function or job, search engine optimization is fading. Websites have gotten a lot more sophisticated, social media is front and center and creating meaningful content has swept up SEO in it's arms.

I recently saw where an SEO was described as a "Swiss Army Knife." I kind of cringe to see that, but I have to admit it's true.

• If you do SEO, you probably also do social media.
• If you do SEO, you probably also do information architecture.
• If you do SEO, you probably do landing page conversion rate optimization.
• If you do SEO, you probably dabble in web design.

What I've seen happen is that SEO is now a subset of inbound marketing. SEO supports your content marketing strategy, which falls underneath your inbound marketing efforts.

But the importance of SEO goes far beyond just building links and doing on-page optimization, which I think is a good thing. SEO impacts and touches social media, videos, podcasts and e-commerce platforms.

If you've read many of my blog posts, then you know I often say SEO is longer "one and done." There's no way you can "do SEO" once a year on a site and expect it to get any meaning traffic and conversions.

The importance of SEO is that it's applied every day in multiple content pieces, because your target audience may consume several types of information to make her decision about purchasing your services and products.

The importance of SEO is that you probably do keyword research and discover topics of interest for your client's or company website based on marketing personas you were given for different parts of the sales cycle.

The importance of SEO is that you have more data and information through sophisticated analytics programs to help you measure your SEO processes and see what's working, and what you can improve upon.

Since the basis of SEO is keyword phrases and topics of interest, here's an article that gives you 12 ideas for content on your site and blog.

Are you interested in learning more about how to do basic and advanced SEO? Join us for a class to get the optimization skills to boost your web pages in search results. Or, get your SEO training online from us now!

Until we meet again, keep it safely between the ditches!

All the very best,

Nancy McDonald