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Went Hot: July 17, 2007 - 3:33 pm
Posted By: wrttnwrd 415 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.conversationmarketing.com)
Category: SEO
Haven't we ALWAYS been marketers? Grrrrrrr.
20 Comments
Comments
Depends on how you define marketing.
I know a number of SEOs, even now, who are only about pushing visibility and wouldn't know the 3 Ps if they, well, peed on them.
Have the best SEOs traditionally been marketers, with a strong background in marketing? Most likely, yes. However, have a large number come from places like systems administration or HTML coding? Yes.
Yes, that is frustrating. The professionals have always been marketers. The ones that care about revenue and brand management, in other words in-house SEO's, have always been marketers.
It depends on how you define SEO (or SEM or PPC mgmt or online marketing)... I think the best SEOs are those who came from first being programmers as they are the best to understand the HTML, other code and server configs they are supposed to be optimizing.
But the best online marketers need to be more than that including expert researchers, analytics junkies, creative writers, competitive analysts, etc... preferably all of the above or better yet get one of each of those on your team. All of which makes it a challenging and excitingly diverse field to be a part of.
I agree that good SEOs have always recognized that what we do is at least in part a form of marketing, but there have always been those who've claimed SEO is strictly about rankings. Silly things like conversions are the problem of the marketing department, they insist.
For the most part, those discussions took place years ago, but there was just a series of comments over at SEOmoz a couple of weeks ago. See http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-what-should-you-charge-how-much-should-you-pay#jtc29021
I've come straight out of HTML but always been interested in Marketing, it was a natural relationship. btw, what are the three P's? :D
In my opinion, to be good SEOs have to be a marketers. Indulging only with the technical (html coding) know-how will not achieve much and will not go very far. Afterall, SEO is both and ART and SCIENCE - needs both.
I'll have to disagree with the comment about the best SEOs coming from programming as I didn't!
;)
I wrote a post on YOUmoz a while back which looked at this exact subject - its all marketing, people: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-secret-about-search-engine-marketing-that-shouldnt-be-a-secret-at-all
I am my company's SEO and they put me in Marketing and I hate it.
Eh, I started out as a web developer so I've always been biased about what makes a better SEO. I have known plenty of SEOs who have no programming experience, and I think to some degree that hurt their understanding of the technical end of the job. But I also realize that many web programmers do not understand proper marketing knowledge.
Ultimately the best SEO has analysis skills, understands optimization, site structure, linking and marketing principles. Also be able to do the programming or consult properly on the changes to be made.
Realistically there are different types of SEOs that fill different needs. Some jobs only allow you to consult whereas other jobs require you to write or program. A good SEO is someone who can bring targeted traffic to a website and can produce the proper conversion.
If you promote a brand, product or service you are in marketing whether you like it or not.
SEO is marketing.
There are actually four P's: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. If my memory of my marketing classes from way back is correct, it's a concept first created by Kotler.
And, I agree, that the best SEO's have always been marketers, but there are plenty of people claiming to be SEO's that can't even spell marketing. It's a reasonable theory that as SEO matures, such "SEO's" will be forced out of the market.
"plenty of people claiming to be SEO's that can't even spell marketing"
And there are plenty of marketers claiming to be SEO's that could not even edit the footer of an HTML website.
Marketing, PR, imagination, an inquiring analytical approach - all place high on the list of SEO prerequisites.
"And there are plenty of marketers claiming to be SEO's that could not even edit the footer of an HTML website."
I'd probably fit that description (well, almost) - but I could tell a web dev what to put & how.
I guess it does all depend on where you started - I think we're all agreed that SEO is about promotion & sales, and so to a large part is marketing
Most SEOs, and probably mot SEMs too are most definitely not Marketers - the just work in Marketing. They are Promoters (though lets be honest, some really only master advertising, not Public Relations, Branding, CRM, etc).
Very very few people in the field of SEO are truly Marketers in the broad sense of knowing the basic 4Ps (Product, Place, Price, an Promotion) and leveraging the Internet to real benefit on each and every one of those.
http://sphinn.com/story/399
Yea makes you wonder how many people in the past went to school and got a marketing degree specifically to become an SEO.
"plenty of people claiming to be SEO's that can't even spell marketing"
That would make perfect sense if you consider the the large number SEOs that are in other countries where English is a second or even third language (ie offshore).
Is SEO a form of marketing?
-Technically speaking, yes.
Are they good SEOs?
-"Technically" speaking, yes.
Are they good Marketers?
-Sometimes the message gets lost in translation.
-RL
PS: I am a marketer that understands technology (not the other way around) and even I misspell marketing every once in awhile...it happens when you try to multi-task.
:)
As I said above, I consider what we do to be a form of marketing. However, I read what I thought was an excellent post by Laura Ries earlier today (yesterday, technically) and intended to post a link to it here on Sphinn. But I looked at the categories, then at the submission policies, and there really isn't a place here for information about marketing that isn't specifically search marketing.
We do have a place for beyond search marketing. It's the Online Marketing category, with several subcategories within it.
The Online Marketing cat has the following subcats:
Web Analytics
Contextual Ads
Affiliate Marketing
Display Advertising
Usability
Domaining
Other Online Marketing
The blog post was about branding, and not specifically online branding. How about if I just stick a link to it here, and if you think it's of use to the community, feel free to create a post about it wherever you see fit.
http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/2007/07/but-what-about.html