SEO Is Not A Web Strategy
John Pozadzides posted an article on Lorelle VanFossen's blog this morning about SEO practices and blogging. In that post he made reference to the ongoing "war of words" between those who think SEO is dead and those who believe SEO is more important than ever. John states that the truth is somewhere in the middle. He then goes on to outline some of the "common sense" SEO techniques that have other benefits as well. It's a good list, you should go read it.
The point of this post, however, is not simply echo John's SEO tips. Rather, I want to make the point that SEO, like anything else, does not exist in a vacuum. It is not, in and of itself, a web strategy.
The hardest thing about a comprehensive web strategy is managing the tradeoffs and compromises between the various components of the strategy itself. One of these components should always be SEO - but there are others: (in no particular order) infrastructure, traffic acquisition (search marketing), audience engagement, development cost, usability, accessibility, etc.
Part of the problem that the SEO industry faces is that it is a specialist industry. SEO consultants are not paid to take the entire strategy in consideration. Maximize the rank. This is also true, of course, for accessibility consultants and infrastructure providers. It just happens that SEO catches the flack because of the intense focus on it for the last few years.
The Strategy:
For any inter/intra/extranet web project, make sure there is someone whose job it is to develop the overall web strategy. That person must be prepared to manage the advice of the various specialists (SEO, usability, infrastructure, etc.) that will insist that their particular area if expertise will make or break the project. That person must also accept that one of them might be right.
ShareRelated posts:
Colin Who?
I'm a digital communications executive specializing in community engagement, social marketing, and online identity management currently serving asthe Associate Secretary, Communications, at the national offices of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.
I can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook.
What I’ve Said
- Campaign Information
- Exciting News
- The Revolutionary Aspect of Technology is its Ownership
- Cambridge Reporter Revisited
- Clay Shirky on Institutions vs. Collaboration
- On The Twitter This Week: 2010-02-06
- Facebook just keeps growing (with grey hair)
- Pranav Mistry on SixthSense Technology (TED Tuesday)
- On The Twitter This Week: 2010-01-30
- On The Twitter This Week: 2010-01-23
What You’ve Said
- Name22 on WordPress Image Handling Sucks (WP Wednesday)
- C Campbell on The Revolutionary Aspect of Technology is its Ownership
- Evangeline on The Revolutionary Aspect of Technology is its Ownership
- S. Sinclair on The Revolutionary Aspect of Technology is its Ownership
- Alex MacLeod on Cambridge Reporter Revisited
- @rdjfraser on Clay Shirky on Institutions vs. Collaboration
- links for 2010-02-05 : Being Presbyterian on Facebook just keeps growing (with grey hair)
- Arminta on Beautiful Decay
- Travis Jon Allison on Beautiful Decay
- Sarah on Beautiful Decay
Categories
- General Interest Stuff (20)
- Local Stuff (5)
- Mobile Post (6)
- Personal Stuff (39)
- Political Stuff (4)
- Random Stuff (36)
- Social Media Stuff (119)
- The Commute (9)
- Twitter Updates (19)
- Web Stuff (2)
August 7th, 2007 - 12:55
Before SEO became a recognized abbreviation, it was just about helping search engines move through your site, finding every page on your site with the hopes they would be added to the search index database.
Today, as you’ve said, it’s involved into a monster industry, with too much hype and not enough reality. Every day I get email spam and blog comment spam promoting “get rich with SEO” schemes. SEO is common coding sense, combined with advertising and marketing skills. There is no magic pill, but it does take an expert to do it right, avoiding all the hype and myth around SEO.
John’s article was simple and to the point. Hopefully people will get that SEO can be as simple as you want, as it was and continues to be about accessibility – allowing everyone to access your site be it through cell phones, web TV, or any computer on the planet. From there, it’s just marketing strategies.