“Your left leg is better than your right leg. Your right leg is useless.”
What would you say to someone who told you that?
I was sitting down having a conversation with a friend over dinner recently, (a brilliant and radiant woman who happens to be an attorney,) who made a remark that left me quite baffled.
She mentioned to me that while having a conversation with a friend of hers about her business, that this friend had mentioned, who happens to be in the marketing space, that SEO was dead.
“SEM is the future!,” he told her.
Naturally, knowing that I work in digital marketing, she asked, “So, what do you think of SEM? It’s the future, right?”
Calling SEM the future and SEO obsolete is like calling exercise obsolete because there’s liposuction and gastric bypass. It’s something you’d only be told by someone who wants to sell you something – in this case, cosmetic surgery.
No serious practitioner in the nutrition or therapeutic space would ever make such a foolish statement, of course. But that’s the reality of the day and age we live in now. So many people are getting bad advice, and I feel compelled to set the record straight, as a certified digital marketer.
SEO 2.0
SEO has changed since the “good ole days” of SEO when people would throw together an article and be able to rank it in 2 days on the front page of Google. By all means, it has matured, and it has matured into something more sustainable. By sustainable I mean people aren’t able to manipulate and hack the system quite as easily. This is technology, and with all technology, advances are made in direct correlation with time. As time goes forward, so too does technology likewise march forward. Google’s algorithms are evolving to make the platform more sustainable and to provide users with a better overall user experience. This includes preventing people from manipulating and reverse engineering their own results in the SERPs in a matter of days without being vetted by the internet community at large. So while SEO has changed, I think over all it has changed for the better.
SEO is all about content. Period. If you write lots of great content, you’re going to rank better with time. This is consistent with all of the research that exists on the idea that the more you give, the more you receive in return. Think about it. If you’re constantly providing data, tips, ideas, advice, and contributing to your fellow man with articles and content, people are eventually going to catch on and begin to appreciate you for all that you do. This is SEO 2.0. The more you deliver on content, the more you are rewarded with good SERP results.
SEM
SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing has its place too. It’s what is known as PPC advertising. You pay to appear in the results of internet searches for things related to your industry. Marketing such as this is known as the push portion of a push pull strategy that involves pushing content in front of people with advertising, and pulling people in from organic, natural search results and delivering high content. That’s why I consider a good marketing campaign any campaign that utilizes both. Hopping around on one foot, and cursing at the other one, blaring off about the iniqueties of the other isn’t going to get you very far – at least not pleasantly.
Organic content that attracts customers or visitors (SEO) is like having a left foot, and (advertising) SEM is like having a right foot.
Both have a place. Just as the body uses homeostasis to maintain it’s internal balance, a good marketing campaign run by a reputable agency will have balance, too.