I call bullshit on that. It’s not that marketers don’t understand SEO. It’s that they don’t like it.
I did my first SEO work in 1996. That’s two years before there was a Google. And marketers didn’t understand SEO then -- or so they said. They’ve kept the message consistent for the last 22 years: “We don’t get SEO.”
Look, SEO is not rocket science. It’s where searcher intent intersects with content. Know what people are looking for and give it to them. It’s that simple.
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This is not about SEO being hard to understand. It’s about SEO being hard to do. The last time I climbed on this particular soapbox was four years ago -- and nothing has changed. SEO is still hard, maybe harder than it has ever been. That’s what marketers don’t like.
Well, that and many other things. SEO is hard to control. It’s hard to predict. It’s hard to measure. And that makes it almost impossible to rely on. All of those things are anathema to marketers.
But here’s the biggest reason for SEO’s lack of popularity with marketers: It’s not very exciting. It’s arduous. It about as sexy as weeding the garden. That’s probably why social media tops the list of digital initiatives, and not SEO.
So why even bother with search? For two reasons.
First, there's no better crystallization of prospect intent -- short of converting on your own website -- than an online search. The planets are aligned, the heavens have opened with a hallelujah chorus, the Holy Grail has fallen into your lap.
I spent the better part of two decades researching search user behaviors. Trust me when I say that this is as good as it gets.
That’s reason one. Reason two is that somewhere between 75% and 85% of those prospects will click on an organic listing. When we’re talking about capturing a motivated prospect, this is no-brainer stuff.
Yet marketers are saying no thanks, we’ll take a pass on that.
If online is important to your marketing, chances are extremely good that SEO is also important. I don’t care whether you like it or not. You have to do it. If you don’t want to, find someone who does.
That brings up another reason marketers hate SEO: It doesn’t really live in their domain. SEO, by its very nature, stretches across multiple domains. It has to be systemic across the entire organization.
So, it’s not entirely a marketer's fault that SEO is neglected. It tends to fall into a no-man’s land between departments. Marketers don’t push it because there are many other things they can do that they have complete control over. And if marketers don’t push it, no one else is going to step forward.
Executives, who may legitimately not understand SEO, think of it solely as a marketing exercise. Tech support hates SEO even more than marketers. And corporate compliance? Don’t get me started on corporate compliance! There's a reason why SEO has always been known as a red-headed stepchild.
As a past SEO-er, I wasn’t really surprised to see that SEO still gets no love from marketers.
I’ve forced myself to eat broccoli my entire life. And it’s not because I don’t understand broccoli. It’s because I don’t like it. Some things remain constant. But you know what else? I still choke my broccoli down. Because my mom was right -- it’s good for you.
Re: SEO and writing Press Releases to take advantage of Search Engine Optimization:
When I write a press release for electronic distribution, I explain to the client that I repeat a lot of things in the press release several times, and that instead of using pronouns and article adjectives like "he, she and it," etc., I will repeat the full name of the person and the full name of the product and the company and various other information in the press release so that search engines will be able to pick up the items much more easily. I also explain that the press release might sound a little repetitive (like this comment)...but it makes it easier for Search Engines to find it. In a mailed copy of the same press release, I will edit it for an easier read.
The gorilla in the SEO room is Google. The reason is SEO was predicable until 2012 or so. As a publisher I knew what was going to happen when we added a new sweepstakes or posted a new PR story about a sweepstakes winner. Today all of that has changed.
If the discussion changes to the technical reasons, this is a very long conversation. If the conversation changes about what the rules and who should judge the parameters of how SEO work now, this would be far more preferred by the marketers.
In short, predictability is preferred.