May 12
11
Coming to Terms – What is SEO in 2012?
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene II)
There is a debate running in the SEO [inbound marketing, online marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, smm, website promotion] sector these days about how we refer to our services. Search results are influenced by far more than what we see on-page and Internet users are getting information from a number of reference points independent of the SERPs. The old understanding of SEO (2003 – 2010ish) is dead. So what explains what we do today?
Marketing is a funny thing and thankfully, marketers tend to be funny people. Our product is ideas. The tools we build them with are words and imagery. It doesn’t matter if the ideas are imprinted on paper using ink, broadcast through the air using radio waves, televised for your edification and entertainment or transmitted in packets using light. We make ideas and sell our abilities to place those ideas in front of interested eyeballs.
You can’t touch an idea. I can package an idea in words and pitch a pretty picture describing it, but none of us will ever touch it. Ideas, like knowledge, do not exist in the material world. That’s why words are so important. Words are the tools we use to build, brand, and ultimately to get consumers to buy.
If I spend 20% of my time working on-page, 20% of my time acquiring relevant links, 20% of my time writing page and article content, 20% of my time curating and maintaining social media profiles, and 20% of my time figuring out how to run my business properly, what do I call what I do in a day? I never actually get to do what my industry moniker says I do. The folks at Google and Bing don’t let me optimize their search engines.
In reality, I spend most of my time reading analytic reports and preparing documents outlining my ideas and detailing my thoughts on how to best attract web traffic inclined to conversions. I’m a traffic specialist, a guide and a writer. I come up with ideas on how to best express things and then lead teams in executing those ideas. A few years ago, people were most influenced by my work when they found my clients on Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Today, they might see results of my work on Pintrest, FourSq. or Yelp.
Perhaps the problem is the word “engine”. I don’t work with engines, at least not in my professional life. Engines are cool though. Engines are machines. Search algorithms are kinda like machines, but I don’t actually work on search algorithms. I work on or with websites while thinking about my understanding of the endless combinations of signals my work might be sending search engines. I’m trying to optimize conditions for success on search engines. I’m a search optimization engine but I’m not a machine. Coming to terms with my own professional terminology is confusing enough but I also spend a lot of time thinking about social media.
Facebook is not a search engine, not yet anyway. It is a social space in which people recommend interesting stuff to their networks of contacts. Posts there have an impact on search results in a number of indirect ways. Facebook is friendly and though it is not a search engine I spend a lot of time thinking about it. It drives traffic. If I do it right, Facebook drives relevant, highly convertible traffic to my clients’ webpages.
Google Plus is a search engine space but it too is not a search engine exactly. I am spending a lot more time thinking about Google Plus, even though virtually nobody outside of the IT world is. Google is making me think about it. I’m not a Google optimizer though Google is most certainly forcing me to perform tasks that optimize their understanding of web documents I work on. Google is currently acting like a bully about this, but that’s another dozen posts and maybe a few radio rants.
Twitter takes a lot of my partner, Alan K’necht, and his team’s time. He spends so much time there, conferences want him to tell other marketers how to spend their time there. Alan is all about figuring out who did what when and how much those actions are worth to our clients. He was originally known as Mr. Analytics Canada. He is becoming known as Mr. Social Media Measurement Canada. Alan has traditionally identified as a Search Marketing Analytics specialist covering SEO and PPC. Social media is neither PPC or SEO but it’s taken so much of Alan’s time he has become one of the industry experts. Does that mean he’s no longer a SEO or does that mean his interest in all ways to measure the effectiveness of web traffic has expanded? A new title expressing all the stuff Alan does in our SEO consultancy would be a mouthful and might ironically exceed 140 characters on a business card. I still think of him as a SEO expert. Industry branding is funny that way.
Web traffic comes into a website from an ever increasing number of sources. Since we can exercise some degree of influence in most of those sources, we might call ourselves Inbound Marketers. I think that’s a rather broad-stroke name myself but the new digital marketing environment presents a rather broad canvass. Such a name is a detail that neglects the hours of under-painting that goes into placing art on a canvass.
Search and Social Media Marketers is a bit more precise but, again, who the hell wants to be called a SSMM? Regardless of what the general public thinks of the term SEO, SSMM is going to be thought to be dirtier. I can almost guarantee it. Words are my business.
I’d go with Internet Marketing, and have when saying SEO didn’t make sense but a recent viral video at online news source, has spiked the term “Internet Marketing” for the time being. ()
I work in a space that is defined by the moment. I’ve been in this space for nearly 15 years. That’s a lot of moments. I plan to be here for at least another decade, assuming it will continue to be as interesting as it’s been thus far. There is only on commonality I can think of that not only spans the previous 15 years but will still be applicable in the future and gives any of us a lot of room to grow into whatever the heck we want to grow into.
Digital Marketing. I’m a digital marketer. I don’t work in print. I don’t do billboards. I do digital. My work space is very big but consists of nothing but light. I send signals far and wide and those signals are understood to be virtually real simply because you’ve read this far in a digital medium.
I’m not an inbound marketer. That sounds too touristy to me. I’m a digital marketing specialist and it’s a warm and sunny Friday.
Jim Hedger
Jim Hedger is an organic SEO and digital marketing specialist. Jim has been involved in the online marketing industry since 1998 and a SEO since 1999. Best known as a broadcaster, interviewer, content writer and search industry commentator, Jim is a frequent conference speaker and organizer. He hosts the search focused radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM and is a WebmasterRadio.FM conference interviewer. Jim brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, passion and creative thinking to each project. Preferring a teamwork approach, Jim strives to inform and train his clients and their staff to run and maintain their own search and social media efforts.
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