Focusing on SEO Tactics Is a Titanic Blunder
You’ll Smash into an Iceberg Thinking Tactically about SEO
You have to think strategically about SEO. A lot of companies fall in love with tactics rather than embrace strategy. This is a big mistake, one made regularly in every sort of marketing discipline I know of.
Companies will read an article on social media and start setting up Twitter accounts. Or they will hear about a competitor cleaning up on YouTube and start producing video. Or watch a slide presentation on content marketing and feverishly start composing a bunch of landing pages.
And you don’t have to be an idiot to fall into this trap, believe me. Marketing techniques are fascinating. I find myself, for instance, falling in love with stuff like the nuances of punctuation marks in title tags, instead of looking at the big picture. I know better, but it’s easy to do.
You Got to Have Links
Let me give you an example. A client – a sophisticated, market savvy client who knows his way around online marketing – was talking to me about a content creation project to support one of their websites, to move up in the search rankings. I was excited – I had already found a couple clever angles while doing preliminary keyword research. But after we had spent more than a few hours on the project, I thought, this website doesn’t have any links coming in! We can create all the content we want, but until we engage in some serious linkbuilding, we’re not going anywhere on Google other than south. The correct sequence of activity on this project was clear – links first, then content.
Every SEO scenario is different. It’s not only important to evaluate what needs to be done, you have to lay out the proper sequence of events, the correct staging of activities. The Titanic should have built the lifeboats before the ship sailed. It’s not good to make this kind of mistake with SEO, because there might not be a lifeboat handy. Need help with your content marketing strategy? Submit this form – let’s talk.
(Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons)
___________________
Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content marketing.
Love how well you deliver your message via the sinking Titanic metaphor. powerful and visceral.
Thanks, Jan. Sometimes it really feels that bad, when you’re embarking on an SEO journey you know will not end well.
You write about the importance of serious linkbuilding. I have a question here: Does writing articles for ezines count? What’s your opinion on that?
Hi Ulla, If an Ezine article includes a link back to your website, it counts. You hope that other bloggers or websites pick up the article and keep those links. It’s hit or miss, and the sites linking back to you may be low quality sites in terms of search engine authority, which can do more harm than good. I prefer online press releases for linkbuilding.
I think you should write a book on the nuances of punctuation marks in ttile tags
BTW the site design looks fabulous – did you launch it, did I miss it somehow?
Hi Joanna, The new site launched about two weeks ago. I didn’t make an announcement, but I am very happy with it and appreciate your feedback, which I know is always honest. It’s not completely finished yet. I’m probably going to create a new home page and make the blog a link. And still tinkering, of course!
Hey Brad, this syndrome of clients reacting tactically is something I have had to deal for many years. In my experience, the coveted short-term win rarely manifests. Far better to bite the bullet – or in this case, get in a lifeboat – and take a strategic, longer term approach. The clients who do this are far more successful.
Best, Robin
Hi Robin, Well said. It’s easy to win a lot of battles and still lose the war. For tactics to produce sustainable results they must be in a strategic context. Marketing is one of those disciplines that’s hard to put into context and is often thought of as merely a collection of tactics. To succeed you need a strategic marketing vision and a willingness to commit to it fully.
You have not given up and have continued to hang on and move forward.
Take care.
This comment was originally posted on a mother, a friend, a woman