The SEO Monster

July 3rd, 2008

Most traditional marketing firms struggled to embrace interactive marketing like my 90 year grandfather who still wrecks his golf cart once a year would struggle with a Porsche. But even the most cutting edge SEO firms have trouble grasping SEO. Treating SEO like a media buy.

In the past marketing agencies bought “media” – radio spots, TV ads and some had even ventured into Google Adwords. It was a predictable routine. Marketing firms bought an audience count associated with broadcasts or readership. In the case of Adwords there was an audience count for each keyword phrase. But marketing firms could associate a demographic to a keyword phrases only in the rarest of instances

This is where things began to unravel.

But marketing companies still understood a basic Ad agency law: “he who spends the most wins.” This made Google Adwords familiar and usable even if it was not well understood.

But natural search was ruled by a different law: “he who is most relevant to the internet as a whole wins.” This came at a time when telemarketers burned up the phone lines and irritated even the CEO’s of marketing agencies during their dinner hour. Marketing messages had become invasive and reached the fevered pitch of a local car dealerships TV ad. This was a time when being the loudest and flashiest and buying the right spot made you the market place winner.

Suddenly the site in the number one position wasn’t the big bank roll website backed by a New York ad agency but the one that had the most relevant thing to say. Possibly a small mom and pop with little marketing budget but an inexhaustible knowledge of their product on their website. “Knowledge that was liquid capital”, says Bill.

Worse than being confusing to marketing firms it was confusing to businesses. This was the 90’s when companies didn’t see knowledge as liquid capital they where busy laying off knowledge workers in favor of a “leaner, meaner” company. Companies like IBM hired ad agencies to create elaborate PR campaigns to develop and “sincere message” because no one had worked there long enough to know what their message was. Even internet companies like AOL and Lycos put on magic shows for stock holders to make them believe in perceived innovations.

But searchers where busy crossing over multiple psychographic and demographic divisions. They went to news sites and got the news that interested them and ignored what didn’t. They never sat through a news broadcast again. They shopped for gizmos and gadgets and never heard and single radio jingle. The searcher was not bound to the internet by anything but a desire for information and community. The PR campaigns and fake innovations rolled off their lean mental muscles like rain.

It was refreshing and love of the internet grew with the adoption of natural search.

So everyone scrambled; the marketing firm, and the businesses to harness the power of being the most relevant. Company policies about openness where turned upside down. Ad agencies where running around like their hair was on fire wondering “what to write about”. Agencies and businesses tried to trick the search engines and the visitors into believing they had relevancy. But the engines matured and evolve and so do the searchers.

The agency or the company that truly wields the power of search engine optimization knows.

1. Write about what you do and who you are

2. Write frequently

3. Participate in your online communities and social groups.

“Short of a few technical obstacles to accommodate the search engines…everything else will take care of it self”, says Bill Ross of Rank Better SEO.

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