Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy, Revised and Updated

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The phrase search engine optimization tends to bring up bad memories of e-mails asking you to trade links and web pages with repeated words but no real information and no place to click but on ads.

SEO implies optimizing a site for search engines, but understanding how search fits into your business isn’t really about that at all. It’s about operating your business effectively within the current landscape. If you have retail stores, you likely have a real estate specialist scouting out locations. If your product appeals to teenage girls ages 13 to 17, you’ll want to do market research to find out what they like. As we’ve seen, search strategy is no different.

But still the term SEO is often more associated with buy-cheap-Viagra-while-you-play-poker-online-and-file-a-mesothelioma-class-action-lawsuit.com than it is with customer engagement, usability, product strategy, and more sales.

Consider this posting on a tech start-up e-mail list (emphasis mine):

We are in dire need of a customer experience/consumer experience expert.. . . Does anyone have any suggestions for partners/firms/consultants to reach out to in order to try to find adequate partners to assure that the consumer’s needs and issues are addressed? (Not SEO experts—usability or consumer experience experts for e-commerce).

And yet the description is exactly what good SEO should ...