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

BEYOND SEO

I don’t know if the term SEO can be reclaimed. Although the negative perception about SEO is inaccurate, it is the case that a subset of those who practice SEO tend to narrowly focus on rankings, rather than customer experience. This certainly isn’t true of all who practice SEO, but it’s hard to distinguish when we’re using the same name to describe both types of practices. And, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, the term SEO doesn’t describe well the whole picture of integrating a search acquisition strategy into a more comprehensive business strategy.

• Using search data to build a comprehensive and effective product and content strategy.
• Understanding searcher behavior and building searcher personas that maximize customer satisfaction and conversions.
• Realizing the customer acquisition funnel often begins with the search box, not your website.
• Integrating organic search with other marketing efforts.
• Ensuring the technical architecture of the site can be properly crawled and indexed by search engines so that it can be visible to searchers.

When I look at organic search acquisition, I’m looking from a point of triangulation. I understand that searchers want the best result as quickly as possible. I understand that search engines want to understand the Web so that they can deliver the most relevant results. And I understand that site owners want to market their content effectively to the right audience.

We’ve talked about using search data, building a comprehensive ...