Mediarun Search Marketing News

Knowing the limits of SEO is important

May 17th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

Search engine optimisation campaigns are a great leveller in the world of marketing. Like most other digital channels, SEO can offer an excellent return-on-investment and the principles that make natural search engine marketing campaigns a success can be applied to other promotional messages - such as email marketing.

SEO has the obvious ability to boost the amount of web traffic arriving at a company's website - which will have a long-term impact on a firm's bottom line. Having said that, it is important for firms to understand the limitations of SEO and the potential search engine marketing pitfalls that can easily undermine an otherwise effective digital marketing strategy.

According to digital marketing industry expert Brian Easter, SEO is not "a magic bullet that will cure all of your marketing woes in one fell swoop".

Writing for Promotion World, he said that there are some "urban myths" surrounding SEO that need to be demolished if the sector is to avoid making the same mistakes.

To start with, Mr Easter made it clear that organic search engine marketing campaigns will never totally replace pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. He claimed that PPC accounts for about a third of web traffic from search engines, so switching off a paid advertising campaign can alienate a large number of potential customers.

He also suggested that PPC was particularly important when it comes to promoting local company listings, which are more likely to be chosen by web browsers over a company offering a similar service that could be located thousands of miles away.

Mr Easter claimed that another SEO myth that needs to be tackled is that search engine marketing campaigns inform a company's overriding brand strategy.

"SEO is a tactic - period. Doing keyword research and/or reviewing your Web Analytics to help inform you on how people are searching is smart, but taking it a step further and trying to create a brand out of a desired keyword string is not," he said.

He added: "Branding is the most important asset your company possesses, whereas SEO (search engine optimisation) is merely a tactic used to drive visitors to your site."

This view is corroborated by CoreMedia vice-president of marketing Rene Hermes, who recently claimed that marketing across a variety of channels is vital when it comes to brand building.

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