This year I was invited by Graeme & Jo of Site Visibility, our SEO agency, to attend the SEO seminar that they were sponsoring. I thought it would be a great chance to immerse myself in an industry which I have followed for some time, but never really ‘participated’ in.
It started with what promised to be an interesting debate: ‘Is SEO doomed?’ I really only have a sideline interest in this (I use SEO within my role as a marketeer, I am not an ‘SEO professional’) – but I do have a strong opinion on the issue. As it turned out, the debate was far from being entirely constructive; at times a maelstrom of mud slinging, ‘I’m better than you’, self indulgent (and occasionally self-flagellating) arguing erupted that put the audiences backs up instantly. I, and others I spoke to, felt it really reflected the state of the SEO industry at the moment. Immature, confused and uncertain (some found it hard to articulate what they actually do!). So, not the greatest start, but it definitely got people thinking (and sitting up straight)!
Thankfully, things got much better very quickly, although I was quite surprised by Nichola Stott who commented that she couldn’t see SEO being taken on by PR agencies.. this totally contradicts my recent personal experience of our SEO & PR companies both touting for the same business. All credit to her for not getting involved in the mud slinging though.
Personally, my view on ‘Is SEO doomed’ is that SEO is merely a set of best practice guidelines and techniques that should influence the design and execution of your marketing strategy – It’s just one tool in my marketing toolbox, one that could be easily employed by any of the other trades that already work in the marketing arena should they choose to. For this reason, I don’t think it has a long term future as an industry by itself, but something that should be adopted by marketing agencies (Create & Cultivate – see below) and developers/designers (the ‘Configure’ element – again see below) alike. This was reinforced by Lucy Freeborn of Leapfrogg who gave a great presentation; she detailed how SEO practitioners could rejig their approach to more than compete with PR agencies by adding a great deal more value to what they already offer clients. I know the PR agencies are starting to do the same to compete with SEO, so this is essentially do or die for the industry.
Paul Chaloner gave great insight on How Tweeting MAY affect the ranking of your pages, although I believe it needs more testing before the results could be called statistically valid – some insightful research all the same. I would have liked to of seen a bit more insight like this.
There were some good presentations on new SEO tools and other agencies presenting ideas for their approaches; Configure, Create and Cultivate (the approach taken by Propellernet) is definitely a philosophy which I will be working in to my thinking. Disappointingly though, it’s always the low hanging fruit, B2C, that gets the attention, with not much mention of the B2B world – I guess no one is willing to reveal these secrets yet!
I loved the work that Dr Harry Brignull presented on ‘Dark Patterns’! As a designer, I’m really glad that someone is doing work to expose the techniques employed by many of the high street and big name brands: extracting more money from customers through deceitful UI design & trickery. But, as a marketeer, I know these companies get away with it because their target market are after convenience or low-prices, whilst their repeat purchase rate is low: customer service is not a priority and by the time the customer re-enters the decision making process they may have forgotten just how annoying or disappointing their previous experience was and, anyway; the price is good / it’s in stock up the road / it’s a high street brand so I can take it back if there is a problem / all of the above. As long as people continue to buy like this, then those practitioners of ‘Dark Patterns’ will continue to get away with it. They have little fear of either getting caught, reprisal or, most importantly: damage done to the bottom line. He’s certainly got an uphill battle on his hands.
One of the most intriguing and substantial presentations for me was given by Malcolm Coles who revealed some great tools and techniques for boosting the traffic of your editorial content. He covered areas such as how to find out what people are searching for now and then using this to create relevant content (taking advantage of Google’s near real time indexing) that drives traffic to your site. It was a really rounded, joined up presentation – all points backed up by personal examples and lessons that anyone could take away and apply immediately.
I didn’t hang around for the ‘Is SEO Ethical’ panel debate, partly because of my experience of the first panel debate, and, secondly because I don’t think it’s a valid argument. As a I said earlier, SEO is just a tool in my marketing toolbox and you don’t get builders and carpenters sat around discussing whether or not their hammer is evil – it’s an inanimate object! It depends entirely on the intentions of the person wielding the tool: If you’re promoting a company that deceives, exploits or is acting unethical in any other way, then you too are being unethical. And, if you’re buying links, then you aren’t involved in SEO (by my standards).
I would have liked to have seen a grown up conversation about how the industry can improve it’s reputation and increase levels of trust amongst business in general. Personally, the two questions I ask myself when working with an SEO agency, and (more importantly) are asked of me by my marketing director, are; 1 – Are they pulling the wool over our eyes? Does the work they do actually have an impact. 2 – Are their techniques going to damage our business? Will they damage our brand or get us chucked off google? Find a way to reduce these fears and you’d be on to a winner. ( – SiteVis obviously are! 🙂 )
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