The question "Is SEO marketing or technology?" has been debated heatedly for the last decade. So far the debate has mostly been won by technologists, but overtime as the Online World has evolved to measuring business results, and the search engines have become more sophisticated to delivering results, the scales have started to tilt towards the marketing camp.
What exactly is Search Engine Optimization? Most online businesses along with SEO companies define SEO as a set of techniques that help ensure that the website is built such that the search engines treat them as relevant targets (destinations) for the appropriate Keywords. These Keywords are the ones a potential customer would type on the search engine to find you or your business.
This has led to the interpretation that SEO is creation of a structure such that your website is populated very heavily with appropriate Keywords. Based on how your website is populated with these Keywords the search engines will display your company or website in the search results in response to a search query. Hence, SEO is about finding the right Keywords and ensuring those Keywords are heavily populated on your website.
Now, I am in agreement with this definition, but I would submit that this interpretation is incomplete and misses the big picture.
The fundamental question to be addressed is whether the online presence we build is for the search engines to drive appropriate traffic or whether the websites we build are for the potential customer to get the best information when he or she interacts with the company in the Online World. SEO experts have always grappled with this question, till the answer was provided by none other than the sources themselves, the search engine companies, and they ruled in favor of the customers.
All of the search engines today are sophisticated enough that they don’t look for Keywords on website; they actually measure you on the relevancy of your content and your website to the query initiated by the searcher. So, SEO is no longer "The technology of Keyword stuffing and links"; SEO has transformed into the marketing and art of making your website relevant to the search, and providing people with maximum pull to convert from visitors to Customers. Relevancy for the customer has become the single most important factor for a search engine to rate any business.
The art of providing this pull to the customers has always been thought of as a feature of the website and has always been delegated to the web-designers and marketers, but the changing preferences of people in the online world and the maturity of the industry is calling for this to change.
I have always been a firm believer that all potential customers require appropriate messaging addressing all their concerns before they engage with a website or a business. SEO/PPC Services must accomplish this task.
Take a moment and answer this question: What makes you decide to click on a particular result when you search on Google?
