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Using SEO As An Extension Of Marketing
By Aaron Wall
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-12-03
When I was about 1 year into the field of SEO my friend brought me over to his parent's house for a winter break for a few days. His dad is a genius (in about every way possible) and worked at the time as an archivist that digitized old content collections for media companies. I told him of what I did (SEO) and he told that I should learn XSLT, and that Google would soon kill the field of SEO.
The Anarchist
I believed just the opposite...that SEO was an extension of marketing (which will only increase in demand as the web grows older), and that as Google's profits grew, they would use them to forge partnerships with content creators and build their own mini-web to supplement the greater web and give themselves a second bite at monetizing searchers. In the past few years Google added news results to their organic search results, bought YouTube, digitized a ton of books, settled a publisher and author lawsuit with books, created a books API, created Google Maps (and local), created Google Earth, created Google Maps, created Google Local, and Google just purchased 20 million digitized historical newspaper pages from PaperofRedord.com.
So far I am winning that bet, but only because I view SEO as an extension of marketing and have aggressively re-invested profits toward growth...which got me to thinking of publishing trends that will grow in the years to come.
Publishing truths for the digital age- Many forms of scams and spam will look so much like real information that most people will not be able to distinguish between them.
- The web has a deep and rich memory. But most people's use of it will remain shallow.
- As the world gets more complex, we will increasingly question authority and seek out experts to turn to for alternative view points and advice.
- We will subscribe to niche channels that largely match our biases and worldview. Information retrieval tools (search engines), information consumption tools (feed readers), and the social structure of the web (links, comments, how we use language) will further create a self-fulfilling prophecy on this front.
- Curiosity and the ease of publishing will turn a half billion people into experts connected to a passionate audience.
- Amongst that competition, there will always be an unquenchable demand for marketing, branding, and public relations.
- If you sell information, accessibility and marketing will matter much more than being deep and/or factually correct.
- Piracy is a cheap distribution channel.
- The tightness of a social network will be far more important than its raw size.
- It is easier to build a large profitable revenue stream selling what is new rather than selling what is old.
- Information without personalization and context will increasingly become commoditized. The average web page will be worth less than a cent unless there is a strong editorial voice associated with it and/or there are explicit votes for it.
Your Turn
What do you see changing as the web ages and grows?
Comments
About the Author:
Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, a dynamic website offering marketing tips and coverage of the search space, free SEO videos, and free SEO tools. He is a regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and publishes dozens of independent websites.
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