In meetings with current and perspective clients I often use football as a metaphor for SEO. I call it Blind Side SEO. Most of you have seen the movie “The Blind Side.” It is a true story about Michael Oher who goes from being an abandoned, impoverished kid to playing Left Tackle in High School, College at Ole Miss, and currently professionally with the Baltimore Ravens. In the movie the adoptive mother explains that the Left Tackle is the most important position on the field as it is the key to protecting the quarterback from blind side hits.
In the world of Digital Marketing, SEO Is the Left Tackle and Social Media is currently the Quarterback. SEO is not glamorous and has been declared dead in many blog posts on the web. Social Media on the other hand is hot. It is akin to the Quarterback selected as a high draft pick. Yet, we are betting on a future commodity that most of us don’t know what it will become…like Ryan Leaf vs. Peyton Manning.
What we do know about SEO is that it evolves and is solid and important like the Left Tackle. Before you address the Quarterback with a high draft pick you better have a solid line and Left Tackle to protect him so he can play to his full potential. SEO starts with basic blocking and tackling:
- Content is King
- Create useful content that will address search queries
- Develop a quality user interface that displays content prominently
- Ensure that all content is accessible for the crawlers
- Keyword Research and Meta Data
- Find keywords that are searched and most importantly, relevant for your business
- Select 2-3 keywords per page and place in important areas on-page
- Ensure that these keywords are used in the code (Title, Description, H & ALT tags, links, etc.)
- Link Building and Local
- Create link references to other high quality, respected and related sites
- Utilize Local (if applicable) to build citations and reviews
I am not advocating that you ignore Social Authority (the Quarterback) and its importance to SEO. Only tackle that portion as part of a comprehensive Search Engine Optimization effort that addresses the basic needs first.
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Indeed Mike. Social Media is rising - a lot on theory (not saying that the theory isn't of substance or value) and its rising fast. Even though global reports (like the beauty from the London Olympics) clearly demonstrate that users love search and Google drove over 60% of traffic. That is huge. Social is great, social is helpful and fun but too many things can't be answered. Also, if you have a small network - you have a small amount of intelligence. SEO does 2 things that Social can't: 1. Connect it to all of the data on the web, not just what their tribe has so far discovered (and its far from all) 2. provide unbiased, anonymous and detailed technical searching Social is 90% opinion - and its great for where to eat, what to drink, where to go and what to wear...