Search Engine Optimisation is a very different environment than it was 12 months ago. Google have shut down a lot of common tactics that used to increase rankings and it’s an all too common belief that SEO is dead.
To me, SEO is technical. It’s about making sure your website is fast, has clean URLs, doesn’t have duplicate content, is indexed, has meta and open graph tags, and has valid mark-up. After that Search Engine Optimisation stops… and you begin HIO, Human Interest Optimisation. (Alright, it probably needs a better name)
Search Engine Optimisation… why? I’m not optimising my content for a bot… I’m optimising my content for Human Interest.
I prefer to call myself a Digital Marketer or Inbound Marketer.
SEO is some magic trick
When I landed my first full-time SEO gig, a lot of my family and friends either asked what SEO was or offered up their understanding of the Google Algorithm.
Isn’t that where you just have a hidden page covered with keywords you want to rank for?
So, do you just sit there refreshing the page all day long? It’s based on hits, yeah?
Don’t you just submit the website to Google?
Pfft, easy, just add the keyword meta tag.
Then I noticed many new or potential clients had the same understanding level and expected me to wave my magic wand and make them sales. Ruth Burr put a great spin on it with SEO isn’t magic from an SEO’s perspective but the rest of the world tend to see SEOs as wizards. And where there is talk of magic and wizards there are always skeptics.
By not calling myself an SEO I avoid the negative name some companies are giving our industry, I avoid the ‘SEO is dead’ debate, I dodge the skeptics and my conversations with family and friends are much shorter and less frustrating.
However the biggest advantage of calling myself a digital marketer is that I’m able to propose a complete digital marketing solution to achieve clients goals and not get them hell bent on being number 1 on Google for every place in the world for the word ‘tea’.
