At the risk of sounding like an old zen master, I'm coming to worry that too many companies engaging in Internet marketing are fundamentally out of balance. As I see it, Internet marketing fundamentally relies on two entirely different thought processes to succeed, and it needs both of them to work well.
On one hand, SEO and content marketing is primarily aimed at catering to your customers. You want to make new connections and provide content that people out there want to see. On the other hand, Internet marketing is fundamentally a statistics game, and as we've talked about previously, there is an overwhelming amount of data to be sorted through if you're going to actually see a return on your investment.
Both of these elements – a human focus, and a data focus – are both needed in roughly equal proportions if your SEO is to succeed. Yet far too many companies lean too far in one direction or the other, creating an imbalance that leads their Internet marketing to underperform, or even fail entirely.
To succeed in SEO, you need to balance both within your strategy.
Taking a Customer Focus Too Far
It could be reasonably argued that a company could never place too strong an emphasis on its customers and social interactions, but at the same time, it cannot be the sole focus of your SEO strategies.
Basically, you cannot focus solely on being liked – literally and figuratively – without regards to anything else. Yes, it's great if your pageviews are up and you've got 200% more Facebook fans than you did a year ago... but is anyone actually buying anything? Good will only takes you so far.
Along with a drive to be well-liked and succeed in social media, a company still needs to have solid practices in place to translate that into sales. They need to understand how to look at their customers' interactions with their website and look for ways to funnel more people onto landing pages. That sort of work requires a good understanding of statistics and analytics.
The Internet is More Than Ones and Zeros
Realizing the importance of analytics sometimes then sends companies down another wrong path: allowing data to be more important than people. These are the sorts of firms who auto-spin hundreds of nearly-identical articles to try to improve their inbound link rates, rather than producing quality content that anyone wants to read and link to. They consider keyword percentage rates more important than choosing keywords that read well in articles.
In short, they believe they can cut the human element out almost entirely, and still gather sales by playing numbers games with Google. It's short-sighted, but there has been an explosion in the past years of firms aiming to win the SEO game in this way.
Bring Balance To The SEO
To have great Internet marketing, you need people in charge of it who are comfortable in both realms. You need people who understand how to relate to your customers, as well as how to take those human interactions and translate them into the hard data that's required for analysis and optimization.
This is a tricky mix to find, since people skills and computer skills don't often land in the same person. Yet, without that balance, your Internet marketing strategies will be fundamentally crippled.
If you think your own SEO has gotten out of balance, then it's time for a high-level strategy meeting. Get your people to understand the necessity of utilizing both approaches, and you'll be well on the road towards having truly effective Internet Marketing.
Call DeepSky Marketing to find out how you can create profitable marketing strategies for your company. DeepSky Marketing is a company that provides businesses with profitable marketing systems and verifiable return on investment (ROI). To schedule a brief no-cost consultation call 707 823-3888.
