Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : SEO / SEM Discussions : Separating Marketing from SEO

[dvduval]

What is your perception of the difference in marketing and SEO?

To me, SEO is mainly concerned with what you do on your site, to make it easy for search engines to index the page properly. But sometimes I think customers get confused by what SEO is supposed to be.

[mummy]

Marketing is way more than just title tags, anchor text and all that. When you target a prospect from a certain audience you do not depend on the before mentioned. I am backing your opinion and I too think that SEO should be be used in order to make one's website more visible for SE to find.

However, the content and the words you use, products you offer and the way you deliver and present them to people is what marketing is all about. Providing the most searched items to people when they want them the way they want them is professional marketing in action. The rest is more or less site building stuff.

[Jamie Harrop]

But sometimes I think customers get confused by what SEO is supposed to be.

Probably because, to a customer, they both do the same thing. They both attract customers.

Most customers don't know what SEO is. But they know they need it, and they want it, because they know what it does. Knowing what it is and what it does are two different things. Customers know it increases their turnover, but they don't know how it does that.

And they don't want to know.

In a sense, SEO is a form of marketing. Marketing is about getting your product in front of new or larger audience. To boost your brand. To increase your turnover. And this is exactly what SEO does.

SEO isn't about "making one's Web site more visible for search engines". It's about making one's Web site more visible to the audience using search engines. Marketing.

Mmmm. I think this post may cause a bit of a stir, but I don't think I'm too far off the cracker. Marketing and SEO are very similar and could easily, and rightfully, be called the same thing in some situations. I think.

I'm open to thoughts on that. This post was literally a bunch of thoughts from my own head that literally appeared there in the last three minutes. If I'm wrong, tell me.

[mummy]

Originally Posted by Equentity - Jamie

Probably because, to a customer, they both do the same thing. They both attract customers.

Most customers don't know what SEO is. But they know they need it, and they want it, because they know what it does. Knowing what it is and what it does are two different things. Customers know it increases their turnover, but they don't know how it does that.

you've hit the nail on the head here!

In a sense, SEO is a form of marketing. Marketing is about getting your product in front of new or larger audience. To boost your brand. To increase your turnover. And this is exactly what SEO does.

I like one thing that you've mentioned here - "Marketing is about getting your product in front of new or larger audience" and SEO is just the tool IMHO

Don't confuse the tools or the techniques you use with the process of marketing.

Well, that's just me, maybe other people have different opinion on this one.

[softlogica]

if you're talking about search engine marketing, SEM = SEO + Link Building + PPC

[Melnel]

Where is the dividing line between SEO and SEM??

IMO a good SEO should be not only getting rankings for his client, he should also be advising on content that will sell, how to get more clickthrus from the SERPs, making sure the keywords selected for optimization are not only relevant and high traffic but sales oriented, etc etc.

The only thing I can agree on is that perhaps email marketing campaigns, radio adverts, TV spots etc designed to bring more brand awareness and traffic probably fall outside conventional SEO.

[dvduval]

Originally Posted by Melnel

Where is the dividing line between SEO and SEM??

I think every person selling SEO should be very clear what they are selling specifically, and too often customers never get a clear explanation just what they are buying.

[MrCat]

SEO for me is a part of the marketing process. Marketing is being able to promote and increase the visibility of a product or website. SEO helps in getting that visibility in the search engines.

[JRSEOMarketing]

To me SEO is basically optimizing your website to get better rankings for various keywords on Search Engines.

Marketing is a plethora of different types of exposures. For instance I work with companies that do: Radio Marketing, T.V Marketing, On-line Marketing, Mailers, Emails, etc... etc... etc...

SEO is just one aspect of Marketing, and really just one aspect of internet marketing.