Online Marketing Blog

As an active observer and participant in the digital marketing world, I see a spectrum of attitudes and perspectives towards attracting and engaging customers online. There are a growing number of great examples and case studies within the world of content marketing in particular, but it’s really only a fraction of the digital marketing spend overall. Despite well promoted studies, statistics, trends and tactics, many companies don’t come close to realizing their potential when it comes to customer acquisition and community building online.

Why do companies continue to invest in content creation without specifying its purpose, the intended audience or outcome? Why do so many business marketers continue to think their existing distribution channels are all that’s needed to gain the full value of exposure to the content they’re publishing?

Readers of Online Marketing Blog know I have a bent for holistic SEO and the role of content marketing across the entire brand and customer relationship (customer life cycle marketing). A lot of commentary in the SEO world over the past few years has been about moving levers via site architecture / code / server / crawler / robot / markup / feeds / microformats as well as blocking and tackling with keywords and links. There’s even been a trend in attention towards social signals and an increasing perception of value for content.

Understanding something as effective and tactical as search engine optimization is more than a moving target but with the right mix of human talent, adaptive strategy, hypothesis/testing/refinement and ongoing education through credible resources and a human network, companies can do exceptionally well with SEO.