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Where Does SEO & Social Media Optimization Fit Within Your Company? Hint: It’s Not All About Marketing #optimize

Lee Odden
Lee Odden
Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Online PR, Optimize Book, Social Media

social seoWhen most people think of search engine optimization for a company, it’s usually as a marketing function. That makes sense since SEO is such a low-cost, high impact and measurable method of attracting new customers and revenue. However, I think looking at SEO and optimizing social media solely as a marketing function is like looking only at the eyeball of your favorite portait. Take a step back and you’ll see a bigger, more interesting picture.

Think Outside the Marketing Search Box. Companies publish a variety of content besides products and services but usually rely only on people’s familiarity with the company website to find that information.  Customers, employees, partners, job seekers, news media, industry analysts and investors need a variety of information from those companies and with over 11 billion queries handled every month by Google, search is a prime channel for discovery. So is social. Facebook has over 800 million members, Twitter has over 200 million and LinkedIn over 100 million. If content has a purpose and an intended audience, why not optimize for findability and shareability?

Go Holistic. As companies are making plans for resource allocation in the coming year, I’d suggest consideration of how to facilitate the ease of connection and sharing between the online content published by the brand (on and off the corporate website) and the intended audiences. In particular, the holistic application of search keywords and social topics on marketing, PR, Customer Service, Talent Acquisition and HR.

organizational seo

ROI on Optimization Isn’t Just for Marketing. There are more departments that publish online content than those above, but it’s a good example of the opportunity that companies have to make it easier, more efficient and effective for intended audiences to discover and engage with a company’s content. If Marketing can show a return on investment based on content optimization that attracts website traffic and converts visitors into sales, then so can optimizing other types of business content with a specific purpose. For example, optimizing news content for discovery by journalists, bloggers and analysts who are doing research.

Amplify PR Investment with SEO. If a company is spending $10,000 per month on a Public Relations firm retainer and part of that budget is specifically for media relations and getting press coverage, then optimizing press releases, the newsroom, digital assets like PDFs, images, video and even social media content can help connect the brand story with journalists who are in need of sources. With effective PR content optimization, the impact of that $10k spend might be increased by 50%. We spend nothing on media relations (not that I don’t think we should) and gain about $5k in value of media coverage every month because our news content is discovered by journalists, analysts and bloggers through search and social media.

Make Connecting & Sharing Easier. So think of search and social media optimization not only as way to boost leads and sales, but as a way to amplify the effect of communications between the brand and its community of customers, media, job seekers and employees.  Whatever can be searched can be optimized. Facilitating search and social media based discovery of that content can mean attracting better employees, solving customer service problems online without phone calls and increasing credibility of the brand where key constituents are looking.

Are you optimizing for search and social media discovery outside of marketing? If you could show an impact on increased effectiveness or even a deflection of costs, where would you start?

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  1. Jack Albritton says

    December 5, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    Great article.  As an old guy starting over blogging and writing articles it seems like there is so much to learn.  Love following the blog.

    • leeodden says

      December 6, 2011 at 1:29 pm

      Thanks Jack – good luck with your blog.

  2. Anonymous says

    December 5, 2011 at 7:35 pm

    Anyone involved in developing, marketing and promoting a website business will find value in this post. There is a lot to learn but this is a great place to start.

  3. Anonymous says

    December 6, 2011 at 1:44 am

    Whenever I look at the traffic I’ve got from the searches, I’m wondering just how to qualify the numbers into potential leads for my business. I love the tips you shared here, thanks!  On the ROI part, I’m wondering which ROI do you think businesses should measure most: return on investment or return on influence?  

    • leeodden says

      December 6, 2011 at 1:16 pm

      Thanks Aaron. Value for business comes in many forms and I think it makes sense to measure whatever is most important. In the case of return on investment and impact on influence – both are worth measuring.

      • Anonymous says

        December 12, 2011 at 7:35 am

        Thanks Lee- sometimes, it makes me ask the ROI of my phone.. just an analogy 😉

  4. canada goose says

    December 6, 2011 at 6:59 pm

    According to a tweet from the AP Stylebook, the [url=http://www.tradesnowboots.com/]Ugg Støvler[/url] is noted as of today on its web version, and will be included in the next print edition, due out next month. We’re pretty ecstatic about the change, and hold our collective breath for other possible updates, such as changing “e-mail” to “email.”

  5. iphone app developer says

    December 7, 2011 at 6:53 am

    yes
    this is true that social media sites are really effected for websites grouth on the internet marketing.

    facebook developer | facebook development

  6. Dipal Raval says

    December 9, 2011 at 5:51 am

    I agree with you.Today Social media optimisation is the best way to communication between brand and community of consumers.Social media optimization is the best platform for online communication.Really great post.

  7. Sujit Singh says

    December 24, 2011 at 5:21 am

    If a person  So displaying the most viewed pages
    is known as top google search. http://www.topongooglesearch.com

  8. justin albert says

    April 4, 2012 at 1:44 am

    Thank you for sharing these resources. Hopefully I can use them to promote my new blog to prominence!
    Social Network Marketing

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