By Marc D. LeVine, Director of Social Media
Recently I listed to Rebecca Leib, CEO of EConsultancy, who provided a very good discussion about how to build an effective Social Media strategy. Rebecca is very well informed and is equally well spoken on such topics. I consider her to be somewhat of an expert in an emerging field that doesn’t really have too many experts, yet.
As the Social Media Director of a web page design company (http://www.RiaEnjolie.com), which designs professional looking and affordable websites for most small businesses, I write blog entries such as this one to inform and educate my business colleagues and clients. I want them to be read and to be of some value to their Social Media for marketing understanding. And, I especially need them to be easily found on the Web, so as to accomplish these two main purposes.
At first, I wasn’t sure – exactly – where Rebecca was going with her discussion of best search engine optimization practices (SEO); a piece of her overall presentation. She seemed to indicate that some people may be a little too preoccupied with SEO as a Web marketing tool. Later on in her discussion about SEO, she shared some in-depth thoughts on its relative importance and critical value in helping many of us to be easily found on the Web. I’ll accept her overall position on SEO and consider her someone, who might find my personal point of view agreeable with her own.
My take on SEO is simply this… It definitely has its place in Social Media Marketing, but – for me – rich content will always win the day and rule the kingdom. That being said, I use the Google Keyword Tool, which is always on my Favorite’s Toolbar, to run a few questionable (to me) keywords and keyphrases through its search function to see what it may suggest. I do this only AFTER I have completed my blog writing and initial edits.
If I believe there are keywords and keyphrases that may better express my thoughts and ideas, I’ll make some changes. I will not, however, try to force or try and retrofit any awkward keywords or keyphrases into anything I write just to satisfy some webcrawling, non emoting SEO robot. I am very adamant about this. My primary job is to interest, educate and/or entertain my readers. To them I have a much greater responsibility.
Can you imagine if our greatest authors and syndicated columnists had to deal with SEO when writing their masterpiece works? Take Shakespeare, for example. For the heck of it, I plugged one of his most famous phrases into the Google Keyword Search Tool to see what it would recommend. According to Google, “Avoid Telemarketers” would have been a much better SEO search phrase than “To Be or Not to Be.” Huh??
In any case, Shakespeare really never needed SEO to be found or to become well known. Neither have any other great writers from his day or even those alive and successful in ours; notables such as John Grisham or Mary Clark Higgins. Great writers are discovered through the quality of their writing; not the searchability of their written content. That being said, not everyone IS a great writer and many that are may also find themselves lost among the approximately 400 million active blogs some sources say are currently out there. That number continues to grow, by the way. This being the case, reality dictates that SEO be considered and employed whenever possible and perhaps, in the manner I have already recommended above. I suppose it is better to have one’s modern day works easily found on the Web than to someday die a starving artist.
