Blaglash.com

Recently I was in a meeting with our development lead discussing SEO, and the running joke became the concept of hiring Black Hatters to improve Search Engine Placement.

We then discussed the almighty Google and their ability to blacklist black hatters. The obvious fear: Google’s ability to essentially remove a website from the internet.

From a development standpoint, SEO and search engine result placement is obviously of paramount importance, and it would make sense that every word and line of code is created with these goals in mind.

But here’s the secret:

When your marketing team begins obsessing over SEO, you’ve got a problem on your hands.

SEO has become a big issue in marketing, but the fact of the matter is two-fold.

1. If your product or service is as important as you think it is and your market isn’t oversaturated, search results will lead your consumer to your website anyway.
2. If your product or service is heroin-like and needed by a community and your marketing team is skilled, your target consumer will ask for your brand by name.

To go back to an overused example, how many people do you think found Twitter by searching Google for something like “social network offering hyperconnectivity through short status updates?”

The answer is zero.

Twitter, and any other sexy and successful web product will win because it is desirable, and the brand will create and strengthen itself.

Users find twitter through WOM from trusted sources and will call it by name.

For an addictive and relevant product, SEO will happen naturally.

If your marketing team is overstressing SEO, it’s simply because your product sucks or your brand sucks.

You might be the eighteenth or nineteenth best Texas Hold ‘Em site on the internet, and getting you ranked at #1 will drive preliminary traffic, which is the only possible marketing win. But just wait until the following week, when you call your marketing team in to discuss the lack of sales/conversions from all that traffic.

So stop stressing over SEO and get back to the root of the problem.