Many people think that digital marketing can be one and done. This myth is often perpetrated by web developers who add “SEO” into the development proposals. There are certainly aspects of digital marketing that are a one-time only issue, but the bulk of good marketing is an ongoing process.
I like to think of digital marketing as two distinct processes: Making a site search engine friendly and optimizing and marketing the site.
The One and Dones
The first consists of a number of tasks that can (and should) be completed during the development of the website itself. The second is the ongoing issues that the marketer must do to help grow the business.
If the site is built search engine friendly, the costs and time to achieve strong marketing results is lessened. If the site isn’t built search friendly, then the digital marketers will have to spend time and resources fixing those issues.
That’s time away for a strategy that moves you forward being spent on issues that should have been cleared up in the past.
Unfortunately, though, that’s so often the case.
The Ongoing Tasks
But let’s not forget that the vast majority of digital marketing is ongoing. That’s because marketing is active, not passive. If you’re not actively marketing your site then you’re standing still.
Sure, you get a lot of long-term benefits from good optimization, but those benefits only last until a competitor does you one better. In web marketing, if you’re not gaining, you’re losing.
There are always more keywords to optimize, more content to create, more links to get, more rankings to achieve, more traffic to build, and more conversions to fulfill. There is never a day when the SEO gets to sit back and say, “It’s done!”
So what do you do with this information? Glad you asked.
Checklist to Web Marketing Knowledge
- When getting a site developed, understand the difference between a search friendly site and a search optimized site.
- Make sure you understand exactly what the developers are doing to make the site search engine friendly… and what they are not doing.
- If you don’t have a search friendly site, know that web marketing is going to cost more.
- Be willing to do what is necessary to get a search friendly site.
- Once your site is friendly, engage in active and ongoing search marketing.