What the Old Testament Teaches Me about Web Marketing

Since the Bible is the best selling book of all time, I figured I might be able to find some indispensable wisdom for the Internet age. Who knew the Bible could provide us with sage advice for SEO and Internet marketing!

Each book of the Bible has an overarching historical theme. These themes can be applied to our online marketing and SEO campaigns. While the Bible doesn’t quite give us specific SEO strategies (who’d follow them anyway?), we can look at some general principles to help guide our online marketing efforts.

Genesis: The Book of Beginnings
When creating a Web marketing strategy, the foundation of your website can make or break your success. As our marketing efforts progress over time, we often find ourselves off course from the original plan. Getting back to solid marketing strategies can help ensure you’re back to the right path of a successful campaign.

Exodus: The Book of Deliverance
Sometimes we are held hostage to developers, programmers and even old marketing strategies that are holding us back. We have to be willing to break free from anything that is preventing us from building the best site possible and ensuring that search and conversion optimization strategies can be as successful as possible.

Leviticus: The Book of the Law
There are always rules that need to be followed if you want your marketing efforts to be successful. If you don’t know the basic principles of good SEO and online marketing, you’ll be wandering around in the wilderness, waiting to get to the promised land of business success.

Numbers: The Book of Counting
If you’re not looking at your analytics, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Use your analytics to help you figure out what’s getting you conversions and what isn’t. Rankings get you exposure, but they don’t get you sales. In the end, conversion numbers and ROI matter most.

Deuteronomy: The Second Law
If at first you don’t succeed, make sure you’re doing it right. See Leviticus.

Joshua: The Book of War
Conquering new land with a new site is definitely a challenge. Don’t expect all your competitors to come crashing down around you as you speed up through the search results. It can take years for an effective online marketing strategy to produce ROI, but you should be seeing many victories along the way.

Judges: The Book of Rebellion and Leadership
Going it alone carries risks. Disregarding the advice of your SEO and marketing strategists will often destroy the progress you’ve made and cause you to lose ground to your competition. Follow the leadership of those who know and be free from the bondage of poor results.

Ruth: The Story of an Unlikely Redemption
Great online marketing successes may come from the most unlikely of places. Look for unique opportunities that you can incorporate into your online marketing strategy to help create a unique advantage over your competition.

1&2 Samuel: The Book of the First Kings
Choose who is going to lead your optimization and marketing strategies carefully. Putting the wrong person at the forefront of your efforts can lead to being ineffective when you’re facing key battles. However, when led by someone with their heart and mind in SEO, they can turn even sure defeats into marketing victories.

Kings & Chronicles: The Books of Succeeding Kings
Sometimes you have to go through a lot of trial and error to find conversion strategies that get the best results. Keep testing until you find a winner. Then test that to make sure it’s truly the best strategy. Never hold on to poor performing strategies.

Ezra: The Book of the Rebuilding of the Temple
If any search engine puts you in exile, there is a way out. It starts by going back to the basics, getting back to the foundational SEO and marketing strategies.

Nehemiah: The Book of the Rebuilding of the Wall
With your SEO foundation back on track, rebuilding your walls of defense is essential. Implement quality SEO strategies as quickly as possible and don’t get suckered into anything that got you into exile to begin with.

Esther: A Book of Unlikely Deliverance
Your competitors are out to destroy you. Never let your guard down and be willing to fight back! If you let your competition outpace your online marketing efforts, you will be wiped out.

Job: A Book of Pain and Healing
You can’t expect a 100% success rate. Even sites that “deserve” to be on top get beat out by a lesser competitor. These setbacks may seem disastrous, but are temporary, as long as you persevere in building up a solid website with a worthy reputation.

Psalms: A book of Poetic Prayers
There is no shortage of SEO and other online marketing stories, tips and tutorials that can help you improve your online marketing success. Learn from others so you don’t make the same mistakes.

Proverbs: The Book of Wisdom
Look for trusted sources of SEO wisdom and follow them regularly. Take what you learn to heart and apply their wisdom wherever you can.

Ecclesiastes: The Book of Common Wisdom
Conventional SEO wisdom isn’t always good wisdom, even coming from “trusted” sources. Make sure anything you read aligns with good online marketing strategies you already know.

Song of Songs: A Love Story
A properly implemented marketing strategy gets results and makes everyone happy. It’s love at its best!

The Prophets: The Books of Things to Come
Keep en eye on the future. Good SEO principles stand the test of time, but if you don’t know what’s coming, you won’t be ready to apply those principles to the current or coming age.

I’m a firm believer in finding new ways to understand SEO and online marketing. It’s not that any perspective is necessarily new, but framing good concepts in a new way can sometimes help something jump out at us and give us a new perspective. The concepts above are not new, but hopefully this collection can, God willing, help you understand your online marketing efforts more clearly and perhaps breathe new life into your SEO campaign.