You need more than SEO to build your website
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Why SEO is just part of the puzzle

Why SEO is just part of the puzzle

According to Google, there are more than 1 billion live sites on the internet and more than 3 billion internet searches a day.

man buried in paper

So, that’s why it’s so hard to get customers to land on your website! If you don’t do much advertising, then your primary way to attract visitors to your site is to be so relentlessly good with your site SEO that you end up as #1 on page 1 of every relevant organic search.

A couple of days ago, I went to an SEO seminar for non-programmers, such as freelance Atlanta writers like me. It was led by Mickey Mellen of Green Mellen Media. Thank goodness the SEO world has people like him. He was very informative, full of great tidbits, such as debunking the myth that social media directly impact your search engine ranking. (For more info on that, ask him.)

But as I sat there soaking it all up, I was hit by lightning. After I came to my senses, I realized that as much as we need to optimize our websites, we’d better have something worthwhile for visitors when they land there.

I don’t mean just useful content. That’s a given. So are features and benefits. I mean the things that are missing from so many websites that were the essence of great advertising in advertising’s Golden Age. A soul. A heart. Passion. Personality. These are things that make people pay hundreds of dollars for a Nike basketball shoe when other brands cost a third the price or a couple thousand bucks for a MacBook Pro when they can get a generic laptop for mere hundreds.

Put them together and they make up what I call “standing for something.”

True, many people buy on price, convenience and availability. But if you compete only on those criteria, you are on a downward slope to poverty. How low can you price yourself before you’re paying people to do business with you?

Ultimately, people do business with businesses that stand for something they understand and believe in. Our current political chaos shows how much people are craving authenticity these days. I guess that’s because there seems to be so little of it everywhere.

Standing for something is not just a slogan. To be authentic, it needs to start way before website optimization. In fact, it needs to be conveyed at every touch point with customers. Not just a website, an eblast or a newsletter, but everywhere a business makes contact with customers – down to phone calls and even on-hold phone messages.

This used to be called integrated marketing. Now it’s called brand building. Call it whatever you want. It’s what I do. If you think you could use more of it for your business, please visit my website at https://carolsniemi.com or email me at carol@carolsniemi.com.