Perfect synergy between Marketing and SEO

Achieving Perfect Synergy Between SEO And Marketing

One of the biggest challenges in SEO is taking a website which is mainly marketing oriented and turning it into a search engine optimized site. The list of conflicts seems to be endless and as an SEO expert you constantly need to explain yourself to product managers, graphic designers and site owners who are mostly concerned about conversion rate on their site. 

Achieving Perfect Synergy Between SEO And Marketing

Being aware of the possible obstacles and preparing yourself from advance can save you a lot of time and effort.

I’ve personally encountered this problem when optimizing this online soft games site – Winnings.com. Since we’re talking about a site which is targeting a highly competitive market, the optimization had to be at its best. On the other hand, when I started working on this site it already had other traffic sources which were getting conversions and so it was not relying solely on SEO. This means that the site owner and the product manager will probably consider any change you request as a possible treat to their existing revenues. So when you start optimizing a new site, always find out first which existing traffic sources the site has and take them under account with each change you make on the site.

Another thing to consider is that from the product manager and site owner’s point of view the SEO is an invisible variable in their overall marketing strategy. They still don’t know what to expect in terms of traffic and conversion, they know they’ll only see today’s work in about 3-6 months from present time and so their willingness to do changes on the site for SEO purposes might be relatively low. As an SEO professional you need to be aware of this and find a reasonable balance between required search optimization changes and budget aspects. A good strategy can be building a step by step work plan – for instance offer the site owner to start with just a few pages, prove your worth on them and continue from there. 

With the site in this example I’ve offered to focus on their main product – Scratch cards and on their main market – UK. We’ve fully optimized their scratch cards designated page and once we’ve started getting results for it, the owners were a lot more prepared to give a green light for big changes on the entire site and on other markets.

But even once you get pass the full marketing strategy and expectations by site owners, you still have one more important variable to take under consideration – the graphic designer. Web designers or any graphic designers for that matter, are a unique breed in the online arena. They are artistic by nature, take their design very personally and any small change could seem, in their eyes, as a major sacrifice from their side. As an SEO expert you can find yourself arguing with a web designer, on more than one occasion, about elements which seem to you ridiculously insignificant visually while the web designer view them as crucial to the overall site appearance. 

My personal recommendation is – don’t consider anything in the overall design as ‘small’. Make sure you compliment the web designer, give him the respect he deserve and always present the visual changes you require with a logical justification behind it. If you treat the web designer as an equal partner rather than an insignificant executer you’re more likely to get his or her collaboration.

So what’s the bottom line?

A true SEO professional always takes under account all the existing players in the overall environment of a website and not only the actual paying customer. The bigger the site the more variables and people you’ll need to take under consideration and the more reasonable you’ll need to be with your demands – give the site owner time to learn and appreciate your worth through actual results.

Natalie Halimi, Webmaster and SEO expert, specializing in the online gaming market, is writing this guest article especially for www.blog7.org