1. 7 DISCUSSING
  • Mark Proctor   Mar 02 2012   Flag

    "Basically anyone who has a presence online these days is building a brand." nope! In my experience, the majority of my SME clients are chasing generic keyword rankings with very little consideration to brand or social engagement. I'd love it if that was the case, as it'd add so much more value to their businesses and maybe take their focus off the increasingly variable "getting google #1" for 1 keyword, but it's certainly not the situation at the moment.

  • Noah Clark   Mar 02 2012   Flag

    But they are building a brand. A very bad one that is focused on the wrong metrics. If you ignore everything for the #1 spot on google, you're probably not building an engaging experience for your customers.

  • Tad Chef   Mar 02 2012   Flag

    You need both at the same time. Also SEO is not about "tricks".

  • Thomas Høgenhaven   Mar 03 2012   Flag

    Right, branding is way more expensive than SEO. Doing both will help pay for the brand building.

  • Danny Sullivan   Mar 02 2012   Flag

    I can't really take advice from a column that interprets the rise of content farms as "SEO tricks." It's far more complicated than that, as is SEO. It just goes to the credibility of what anyone's supposed to believe here.

  • Michael Dahlström   Mar 02 2012   Flag

    There is obviously an advantage to do SEO, but customers seem to have a tendency to forget to work on their own brand. And the brand can be much cheaper as a keyword.

  • Ker Communications   Mar 03 2012   Flag

    Why not do both - build brand reputation AND search engine visibility - or even build a brand with SEO as part of the strategy? I suppose the intentions were good - trying to get people to understand the importance of brand and image rather than just keyword positions. But it kind of looks like another "SEO is dead" article written for the band wagon jumpers who can't handle doing more than one thing at a time. "Oh! I hear social is the next big thing. Stop our SEO campaign immediately!"

  • Tad Chef   Mar 03 2012   Flag

    Exactly what I thought.

You must login to post comments.