Search engine optimization has changed the way the world does business online. It has done this through a simple change in the way that the web crawlers search the net to create their ranking indexes; it has taken the classical design of a web page as a collection of links that conform to standard navigation rules (Home, ContentA, ContentB, About, Contact, etc) and all these individual pages a cluster of relevant work. The cohesiveness of this cluster is what is used to determine relevance, and the method of judging the cohesion is simply words: on the web, content is king and words are his army!
The result of this is simple: in a ‘world’ where content is everything, the links from one content piece to another are the cohesiveness of that site and the method by which the site will be traced by the bots. The bots will look to titles, content (often what appears first is ranked higher that content further down the page) and put them into a series of indexes. How well these indices are connected to each other are how well the site will be found by search terms. The hierarchy of a web page design is therefore: determine search terms that are relative to the client; determine site structure as a cohesive set of interconnected search terms; create the content that informs the reader in those terms.
All of this is more than SEO; it is actually the basics of Internet marketing. It can easily be argued that standard marketing is dead, and any marketing firm that does not incorporate a strategy for internet marketing, whether it be for brand recognition, sector definition or for online sales, is sorely lacking in expertise. Internet marketing is no longer the ‘red headed stepchild’ of the marketing world, it is the most cost effective marketing there is.
Our saturation point of the bombardment of marketing campaigns through our daily lives is perhaps already reached, and this may explain the explosive interest in online shopping and online ‘research’ that happens prior to shopping: one reference shows that 9 out of 10 people look to consumer reviews online before buying. Perhaps it is a reaction to passive selling that active participation, as given by the net, without the constant attention that people would get in a store, and without the need to actually purchase, that drives people online, but whatever the drive, the reality is that all MDC societies are now interconnected in ways never dreamed of before, and the power of reference dominates.
Whatever the reason for it Internet marketing is here to stay because referential selling is the most powerful selling there is. Marketing online is now inextricably linked to contextual browsing, and companies like Facebook have invested billions of dollars in determining how best that will work. Bing now uses its reference to what your friends like to find searches for you, linking your friendship to others as a reference for referral to products. This is not the future of marketing it is a reality right now.
