What Can Marketers Do That No Other SEOs Can?

I saw another rand(om) post by Fishkin who has written a blog on “What Can SEOs Do That No Other Marketer Can?” A while ago, he ended his note with some vague promise to find a solution for encrypted ‘not provided’ data on his Whiteboard Tuesday. 

To me, this looks so funny that I could not hold my laughter for sometimes, and then I took a glance through a few points he has written to justify as if SEOs are the smartest marketers on the earth, and none else. He wrote, an SEO can do keywords research; do funnel optimization, auditing a website, link building, blah, blah. Huh….!

In response to his posting, let me share my observations where other marketers have remarkably done some awesome works while SEOs are far, very far left behind.

Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, Mary Kay Ash, Phillip Kotler, Steve Jobs, David Oglive, and many more are some renowned marketers who are unmatched, beyond our reach to scale up. They have never been SEOs, nor can they do these. Does this mean that hardcore SEOs can ever scale up to their levels?

How many of these marketers have left their professions? On the contrary, let me give a few renowned names who have left SEO profession, and some of them even dislike being there.

Jill Whalen. She does not need an introduction. She has shared her reasons –Why she quit as an SEO. Here is a link in case some of you wants to know why - http://goo.gl/.

She says, “Finally, however, Google put their money where their mouth was with their Panda and Penguin updates.”

Rae Hoffman - CEO of Sugarrae, and PushFire, rants against Google’s propaganda in her recent post even though she disagrees on SEO being dead, yet she does not advise to put all eggs in one basket. She comments “any marketing model where a business will die should one traffic source be lost is not a model I aspire to implement.”

This is contrary to her ideal belief what SEOs do to optimize websites for Google, as the most single objective.

 Aaron Wall - An SEO consultant, book author, blogger, and the founder/owner of SEO Book, during an interview with SEJ says, “There was a golden window of opportunity for about a half-decade…and the door is starting to close..” 

Eric Ward - SEL author has sensitized with his post a while back on “11Reasons Link Building Is a Futile”. He suggests creating right content to naturally draw the links. I don’t think it’s a new advice, as Google has been recommending this over many years. However, he seems to be against the "SEO way" of building links.  

Jonathon Colman-An eminent strategist, writer, and marketer who shared his last post on –Why I’m Leaving SEO. He says "As much as I know that SEOs hold themselves accountable for understanding users and optimizing experiences for them, there’s still an intermediary: a robot."  

"And while the best SEOs can provide great experiences for people and robots, I’ve become much more interested in the human side of that equation. And, to be fair, I think you would agree that Google thinks that user experience is pretty important, too." 

At time, we all talk about developing quality content, and Google is coming up with a new content recommendation system for publishers’ website, Rand Fishkin still thinks that link building, syndication, and earning social signals are a few things SEO can do but other marketers can’t. 

Image Courtesy: Search Engine Genie

Mr. Rand, marketing is all about personality. It’s not just about ‘what’, but about ‘who.” 

Can SEO ensure fair ranking of a website even if SEO professionals do what other marketers can’t? Don’t say, SEO is not about ranking. If not, then what the fuck SEO is primarily all about? What If I say, ranking of a website is still possible for brands without having SEOs working for them!

Let me tell you, those who build their personality naturally rank on Google. I agree with Rae Hoffman, “Google does not want to make your site popular but they rank popular websites”.

Questions 

Not sure, if you, or any one can answer to the following questions. 

• Can SEOs build trust of a website on Google? If yes, share some real tips, and let us check back with Google if they validate.    

• Can SEOs earn some reputation with all set of activities you have described? How do we validate that these set of activities help a website earn reputation?

• Can SEOs think beyond Google? Can SEOs have a fair knowledge of “effective” budget allocation across different marketing channels?

• Do SEOs have a fair knowledge of code, design, and UI? Can SEO have very fair understanding of analytics data?

• Do SEOs have knowledge on how to put eggs in different baskets?   

Why traditional marketing agencies hire celebrities to sponsor their products? Obviously, they are known personality, and have great fans/followers that help them buy, or spread the words about a product they sponsor.  And once they promote, they become commercially successful –guaranteed! 

Now, let me ask you a very basic question. 

Can you ensure top ranking of a website if you are given sponsorship to promote on Google using your SEO techniques? Despite the fact that people at Google recognize you as the most reputed SEO person, can Google rank ‘that website’ high on SERP just because you are optimizing it?    

                                                                                              

In my view, success of any “dependable marketing model” depends on various external factors way beyond for SEOs to guess over!

Further, a true marketer is a critical thinker that focuses on overall marketing and business solutions rather than spending too much time for ‘Google optimization'. Multi- Channel optimization is a key that adds value in real world than search engine optimization. After all, SEO is not an end goal.      

C’mmon, be a marketer, and leave hyping much about SEO’s can, or marketers can’t do! If Google is not so crazy about SEO technique, then why you are!