Comments on: Beyond SEO: Inbound Marketing in a Post-Google World

By: Jeff Bronson

Jeff Bronson — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:19:58 +0000

The role of an “SEO” is indeed rapidly changing, and I think for the better.
SEO as a whole, in it’s purest sense has become a commodity which is sometimes sold to the lowest bidder. A limited set of functions to be performed.

Inbound Marketing on the other hand (like the name or not), cannot be reduced to a color by number playbook of predefined template tasks to apply over and over.

I like that it takes more effort, more creativity, more focus on branding and conversion, to do Inbound Marketing.

While I’ve been doing this over 8 years, I can see how the newbie will have a really rough time adjusting to all of the recent industry changes, especially over the last couple of years.

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:59:12 +0000

What is comes down to is that SEO is no longer a technical function and it absolutely cannot operate in a silo. If you don’t have a content or social strategy as part of an SEO campaign, the SEO campaign will be very limited and have limited results.

By: Ruth Burr

Ruth Burr — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:59:53 +0000

I think that both are important – if nothing else, I would like for it to be better understood outside of our industry echo chamber that SEO can be just part of a larger online strategy. I use inbound/outbound marketing as the differentiators because that’s what makes sense to me, how I think about it.

There are plenty of people (myself included), who just do SEO and nothing else. It’s still a vital part of every website’s success. My point is not to slag off on SEO so much as it is to point out that there are other ways besides search that people are using to find and engage with our content, and it’s important to acknowledge and leverage that.

By: Ruth Burr

Ruth Burr — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:57:08 +0000

The problem, as I see it, with using just “internet marketing” is that it doesn’t make a distinction between free vs. paid tactics. SEO is part of a very different overlapping skill set than PPC is.

By: Rhea Drysdale

Rhea Drysdale — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:27:02 +0000

No one does all that marketing encompasses, nor can they. But they can excel at the type of marketing they specialize in, whatever that is, and ensure that they are working with other types to get the best results.

Yes!

By: Rhea Drysdale

Rhea Drysdale — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:33:36 +0000

Love your grandma’s advice and dead-on for size/brand does matter.

By: aaron wall

aaron wall — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:33:36 +0000

It’s also that some of the people pushing “inbound marketing” have a pattern of taking old concepts & giving them new names. And then some of these people as a step 2 try to slag off SEO in order to some how pretend what they are doing is somehow better than SEO & differentiated from SEO.

It is easier to change the words used to describe something than it is to create new strategies.

By: Ruth Burr

Ruth Burr — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:40:55 +0000

Very well said, Danny. I couldn’t agree more.

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:28:09 +0000

SEO was never a term for covering all types of internet marketing.

The kerfuffle you’re hearing is because you have people who do SEO, are happy with SEO and don’t want to think they have to do other things.

And that’s fine. They don’t. An SEO doesn’t have to also become a video marketing expert, and email marketing expert and so on. They don’t have to be an “inbound marketer,” if they don’t want.

In fact, it’s difficult for anyone to do all the things that inbound — which is really just a new term for “earned media” — covers.

But a smart SEO will understand more than what SEO covers, may do more depending on the time they have, the project they’re involved with or importantly, work with others so that SEO is supported by both other inbound marketing activities as well as paid media activities.

In short:
Marketing > Inbound Marketing > SEO

No one does all that marketing encompasses, nor can they. But they can excel at the type of marketing they specialize in, whatever that is, and ensure that they are working with other types to get the best results.

By: David Hitt

David Hitt — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:53:47 +0000

I’ve never been fond of the term “SEO” either as I always thought it defined a very limited set of onpage and offpage optimization tasks. But I’m not that comfortable with “inbound marketing” as a buzzword either. Why do we need the “inbound” qualifier? Isn’t all marketing, by definition, supposed to be “inbound” in nature? If you’re not driving consumers to your brand, you’re not a good marketer.

How about just the good ole fashioned “internet marketing” phrase as a descriptor of what we do? It gives us the one differentiating qualifier we really need (ie, that this sort of marketing is about the internet) but doesn’t saddle the phrase with an unnecessary, implied-by-definition, adjective…