SEO - Is it Marketing Or Technology

The question "Is SEO marketing or technology?" has been debated heatedly for the last 
decade. So far the debate has mostly been won by technologists, but overtime as the Online 
World has evolved to measuring business results, and the search engines have become more 
sophisticated to delivering results.

What exactly is Search Engine Optimization? 

Most online businesses along with SEO companies define SEO as a set of techniques that help 
ensure that the website is built such that the search engines treat them as relevant targets 
(destinations) for the appropriate Keywords. These Keywords are the ones a potential 
customer would type on the search engine to find you or your business.

" This has led to the interpretation that SEO is creation of a structure such that your 
website is populated very heavily with appropriate Keywords."

 Based on how your website is populated with these Keywords the search engines will display your company or website in the search results in response to a search query. Hence, SEO is about finding the right Keywords and ensuring those Keywords are heavily populated on your website.

Now, I am in agreement with this definition, but I would submit that this interpretation is 
incomplete and misses the big picture.

" The fundamental question to be addressed is whether the online presence we build is for the search engines to drive appropriate traffic or whether the websites we build are for the potential customer to get the best information when he or she interacts with the company in the Online World. "

All of the search engines today are sophisticated enough that they don't look for Keywords 
on website; they actually measure you on the relevancy of your content and your website to 
the query initiated by the searcher. So, SEO is no longer "The technology of Keyword 
stuffing and links"; SEO has transformed into the marketing and art of making your website 
relevant to the search, and providing people with maximum pull to convert from visitors to 
customers. Relevancy for the customer has become the single most important factor for a 
search engine to rate any business.



I have always been a firm believer that all potential customers require appropriate 
messaging addressing all their concerns before they engage with a website or a business. 

SEO/PPC Services must accomplish this task.

Take a moment and answer this question: 

What makes you decide to click on a particular result when you search on Google?
I hope your answer is the content of that link you see on the search results page, which are 
the 'Title' and the 'Description'. If you didn't then please conduct a search for something 
and observe the results you get back.


Given that 'Title' and 'Description' play a critical role in people clicking on the Search 
Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you would want to take utmost care in writing the content for 
these tags. Your SEO results are like Ads for your webpage.You may not be ranked 1st on Google for a desired keyword, still you can acquire more (and relevant) traffic (reminds you of CTR?) to your website than the site which is 1st. 

Provided, the content you write in the Title and Description tags is relevant to the 
searchers. To breakdown 'relevancy' further, I would recommend asking yourself the following 

questions, while you are writing Title and Description tags for your web pages:

1. Are you communicating effectively with all potential customer segments?

2. Are you persuading the searcher to take the desired action? 

3. Is your copy optimized for SEO? While ensuring the above points, do not forget to 
optimize your tags for SEO - in other words, do include the keywords in your tags. Otherwise 
you will not even get the chance to benefit from good SEO ?.