Last night (for me at least) Rand posed the question:
Is there a phrase (besides “inbound marketing”) that describes combined processes of SEO, Social, Content, CRO & Analytics to earn traffic?
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) March 9, 2012
And while, perhaps, all of these could fall under a very general umbrella of marketing, my impression is that there is a need to describe this organic subset of marketing.
Interestingly, to me at least, the SEO community is quite protective of the specific term of art known, for better and worse, as “search engine optimization”.
@bill_slawski @randfish #SEO by definition = search? If so, terms like #inbound are more inclusive. But can we talk about #SEO w/o #social?
— Gyi Tsakalakis (@gyitsakalakis) March 9, 2012
@gyitsakalakis Exactly my point. SEO = by definition/acronym-structure “search” @bill_slawski
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) March 9, 2012
And while I do think that the term SEO is, by definition, inseparable from search engines, there seems also to be little question that the responsibilities of SEO have been upgraded:
Which is why, at least in part, I believe Rand is searching for this new term.
And while I tend to lean toward a very broad definition of SEO, maybe something like Bill Slawski’s:
@dan_shure @randfish SEO is marketing with an awareness of the framework of the Web.
— Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) March 9, 2012
The lines are getting pretty blurry.
Does the term SEO encompass things like analytics, social, and CRO? I guess the answer is sometimes. Depending, of course, on the context within which these topics are being discussed. For example, if we’re talking about social’s impact on organic search, well then of course SEO is applicable. But what about social minus search engines? SEO doesn’t seem to fit.
To me, the issue here isn’t about replacing the term SEO or SEO services. It’s about broadening the conversation to these other organic marketing strategies that either only indirectly influence search results, or having nothing to do with search at all.
And I think it’s a good exercise, even for SEOs.
So what’s it going to be? Internet marketing? Doesn’t seem to be inclusive enough. Earned media, as proposed by iPullRank? Maybe. But you’d need a pretty generous definition of “earned”.
Organic marketing? Perhaps the best fit for now. But, to me, there still seems to be something missing. Unfortunately, I don’t have a better idea. At least not yet.