You know, a key aspect of being successful with SEO is the ability to implement the changes necessary to grow one’s organic traffic.
In order to have SEO implemented, SEO has to be evangelised in one’s organisation.
The bigger the organisation, the more important that SEO is evangelised across the business.
Today, I want to shed light on why this is, and why it’s vital that a business has SEO evangelised as part of their digital marketing strategy.
So, to start with, what is SEO evangelism?
SEO evangelism is the ongoing process of promoting the awareness of SEO.
Now, why is this necessary?
It’s necessary because SEO is still, to this day, seen as a dark art – a mystical, magical channel that somehow brings traffic to one’s site.
This unawareness of SEO leads to an inadvertent regression of SEO, where the progress of the channel is compromised.
You see, every person in your organisation, that has a touch point with your website, shapes the website, and therefore, shapes the way the website performs in the SERPs.
What this tends to lead to is a situation where every person, that has a touch point with your website, affects the performance of the organic channel.
SEO evangelism sheds light to this in an attempt to avoid a situation where the website’s organic presence is negatively affected.
SEO evangelism provides insights into how SEO really works.
SEO evangelism helps the business make informed decisions that’s aligned with its digital growth.
Let’s delve into this…
SEO is an integral part of a website’s digital growth.
For many businesses, the typical approach is to hire an agency to carry out their SEO, whether this be for strategy, a particular pillar of SEO – whatever the case may be!
Upon receiving the recommendations, it then becomes down to the business to implement the recommendations.
It’s at this point that major roadblocks are seen.
Let’s take… let’s take a tech SEO audit, as an example.
A business receives a tech audit. They’re happy with it, and now seeks to implement the recommendations.
What is the typical outcome at this point?
The business realises they’ll need development work on the site’s CMS in order to action the implementations. But there’s no budget for this! Yet SEO still has to be worked on, right?
And you can guess what happens at this point, right…?
A compromise is made! A compromise with SEO – for SEO.
The business looks to action what can be actioned at the current time.
In SEO terms, this translates to partial implementation!
What does partial implementation lead to…?
Partial results!
Partial results that may not be the most impactful to increase organic traffic to the website.
Sub-par results doesn’t bold well for why SEO is a sound investment.
So now, SEOs have to spend a lot of time and energy in an attempt to convince the business to make further, unexpected investments in SEO.
All the while, what caused the creation of the issues identified in the technical audit persists – a lack of SEO awareness!
This folks, is why SEO evangelism is vital for businesses!
The vast majority of SEO issues, across all the pillars of SEO, are caused by a lack of awareness of SEO.
SEO evangelism aims to resolve this!
It aims to educate people on a channel that is very unique in marketing.
You see, other digital channels are closely reminiscent of traditional marketing.
They’re a lot more straight forward – you pay, you play!
SEO on the other hand, is beautifully complex!
SEOs love it but non-SEOs (within marketing) don’t understand what the hell it is.
Non-SEOs tend to either think SEO is a dark art, or that it’s too technical to grasp.
And these are marketers! Imagine how SEO is regarded by non-marketers, if it’s regarded at all!
Individuals unknowingly cause SEO problems for SEOs!
Imagine a Designer working on a site redesign with the intention of having very little text on the pages, unknowingly jeopardizing the site’s SEO.
Imagine a Web Editor publishing several new pages a week without SEO involvement.
Imagine a Marketing Director launching an interstitial ad on the site that covers the entire page, unaware of its effect on SEO.
These are problems that negatively impacts SEO performance.
SEO evangelism helps to prevent the problems that leads to, and keeps SEO, in a firefighting state!
You see, when you have SEO evangelised across your business, you have a situation where SEO becomes less daunting to non-SEOs.
And believe it or not, when individuals start to see the link between their individual work actions and how it leads to the organic traffic the site receives, and ultimately the revenue it generates, they start to adore this friggin’ thing we call S-E-O!
This SEO thing goes deep! It’s a lot more than keywords and rankings.
Organisations that are able to build, cultivate and maintain a relationship with SEO, across every department that has a touch point with the website are able to demonstrate great SEO, which is shown on the website.
You see…?
Moving into 2021 and beyond, SEO evangelism is imperative in order for businesses to flourish.
SEO evangelism is vital to help businesses transform from a reactionary state to a state where SEO is proactive, enabling the business with the ability for their site’s SERP visibility to grow exponentially.
