Your Website Is Not the Center of the Universe Scott Loring
Building your marketing strategy around SEO and SEM is not just a problem of execution or effectiveness. It is also a problem of vision. As in, time to get some new glasses.
Reboot your Weltanschauung
Earth is not the center and neither is your site
The web universe is not what you think it is. Understanding it requires a major worldview shift.
It is not a fixed system that revolves around your corporate dotcom. Thinking that way is like adhering to the belief of Ptolemy — the Earth-centered cosmos.
This background belief is what drives you to put your faith and dollars into SEO and SEM. But it’s false. Your website is not the center of the universe — or the internet.
The Galilean Web
The internet is more like the heliocentric model championed by Galileo, with search as the sun. It is an ever-growing collection of distribution channels, each with their own audience, revolving around an increasingly contextual search experience.
It’s time to expand your perspective to account for this. But, like Galileo, you may have a hard time with the authorities as you start to act on this understanding.
The evolution of search
Search is at the center of the web and should be driving your marketing. But search itself is evolving. Engines such as Kosmix, Bing, and Duck Duck Go are re-envisioning the search experience by contextualizing information from trusted sources. Twitter Search has also made waves by offering real-time search results to their community.
Your customers engage with these trusted services and sites where they themselves publish and digest content — networking, video, news, documents, tools, music, microblogging, blogging, photos. Search is increasingly about these contexts where people spend their time doing business and having fun. The recent announcement that Facebook is making public — thereby searchable — the default setting for profiles is huge indicator of this shift.
The Earth Is Not the Center and Neither Is Your Site
Take the emphasis off your site
The more trusted the source, the more that search engines are combing it for content. In fact, within the Galilean model, your corporate dotcom is just a distant satellite.
What you’re doing when you look to SEO and SEM with Google is you’re trying to pull people away from their interests instead of engaging them from within their interests.
In order to be a real player in the new search, you have to participate outside of your domain. You have to populate these sites with content. Create content not for your dotcom, but for your audience in these different channels.
Put your customers first
Take the focus off marketing communications, and you will naturally be inclined to create higher-quality content.
Go with this flow. Your business really is all about your customers.
Takeaway
Think outside your corporate dotcom. Search will follow the content you distribute across trusted channels.
My questions to you
Are you devoting too much time to promoting your corporate dotcom? Where else are you publishing content?
Category: Forward Thinking
Tagged: Content Distribution, Content Publishing, Content Strategy, contextual search, evolution of search, Online Content Marketing, SEM, SEO
12 Comments »
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This is why we do article marketing. But, the way you describe it makes me think we should be using all of these channels to distribute content.
I love the analogy by the way :)
Amelia,
So glad you like the analogy. We’ve been working on the right one for a while.
So, do you call it Article Marketing? We’ve been using custom content or content marketing. What do you think of those?
- Andrew
Scott, great perspective on the issue! Corporate .coms need to make their content more accessible and engage people on the platforms where they’re already spending time.
Do you think using RSS feeds are the best way to distribute your content to these channels?
We’re finding that many of the small businesses we’re talking to either don’t see the value in setting up distribution or if they see the value, they don’t understand how to do it. Where do you think distribution services (such as the product we’re developing at Yourmagz) will fit into the mix in the future?
Does there need to be an easy and cost effective distribution service available before everyone can take advantage of the newly discovered “round world”?
I love the analogy as well.
John,
Glad you like the analogy too! I think all the services for effective distribution of your content already exist. Companies have to actually participate where they are distributing their content – otherwise they are not adding any value, so I don’t think just offering an RSS feed for content inclusion really helps.
I’m checking out YourMagz beta right now. I’m not sure how it works or what the premise is, but I think it’s much more than content syndication and delivery – it’s really about a distributed content model – put your videos on YouTube or Viddler or Vimeo, put your documents on Scribd or DocStoc… etc.
What do you think, John?
Thanks for contributing!
Andrew,
Thanks for taking the time to look at Yourmagz. We’re in the process of re-designing the entire platform to make the concept of distributed content simple and easy for everyone.
We have developed applications for the major social, mobile and desktop platforms which allow our users to engage their readers on the platforms where they already spend time.
We’re working towards synchronizing the conversation around content across multiple platforms. So that readers could participate in the same conversation we’re having here regardless of whether they’re reading from their Blackberry/iPhone or Facebook.
I agree that companies need to participate where their content is distributed but do you think there is value in bringing those different conversations together?
We’re trying to go beyond simply syndicating the content, we’re looking to allow our users to engage their readers across multiple platforms in one consistent format.
Thanks for the conversation,
John
John,
My pleasure. It’s part of my job. I like where your going with YourMagz. It’s intriguing. I know it’s in Beta and your working on it – had a bunch of beta bugs appear through the process as I set up my mag.
I think the big difference between content syndication and broad distribution of content is that syndicating content implies a formal relationship between you and the content syndicator (i.e. content syndicated to a channel partner.) Where as broad content distribution implies putting your content where the audience already is. Does that make sense?
I’ll need to really see yourmagz in action before I really understand the three-screen/multiple channel approach your pursuing – it’s not immediately apparent to me.
Anyway, thanks again for participating and keep me in the loop for yourmagz.
Thanks,
Drew
[...] This post was Twitted by yourmagz [...]
There are definitely some bugs in the system that we’re steadily working out. I’m happy to hear you like where we’re going. I believe we can bring value to people by making content distribution simple and easy for everyone.
We’re close to getting our Iphone and Adobe Air applications live so I will keep you posted as we get closer to putting all the pieces together.
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve the platform I’d love to hear them.
Thanks again,
John
[...] the trippy thing about web communications. Everyone is a user and a content generator. (I read an interesting post on this a while ago that compares a website-centric mindset to ptolemy. It makes some great [...]
[...] Ptolemy was wrong. So was Galileo. The universe does not revolve around the Earth — nor the Sun — but rather search engines. This is where research begins, where buying decisions begin, where outreach begins. In fact, Google is many a person’s home page. As a result, you’re also wrong when you think that the Web revolves around your Web site. No one cares about it, until that very point at which they are ready to make a purchasing decision. In the meantime, how will your Web site stay relevant and current in search results? In many ways better than SEO (search engine optimization), consistent blogging about hot topics relevant to your industry, loaded (naturally!) with keyword-rich content, will keep your company, product or service among the search term winners for the searches you covet. Google et. al. “heart” updated, fresh content, and you will find it difficult to keep your Web site’s content fresh and current. But it will come naturally on your blog. [...]
[...] Ptolemy was wrong. So was Galileo. The universe does not revolve around the Earth — nor the Sun — but rather search engines. This is where research begins, where buying decisions begin, where outreach begins. In fact, Google is many a person’s home page. As a result, you’re also wrong when you think that the Web revolves around your Web site. No one cares about it, until that very point at which they are ready to make a purchasing decision. In the meantime, how will your Web site stay relevant and current in search results? In many ways better than SEO (search engine optimization), consistent blogging about hot topics relevant to your industry, loaded (naturally!) with keyword-rich content, will keep your company, product or service among the search term winners for the searches you covet. Google et. al. “heart” updated, fresh content, and you will find it difficult to keep your Web site’s content fresh and current. But it will come naturally on your blog. [...]
[...] Search is the center of the Internet universe. It is where research begins, where questions get answered, where resources get discovered, and where purchasing decisions are borne. If you’re invisible in search, you’re invisible to prospects. [...]