Today, a friend of mine that owns a creative agency in NYC came to me with an interesting advertising dilemma: He recently built a website for an e-commerce company and the client is now asking to boost website traffic. The client specifically requested Social Media and when my friend suggested a blend of Social Media and SEO, the client snapped back with “We are not looking for SEO, only to get people to our website.” This is wrong on so many levels.

A common misconception is that SEO is simply a thing you will never see happen and never see results for. And, most people don’t even know what SEO is. I am here to change that.

First and foremost, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is geared towards targeting specific keywords that relate to one’s demographic(s) and using a variety of strategies to make a website rank at the top of search engines for the select keywords (or keyword sets). By placing a website on the first page of search engines, especially Google, exposure will be drastically increased as will clickthroughs to the site. The key is selecting the best, most relative keywords that are searched for most often.

Secondly, businesses must realize that everything done on the web involves SEO in some way or another. Social Media campaigns need SEO, social networking needs SEO — everything needs SEO. Don’t corner yourself in a Social Media campaign because it’s the talk of the town, rather blend Social Media campaigns with SEO to achieve optimum results.

In conclusion, SEO is what will increase traffic to a website. When it all boils down to pure numbers, the more your website is seen (increased exposure) the more traffic it will generate. Increased traffic means increased sales if your product, price point, website design and other factors are up to par.

Until my next adventure.

Aaron Schoenberger
The Brainchild Group
http://twitter.com/BrainchildGroup