Quick Post: Organic Traffic Optimization? Doing Agnostic SEO

Introduction: Lee on “UnGoogleing” via SMO

Recently, Lee Odden posted a unique perspective towards Social Media Optimization (SMO) on “UnGoogle Your Marketing with Social Media“:

I think one of the ways you can sum up the idea of social media optimization and marketing is: “traffic alternatives to Google”. As great as Google is, marketers are increasingly looking for alternative and/or additional channels for content distribution and marketing and consumers for sources of information and interaction.

What’s interesting is that more and more of our clients are asking for what amounts to alternatives to Google traffic. They’re doing great on Google and the other major search engines, but want other sources of “free” traffic. SMO/SMM provides that augmentation. These include MySpace, Digg, YouTube and other viral tactics. For an excellent list of such opportunities, check out Rand’s list.

Organic Traffic Optimization – An Agnostic Approach to SEO?

Lee hits on a thought I had exactly this morning when waking up (yes, I think about search marketing in the mornings). I believe that eventually search engine optimization (SEO) will be succeeded by simply “Organic Traffic Optimization” – optimization that is agnostic to where the traffic comes from, but is limited to the organic (natural and unpaid) side of things.

This touches on what Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro mentioned in “SEM Has No Future“:

Search engines, and the form of marketing we’re currently familiar with, will disappear in the next 5 to 10 years. But here’s the good part. The act of a user requesting information through a query, either implicit or explicit, will pervade everything online.

Here, Gord is hitting at the fact that SEM will evolve to focusing on marketing on query done online no matter if its in a search engine or its on any other online tool.

SEO may follow the same path. Optimization for increased organic traffic no matter if its from social networkings/media sites (SMO) or search engines (SEO).


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5 responses to “Quick Post: Organic Traffic Optimization? Doing Agnostic SEO”

  1. […] Indeed, as mentioned in “Organic Traffic Optimization? Doing Agnostic SEO“, the growing lists of vertical search engines places emphasis on the need at ensuring a website’s content is indexed beyond Google, Yahoo and MSN. Content should also be looked at how competitively positioned it is on vertical search tools. For example, people doing online dating search can be very picky – on ethnicity, religion, age, interests – does the profile easily lists all of such data? Is the data listed in a way people would search for? Available on feeds to engines like Oodle? Publicly (like LinkedIn does now)? Note that there are also privacy issues like “What control does the user has to be indexed by a third-party?” […]

  2. Eric Avatar

    This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Post: Organic Traffic Optimization? Doing Agnostic SEO at Emergence Media. Thanks for informative article

  3. George Avatar
    George

    Sorry for my ignorance, but what is meant by “agnostic” when dealing with search engines? I’ve never heard this used in any way beyond a religious philosophy (or lack thereof).

  4. Daniel R Avatar
    Daniel R

    No worries. “Agnostic” has been used (rightly or not) to mean “not specific”, “no preference for” or “work with anything”.

    It’s definitely “business-speak” for sure.

    For example, if an IT Software firm is “vendor agnostic”, their software would work any vendor with no particular preference.

    For “Agnostic SEO”, I’m thinking of thinking of SEO beyond Search Engines like Google, simply optimizing content for distribution, relevancy and “findability” be it on Yelp, Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube or whatever. All of these websites have a search function, which content should be optimized for.

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