A real estate agent recently told me that...
"SEO is intended to - bottom line - generate more leads and create competitive advantage."
I don't agree - bear with me.
- There's a sign on your building that broadcasts your business name and company logo - is it intended only to generate more leads?
- There's a business card in your wallet with your logo and name on it - is it intended only to generate more leads?
- Your business name and logo is on a banner at a local chili cookoff fund raiser - is it intended only to generate more leads?
Most would answer "no" to these questions because brand building, advertising, and community support all work in unison to create the face of your company - a company that can be trusted and one that provides good service and great value. If you don't do these things, it will be difficult to generate leads. So why do realtors generally think that SEO and web visibility activities are any different? (please, tell me if I'm in the weeds on this)
If you raised the height of the sign on your building a bit higher to get more visibility from a nearby highway, would you do so to generate more leads? What if you upgraded it to a neon sign - is that the equivalent of physical SEO? I think that's part of it, but the sign is a strategic asset, not a tactical asset. The community and visitors to your community would come to know your brand without ever doing business with you - that's a desired result that has little to do with the narrow marketing function of generating leads.
A football coach will instruct his wide receivers to do 200 sit-ups at every practice. The receivers will argue - Why should we? We don't do sit ups in a game. The coach understands that there are strategic reasons for doing sit-ups. Creating good content, high-quality HTML, or doing lots of sit-ups are strategic things designed to make it more likely you'll catch a key pass, or get a conversation that turns into a lead, and remain competitive at the most crucial instant when you need to catch a pass in the face of stiff competition or attract a prospect who's ready to become a customer.
"... intended to - bottom line - generate more leads ..."
I think most of the real estate industry (and many other industries as well) have misjudged the relationship between these very narrow technical (and tactical) ideas, and strategic business marketing. SEO of a web site (or blogsite) is a business hygiene issue - if you don't do it, you'll struggle for visibility about your marketing message in the search engines. Competitors that address this level of hygiene will be less likely to experience trouble, but just because you have clean HTML code (for example), you won't gain any competitive advantage because your competition can be reasonably expected to also address similar hygiene issues. Competitive advantage is not related to hygiene - it's related to your marketing message and how you differentiate from your competition.
In my view, the intent of raising the height of a sign, increasing the color density of a brand logo, improving the quality of your site's HTML, or your interest in blogging, are all related to increasing sales, not generating more leads. Indeed, some of these activities may directly [or indirectly] generate more leads, more traffic, more of everything - but consider the strategic importance of these activities and then build your lead generation tactics around your strategy.
If you believe SEO is intended to generate leads, please leave a comment to educate me.
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