How Do Big Retailers Justify Their Arguments Against SEO?

Marketers need to be very clear about one thing:

SEO, commonly known as organic search, is just as important of a digital marketing strategy as it ever was. Yet many retailer marketing directors aren’t buying into it, and there are interesting reasons why:

They can’t see the end game

Because of the very nature of SEO, it takes time for the discipline to show results of any type, let alone positive results. It takes alot of faith for a CMO to dump marketing funds into SEO without any figurative light at the end of the tunnel.

After all, no one wants to invest in chance-they want to invest in results.

B2B eCommerce Word quotes a couple of CEO who share their concerns:

It can be difficult for large companies to prove the value of search marketing and get resources for it, the study says. Many large companies don’t have a specific budget for SEO because it can require a crossover of resources and time from I.T., marketing and public relations.

 

They aren’t implementing up-to-date strategies

To say that digital marketing strategies change seemingly by the week is an understatement!

And while most strategies don’t change by the week, they do change at least a couple of times a year. Whether there’s a small Google (or Bing) algorithm change, or whether there’s a major roll-out, a company’s marketing team must stay on top of the latest organic search changes if they hope to stay in the game.

Search Engine Land admonishes:

Even big corporations handling high-volume online sales often work with SEO dinosaurs — “experts” who learned their craft 10 years ago and then stopped updating their knowledge. In a fast-moving field like search marketing, this approach won’t work.

An SEO strategy implemented without up-to-date knowledge is problematic on many levels. First, there is the obvious issue that you may not be able to outperform competitors that are utilizing more cutting-edge tactics.

They’ve been burned in the past

In conjunction with using out-of-date SEO tactics, many digital marketers have not only found that using old tactics did little to direct new traffic into their sales funnel, but using old tactics caused them to lose all credibility and trust in search engine listings, killing the marketer’s ability to generate traffic at all!

They’re focused on the latest, hottest marketing platforms

Even though many digital marketers know better, they still search for that silver-bullet solution that’s going to open up the floodgates that allow traffic to pour into their sites.

At one point, most marketers thought that SEO was going to be the thing. But after all of major Google changes, then content marketing became the thing. When they realized that content marketing might take took long, then social media marketing (one platform at a time) became the thing.

But B2B Ecommerce refutes ditching quality content in favor of social:

Marketers ultimately see creating content as the most important tactic to enhancing not just their listings on search engines but the success of their entire marketing strategy, the study says. ‘Progressive companies don’t produce content specifically for SEO, they integrate SEO into their content,’ says Kara Alcamo, vice president of digital at marketing agency R2i.

At the end of the day, the marketer’s job is to use every effective strategy that allows their clients to achieve their marketing goals. And SEO can certainly provide substantial results, even if the results aren’t immediate.

Looking for more great information about search engine optimization? Download the report from our partners at ROI Revolution, The 4 Pillars of Successful SEO Mindset, to uncover more reasons why putting a strong emphasis on organic traffic can have a huge impact on your overall ecommerce success.