If you are in the marketing business you will already know how fast-paced it can be, and over the last few years it has been a rollercoaster ride in the SEO world alone. The biggest part of marketing is adapting to new ideas and conforming to best practices, and the only way you are going to improve yourself, and become the best there is, is simply to stay on top of current trends and patterns so you can act first.

Inbound marketing is a broad phrase that is made up of many marketing components, but SEO is fast becoming one of its biggest as it adapts to the growing online marketing ecosystem.

Just when you thought you knew there was all there was to know about marketing, we hit you with this. I know, it can be a lot to take in but by the end of today’s post the relationship between inbound marketing and SEO will become abundantly clear to you. Best of all, these practices can be put into place straight away and we are sure you are going to learn a trick or two here.

Inbound marketing tactics

As we said, inbound marketing is a broad concept of many different marketing channels, but some of the tactics you should already be following. The first and obvious tactic is content marketing, which is now more important than it has ever been.

Content is king they used to say, and that statement has never been as true as in today’s marketing climate. For every king there has to be a queen and that queen comes in the form of marketing the content you are producing. The two go hand-in-hand like…King and Queen.

Content marketing can be done through blogging, news articles, video and copywriting, and syndicated to the likes of Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and many more. This is when social media marketing partners up with content marketing, but the tactics reach even further than this with link earning methods, brand marketing, PR, events, SEM, email marketing, conversation rate optimisation and even through form of customer service, outreach and community engagement.

All these elements just make up the bigger picture of Inbound Marketing, but who are the people that carry these tasks off?

Who Does Inbound Marketing?

Your marketing team is going to be made up of different people from every corner of the marketing world, unless you work for a small business or family run company where one person will play the part of a team.

Usually you will have people that specialise in Social Media, PR, Brand Identity and so forth, and all these will be skilled in their own area of expertise. Sure, they will all know a little bit about each other’s job as they have most likely done it before, and if you are a one-man marketing team then you need to cover every angle and aspect of digital inbound marketing.

At one point SEO stood alone in the marketing world, a force to be reckoned with but the truth is that SEO is fast becoming absorbed by other jobs. Much in the way that SEOMoz rebranded to simply MOZ because marketing wasn’t just about SEO anymore.

SEO’s that managed to cling on after the bouts of Penguin and Panda releases will have adapted by now, or are going through that major change. Some SEO’s may have ventured to pastors new after the SEO scene changes and things got tighter, with results taking longer to see.

The days of simply spamming keywords into a below-par article and hoping to achieve first position in Google are now dead and gone, and to most people this is only a good change. Instead, top quality articles that offer value to the reader and rise above the chatter of every other blog trying to do the same thing is what it’s all about.

SEO’s Role in the Inbound Marketing Methodology

So where do SEO’s now fit into marketing? The truth is every area of a marketing team need to work together as they are trying to achieve the same goal. SEO’s work with content creators, website designers, social media managers and PR people in order to make sure that optimization techniques are being carried out to the optimal level.

Therefore an SEO’s role in an Inbound Marketing Phoenix team should still encompass the main tasks of an SEO, but provide other quality ways to draw in traffic and search results. Analysing keywords, tracking trends, traffic and new links are all fundamental basics that still should be performed by an SEO. In turn, this then helps content teams to know which direction to steer their articles towards so they result in more traffic, shares and link worthy content pieces that sites won’t mind linking to.

Then there is the technical aspect of an SEO where they need to communicate with the development and design teams in order to make sure that technical elements such as 301’s, crawl errors and the speed of the site are all at a certain level. Usually Webmaster Tools helps identify these kinds of issues but it’s still valuable to the on-going presence of a site in search engines that these are cleared up.

Then you have to look at conversion rates and dig deeper into a sites usability ad where improvements can be made in helping customers convert at a higher percentage than ever before. A key contributor to this is also analytical software that can help point out traffic bounce rates and other insightful data that can be worked upon to improve a site.

The SEO as Inbound Marketer

You can see that in today’s Inbound Marketing world that an SEO’s job is a lot more skilful than it has ever been before, and it requires much more attention to detail, technical know-how and strategy knowledge to push a site forward.

It’s not just about link building nowadays, where keyword rich anchor text on any site will force your site up Google. It’s no longer about manipulating search engines and offering simple one page landing pages to viewers. SEO is now about creating top quality content that earns links rather than you having to go and source links, it’s about engaging customers and creating amazing websites. SEO is now about collaborating with other departments in an effort to improve quality for the user, by making sure that it sits well in not just Google’s eyes but also helps users in terms of usability and conversion.

An SEO’s role is now to communicate more and work in tandem with social media departments, web developers, designers, PR teams, content teams, customer service teams and so forth. You can see how the pattern continues and how important an SEO job is today in the sense of Inbound Marketing.

From Keywords to Sessions

The principle that each search is important and that each search performed by a user helps to build brand relationships and influence a customer’s final destination. No longer do people simply search for one thing and then be satisfied with the results, instead they may do 3, 4 or even 10 individual searches before they are satisfied with the results they are seeing. It’s about getting your brand noticed, but not just in search engines.

Think about the impact of social media in today’s world, this is an area of marketing that is still growing and even if a customer isn’t ready to purchase they still have the ability to interact and engage with your brand or company over these very public platforms. Whether it’s a question, a comment, some feedback, or content that you have syndicated over the likes of Facebook and Twitter; you are constantly reaching out to them, and they to you.

This is where an Inbound Marketing strategy really does come into its own as it’s about being heard, and sticking in people’s minds. As a new-age SEO you should be exploring different channels and avenues that will help build the brand and increase sales, and an SEO’s job will never be done as there are always doors of opportunity waiting to open up for them. It’s a case of evolving and adapting to a new breed of searching.

Conclusion

Finally we draw to a conclusion, and hopefully you have learnt that Inbound Marketing and its relationship with SEO is a very complimenting one as marketing continues to stride forward and technology finds new uses. An SEO as we have spoken about today is now a new breed of marketing that doesn’t just rely on simple measures from the past. Now, SEO is made from other marketing experiences and falls under a larger marketing canvas. To be an excellent SEO requires good communication and engagement with other departments and understanding that tunnel-vision isn’t going to help a company engage closer to potential customers, increasing conversion rates, getting links earned, and providing the best content there is out there.

For SEO’s in the old way, now is the time to adapt and learn as Inbound Marketing takes over on a bigger scale bringing each and every member of the marketing team (and wider teams) together as one unit.

Sunny Popali is SEO Director at www.tempocreative.com. Tempo Creative is a Phoenix inbound marketing company that has served over 700 clients since 2001. Tempo’s team specializes in digital and internet marketing services including web design, SEO, social media and strategy.