The Secret to SEO... Make It One Louder

Congrats to you if you recognize the reference to Rob Reiner's brilliant "mockumentary" from the 80's, "This is Spinal Tap." Further congrats if you also realize that to break through all the noise and chatter on the Internet, you're going to need to take it up a notch.

Content publishing, content production, content curation; these buzzwords represent the majority of focus in today's marketing. Whether through blogs, videos, infographics or interactive media, content keeps the Internet alive. Unfortunately, it's also what clogs its arteries, as it steadily and abundantly flows from an infinity of sources. What's a marketer to do to stand out?

Know your audience
The reason "This is Spinal Tap" and movies like it built a cult following is that they knew the audience that they were targeting. The movie, about an aging rock band going on their latest tour, gently poked fun at the world of rock stars. Musicians instantly recognized that and gravitated to the movie. Some musicians even found a few of the situations hitting too close to home and mistakenly thought the band to be a REAL band.

Targeting with SEO starts with a weekly analysis of your website stats. Analytics programs from Google, Piwik, Open Site Explorer and many more help supplement your hosting stats. Knowing who is visiting, from where they're visiting and how they've arrived at the website will help weed out the tire kickers and strengthen the ranking your campaign is hoping to achieve.

Target an emotion
There's no question that all involved with this film were operating at the top of their game. The fact that a lot of the movie was improvised highlights the talent on display. To make fun of the rock music community while also providing laughs to that very same community is no small feat. As a musician myself, I still enjoy the film on many levels, not just the humor.

The social element now necessary in SEO becomes much more active and responsive when an emotional element is attached. Humor is one way to trigger those retweets, shares and plus ones. It's also the most difficult. Luckily, we humans possess a wide range of emotions. With a good story, your marketing is bound to trigger an emotional connection on some level to a customer. Becoming a storyteller, your marketing campaigns may even lead to other projects yet unimagined.

Create a quality product
Though we only knew him as "Meathead" from "All in the Family," I don't think many of us knew if we'd get a quality film. Happily, we did and Rob Reiner continued to bring us moviegoers a long list of popular films.

SEO works best as a long term campaign. Yes, getting traffic quickly is a necessity for generating an immediate ROI. The problem with that singular focus is that trendy campaigns burn up quickly and don't lay a solid foundation for when the search engines change their algorithms. We've all heard about the disastrous results when Google unleashed Panda & Penguin. Why not spend a little more time to produce much more memorable results?

The bottom line is, SEO in no longer strictly about keywords. It's the starting point from which marketers establish an emotional connection with customers while creating a quality, long-lasting marketing product. Think not of marketing as solely a tactic, but as a creative entity. Just as an artist composes a song, paints a mural or writes a story (all of which can exist in a marketing campaign), so too can a marketer create a campaign work of art.

Now, go take your marketing to eleven.

"As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll."