FOOD for thought today from Lee Odden, Internet Marketing Genius…..
My favorite food metaphor for the relationship between search, social, and content is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with SEO [search engine optimization] as the peanut butter, social media as the jelly, and content as the bread that holds it all together.
Bread. Most people think of the bread as the most important part of the sandwich. While it holds or binds things together, it wouldn’t be a SANDWICH without it. Right? As with websites, you can’t have a page without content to let clients know whether or not they have found what they were looking for. Content is EXTREMELY important. That being said, just throwing some “content” on the page isn’t going to keep users engaged, which is REALLY the entire intent of a website. Yes? Offering something, whether it is a product, news or a service, is usually the purpose of a website. You HAVE to keep the visitor engaged and using BORING content is NOT going to help you reach your goals. We’ll have to do further elaboration on the FRESHNESS of bread later.
Peanut Butter. I’m SO sorry for those that have allergies to it (sorry Kayla), but my family couldn’t live without it. It’s just a staple – on bagels, on toast, on apples, eating it straight out of the container – it’s just a staple. Just as Search Engine Optimization should be a staple to any website marketing venture. SEO can be broken down into so many different parts, but it all boils down to optimizing the page for exactly what you are attempting to share on THAT page. It waters down the search results when people put too many things in their titles, H1’s, and descriptions. In the long run, you should optimize correctly. FOR PEOPLE. Google/Yahoo/Bing doesn’t buy your product or your service, REAL people do. If “bots” could shop……wow!
Jelly. Yes, you could eat a plain peanut butter sandwich with just peanut butter and bread, but that’s not interesting. Why not jazz it up a bit with some jelly? Jelly is sticky and messy and requires some maintenance – like extra napkins. So does Social Media Marketing. With 900 million people using Facebook (not to mention Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest – my personal favorite), companies NEED to use social media as a way to engage with new and potential clients. But it’s messy, just like jelly, requiring attention and almost constant maintenance. Kind of like eating a PB&J Sandwich with white pants on. I know, it’s a lot to keep up with, but you just need to do it. Or pay someone to do it.
When the combination of good to great content, social media, and proper search engine optimization, the search engines can drive a TON of traffic to your website. Isn’t that what we are all trying to do? Just remember, it’s not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich WITHOUT any of the parts. Gotta have the bread (content), peanut butter (SEO), and that messy jelly (social media) for it to be a good website. OOOPS – I meant sandwich.
