SEO is certainly not a new topic. But, it continually astounds me that there are still sites representing large brands that are practically invisible to search engine spiders. That old tree falling in the forest analogy comes to mind. If you are selling the best jeans out there, but you don’t have a store or placement in a store in the mall where your customers are shopping for jeans, they will likely buy jeans at a store that IS in that mall.

Why then, would you not want to be front and center when a potential customer or client is actively looking for your product in the biggest mall in the universe—the virtual mall. Pretty homepages with great experience only go so far if nobody can find the site. And just incorporating SEO best practices really doesn’t do the trick anymore. The competition is out there vying for the best positioning, just as they would with store placement in a mall. Best Practices barely levels the playing field at this point.

SEO is not just about tagging anymore, although that is still very important. It’s also about strategic marketing. Crawlable content, SEO copywriting, strategic linking and social and PR optimization are all ingredients in the recipe for SEO success. In my opinion, SEO is one of the best digital marketing investments that any brand can make. The upfront cost will be made back manifold if your brand is ranking at the top of the search results.

When building a site, carving out the cost of SEO from the beginning will alleviate the larger cost of going back to fix it later. You don’t have to give up experience for SEO, you just need to put the pieces in place to ensure that there is a balance. Make sure that whoever is building your site has strong SEO experience and success. Ask to see examples. In the end, if you build the site, put the extra effort in to make sure “they” (aka your potential customers) will come.