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In your company, or client's company:
Does SEO come out of the marketing budget?
Does it come out of the advertising budget?
Or does it come out of the "Web site maintence" budget?
Which one *should* it come out of?
For one of my clients, the money comes from the marketing budget. In another, it is considered web site maintence. I go back and forth with where it should be..on the one hand, it clearly falls under "marketing", but there is so much work on the back end keeping up with the search engine changing, (cloaking/ programming, etc) it seems it should be more of a maintence type expense...especially in the beginning when you put the web site together.
I think this could be an interesting discussion, and I'd appreciate some replies.
-G
<edit to get rid of the entire thing being underlined>
(edited by: grnidone at 9:30 pm (gmt) on July 13, 2001
I found a new job........and I will add [cheesy] WebmasterWorld had alot to do with this [/cheesy].
...the typo Queen strikes again!
(edited by: mivox at 9:58 pm (gmt) on July 13, 2001
<added>
Boy, did it work! Currently, an estimated 60% of our incoming leads are generated by the web.
IMHO - Might as well just shut the site down.
Its like printing 10k brocures and letting them sit on the printers dock and hoping someone will pick them up.
SEO is an ADVERTISING DELIVERY SYSTEM both in function and cost.
If your advertising is not worth delivering, you (not you personally Mivox) better take a closer look at it.
minnapple
(edited by: minnapple at 11:32 pm (gmt) on July 13, 2001(edited by: minnapple at 11:33 pm (gmt) on July 13, 2001
Don't get me started... ;) Just got sprung on me today. I'm very glad it's Friday. Not sure why I work here 40 hours a week, if all I'm doing is website maintenance and the occasional brochure design job, but if the paycheck's there, I'll take it...
This is the sort of thing that happens when you work for a company too small to have "departmental budgets."
After all it is Friday the 13th.
Its just a low blip on the radar.
Keep your head up, the future is sure to bring better days.
Hang in there. At least it's Friday...
LOL... Don't see us getting too much bigger. :) I think the company has a critical employee mass of 6-7. If we hire more than 7 people, someone ends up quitting or getting fired.
I know your pain mivox.
I too feel your pain
Of course, that is my background :)
I was going to ask a semi-related question on this:
Do you view SEO as "Sport"? For example, getting that high ranking on my most important phrase gives me an adrenaline rush and I get all excited for 10 minutes. Thinking about the task, the SEO's job is to beat other SEO's and the SE's alike. Getting to the top of the hill is exciting! So it is kind of a "sport" with competitors, vs. just a job or maintainence procedure, IMHO. Anyone agree?
When I was competeing for rank it was a rush. Now my focus is traffic and it's a different rush, more against myself and keywords. the more targeted the keywords folks are coming in on, the bigger the rush.
I think SEO is a marketing function, in terms of the whole company mission.
Advertising <distribution/media placement> if we are looking at the site in and of itself.
SEO Olympics. :)
"Hey, it's not a job. It's a lifestyle."
So if you have your own SEO corporation, are you a SEOEO? (Search Engine Optimization Executive Officer) or a SEOCEO?
(Search Engine Optimization Chief Executive Officer)
For a commercial site, I think it's infinitely more important to consider your site's goals and how well you are meeting them, than concentrating on how highly ranked you are on a specific phrase. What's your ROI for site maintenance AND promotion? What are your monthly sales? How's your profit margin looking?
If you set up an online store with the modest goal of making a living for your family rather than becoming the next Amazon.com, and your online store nets $5000/month, you're meeting your goals, even if you're only ranked #145 for "handcrafted deluxe widgets" on Google. You might have a choice AOL directory listing (free listing through DMOZ, and almost impossible to do SEO 'tweaking' on, in my understanding), and have spent $199 for a decent Yahoo! listing.
Of course, SEO can be an important part of reaching that goal, but it's not quite the same as the "Yeah, but are you #1?" macho high-school muscle-car weekend-dragster attitude. ;)
A little tense?
I merely meant that most web masters have no idea how to drive traffic to the sites that they build
"And, can you, um, do... uh... the search things, get my site in them?"
"So then, all you have to do is give my site to the search places?"
etc., etc...
Like as new driver trying to race a macho high-school muscle-car weekend-dragster in an old Honda Civic, asking, "So, um... the gas, go faster... what do I push? Or do I pull it? 'Pedal' I think...?"
IMO SEO is marketing, but so is pretty much everything to do with most web sites...in my last but one job the web site was entirely run by the marketing department
Well, and a sport, too :)
"This is the sort of thing that happens when you work for a company too small to have "departmental budgets."
That is both a blessing and a curse, once the company gets "big enough" to have departmental budgets they can cost more in time and money to figure out who gets what and where resources will be taken from to fund this or that than it is worth.
IMHO, SEO should fit in Marketing/Information Architecture. The goals are marketing driven, but seeing as SEO may often alter structure and/or navigation of a site the common goal IMHO should be to increase traffic while improving the structure, infomration flow, and navigation of the site.
SEO is merely an extension of information architecture in that SEO sees the web as the information space instead of just the site, and attempts to create a user path to ring up the sale starting right after the "you've got mail" chirp, as opposed to leaving it up to marketing to actually get people to come to the site.
