Traditional Marketing Firm vs. Search Marketing Firm
Recently I experienced a situation where a long time search engine optimization client had a website re-designed with a PR/traditional marketing agency.
I am not disappointed that we did not do the re-design as we work with many clients specifically for SEO and SEO only. The reason I was dissappointed in this specific situation is because it brought light and confirmed my views on the differences between most traditional marketing firms and an internet marketing firm.
Don’t get me wrong, traditional marketing firms understand a lot about marketing, PR and that Branding that most all companies need. But they tend to lack on the SEO side of the house, especially with website re-design.
Here are a few things that was needed and was not provided:
- content, content and more content!!!
(the as little as possible approach to a website can definitely increase branding but it kills the ranking ability without something extra.)
- very minimal navigation flow
(you know what I mean, one 10 point navigation a-crossed the bottom with beautiful flash rollover effects, OUCH)
- The smalled regard for old url structure. I am pointing more towards: “what are 301 redirects, I can’t even think of what those pagenames were!”
This is to name some of the most important things overlooked. Of course we will do damage control and resolve everything that has been implemented.
The reason behind this post was to inform people, especially internet marketers that no matter what type of communication you can have with another marketing agency you must always monitor the process. Remember that you are the SEO analyst for a reason and most traditional Marketing/PR firms do not understand the ins and outs of SEO and what we do.
