Has SEO Now Become A Hybrid Discipline?

The job titles ‘digital marketing consultant’ and ‘SEO consultant’ were once separate entities. They might have had skills which crossed over, but the former focused more on emotions and the latter on conforming to the algorithms set down by the Google search engine.

SEO is changing. Updates like Google Penguin have changed the way we look at SEO and how Google ranks websites. It’s got to the point where SEO is now a hybrid discipline. Simply knowing the technical data about how websites are ranked isn’t good enough any longer. Google wants it to be this way.

Emotional SEO

Google wants SEO to be more than a list with lots of boxes to tick. It makes it easier to manipulate and it doesn’t reflect the will of users as well as it should. We now have something called ‘emotional SEO’. Now, this isn’t an official term. It does reveal something important for digital marketers and SEO consultants.

The websites at the top of Google need to connect with people. They have to be able to elicit a reaction from their audience. This focus on social media has made traditional SEO techniques like keywords and backlinking less effective and less important.

Two Disciplines Connected

SEO is definitely a hybrid discipline. A good SEO consultant needs to know everything about digital marketing to boost the SEO value of a website. Google actively measures the amount of Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter ‘re-tweets’ to determine how popular a website is. Digital marketers, obviously, already do this.

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SEO consultants might not have any experience with this. It means independent SEO consults will need to adjust their strategies if they are to stay relevant. Conventional SEO is most certainly dying and this is now a hybrid discipline.

Better for You

This might seem like a bad move because it essentially wipes out one field to combine it with another. It’s actually a good thing. You can increase your set of skills as this change forces you to dabble in digital marketing, and vice-versa. We will all become marketing consultants and it expands the field.

The demand for SEO consultants won’t change. Most people don’t understand the full extent of SEO and the micro changes Google make every month. They only grasp the basics. They’ll still want good SEO, but you will need to employ marketing techniques to create a potent SEO campaign.

Is it Here Yet?

We’ve been discussing the concept of the hybrid discipline as if it’s here right now. It’s not yet here and you don’t have to worry about it too much yet. Google is clearly working towards this reality with the shift towards SEO. Metrics from various SEO consultants have demonstrated how keywords and backlinks are becoming less effective.

The best thing you can do is to prepare now for this change by learning about digital marketing, and specifically social media marketing. As of this writing, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter are set to become the main platforms for good SEO.

Kenneth Adams

About the Author:

Today’s post is contributed by Kenneth Adams. He is a computer enthusiast, a SEO pro and an avid blogger. He recommends Adelaide SEO services to his readers who want to improve their websites ranking considerably.