SEO Needs A Re-Brand

I have been doing “SEO” for a long time and have been lucky enough to work across a wide range of clients from small business to enterprise level, this means that i have had the opportunity to gain a good understanding of what people think of SEO and its function.

It pains me to say it but, SEO needs a re-brand! As a collective we have been dragged through the mud so many times that peoples perception of SEO is truly awful! Those that have some knowledge want to know exactly what, and why they are paying for it because it has a bad reputation. Those people that do not know too much about it ask how many links we will need to buy to rank for keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 etc.

That is why i think the industry needs to re-brand SEO as a service, and change the way we sell it to clients (check out Ryan Stewart‘s Moz post for some solid reasoning on why he stopped selling SEO services oh, he owns an agency too)

While ever Google has the majority share of search engine traffic SEO is not going away but the approach required to succeed has changed dramatically, there is a huge amount of elements that now need to be considered.

There is a lot involved in effective SEO but the goal for any agency deploying any of the above for their clients should have the same aim, driving more traffic.

I am calling on you to have your say and help me change not only the name of the service but also the perception, leave a comment or get in touch via Twitter i would love to hear from you.