For almost a year, we at exploreB2B researched the connections between SEO, social business strategies, and content marketing. We conducted many interviews with international experts and drew our own conclusions

1. The Expert’s Guide to Online Marketing
Part 1:
What is “Traditional SEO,” and does
it still work?

2. The Guide
• For almost a year, we at exploreB2B researched
the connections between SEO, social business
strategies, and content marketing.
• We conducted many interviews with
international experts and drew our own
conclusions
• This report is our wrap up – a complete summary
on what we have learned from our own
experience and from the experts.

3. The Experts
• Lee Odden, Top Rank Marketing
• Kevin Cain, Director of Content Strategy,
OpenView Venture Partners
• Adam Torkildson, VP of Operations, Customer
Hook
• Jonathan Gebauer, CEO & co-­­founder of
exploreB2B
• Gisele Navarro Mendez, freelance social SEO
consultant and blogger

4. Lee Odden on the Past of SEO
“Those were the days of the Yahoo! Directory, Excite,
Lycos, HotBot, Alta Vista and later, paid inclusion to
Inktomi.
SEO tactics at the time focused on adding keywords to
web pages, title tags, meta and description tags.
We created landing pages for each major search engine,
modifying content and page formats to increase the
chances of ranking on specific keywords for specific
search engines.
Submitting (and re-­­ submitting) web sites to directories
and getting them included on ‘What’s New’ review lists
attracted traffic and buyers.”

5. Lee Odden on the Start of Google
For Lee Odden, who has a long-time SEO career,
this was the rise of the SEO business. He was
around for the first, big shift in search that came
with the introduction of Google’s search engine.
“Google came on the scene and SEO focused a
lot more on links.”

6. exploreB2B’s Comment
SEO is something that has been constantly
changing since its rise in the nineties. The focus
on links, which is very often viewed now as
“traditional SEO,” was the first evolution of
original SEO.

7. Kevin Cain
“SEO has evolved from being a somewhat
formulaic process into an art and a science.
Because of updates like Penguin and Panda, the
rules of the game are in a continual state of flux.
As a result, you can’t rest your laurels and
expect to get results.
You’ve really got to evolve your strategy as
Google continues to change.“

8. exploreB2B’s Comment
Google keeps refining their algorithms for better
results for the person performing the search
every once in a while evolution leaps forward
and marketers are able to adapt to this change
Kevin notes that these changes are something
SEOs must live and come to terms with to adapt
their strategies.

9. Adam Torkildson
“Every new algorithm change, all the new
mobile initiatives, the localization and
personalization, and the tightening of referring
data in analytics all lead me to believe that
Google is actively trying to put SEOs out of a job,
and turn their search results into something
impossible to influence in any way.“

10. Jonathan Gebauer
“The thing about SEO strategy is that it can work
in ‘the now’ but backfire in the future.
This is not just due to Google’s algorithm
updates, but also from over­optimizing content.
Content might be good for search, but hard on
readers’ eyes and brains.”

11. Jonathan Gebauer
„SEO still is valid when used in
conjunction with the production of high-­­quality
content and as a technique to improve other
marketing efforts.
What is currently dying is SEO as a sole
technique for driving traffic and profit.“

12. Gisele Navarro Mendez
“As long as SEOs keep seeing themselves as
detached from the bigger marketing picture,
they will keep falling into sketchy methods that
might bring them short­term results, but won’t
contribute to their clients’ successes.”

13. Jonathan Gebauer
„A good friend of mine once put it this way:
‚Good SEO is no SEO.’ I would rephrase that:
‚Good SEO is natural SEO.’
Recent developments at Google make me
believe that they might actually be of the same
opinion.“

14. exploreB2B’s Conclusion
Search engines are built to give their users
quality content that matches their search terms
– the main goal of SEO is to attract more traffic
from searches.
After all, was there ever a possibility of these
two coexisting in the long run if they did not
focus on the same aspect of giving search
engine users the high-­­quality content they
were looking for?

15. More to come …
Stay tuned for part 2 of the Expert’s Guide to
Online Marketing where we will talk about
2. The Recent Rise of Content Marketing