Why Search Marketing Is Like A Buffet

Today I thought why not have a little fun and combine two of my passions: food and search marketing. I’d like to lay down the similarities both (apparently quite nicely) have and how the overall impact is both delicious and successful!

You know how you get walked past the buffet area on your way to your table, checking out where you want to go first, second, third and so on? You’re strategizing your experience, right? Just the same with search marketing you need to check out your options, start thinking about how customers may find you and what methods you want to use to get your message out there.
Let’s continue and see how our buffet matches up with your search marketing.

The Salad Bar

I can sometimes be like many others out there and skip the salad bar. I mean, I’m dropping good coin on my buffet experience so why fill up on lettuce, am I right? Well, the thing is, this might be your only chance to get in some good raw veggies and some proper nutrition before indulging in your food feast. Let’s be honest, we want to skip this step and get right to the good stuff that’s on the hot table, but we also know that skipping this part isn’t the best of moves!

Ok, so how does this fit into search marketing? Think of this like your on-page SEO. Just like getting your veggies in is good for your overall health and setting you up to handle the saucy, sugary, deep-fried goodness that awaits, your on-page SEO does the same thing. Setting up the ideal pages of your site with the keywords you want Google to associate with that page, the title tags, as well as meta descriptions to tell the quick story of the page are all good starters.

The Soup & Bread Bar

It looks tempting seeing the freshly baked bread, the piping hot soups and those delicious scents that emanate from this area of the buffet. You want to grab one of each crusty baked goodness, readying to dip it in a large bowl of soup. But what happens when you fill up on liquids? Of course, your stomach starts to expand and you begin to feel full even though you haven’t hit the main courses yet. You almost feel scammed because while you know you’ve done something good you can’t help but feel like you overdid it and now you don’t have the room to keep going. And that’s why you know you’re best to go with quality and go with something small and tasty but not enough that you’re too full to go on.

And just like not overdoing it you don’t want to overdo it on your off-page SEO, better known as link building. It’s not about the most links that wins the game it’s about smaller numbers but higher quality. So you don’t need to try every bread at the table, nor every soup or even the biggest bowl of one of them. With link building, you’ll be more satisfied with great quality over quantity.

The Hot Foods

The hot foods bar, the holy grail of why you’re at the buffet in the first place. There are so many choices and so many tasty items that all you want to do is load up everything onto one plate. You desire to create a mountain of food, carelessly mixing in anything and everything knowing full well the sweet and sour chicken and the 6-cheese lasagna should not mix with the jerk chicken and pancakes – but you don’t care because it’s all too good, all too tasty and so you load up and head back to your table to feast the glorious feast.

Search marketing is a lot of great looking things too. It’s not just SEO! There’s social media, paid search, email marketing, content creation and more. It’s really a lot of ways that you can choose to target and be visible to potential customers. But the thing is not everything is necessarily right for every business. Just because Facebook has a billion users doesn’t mean it’s the best place to target your customers. Nor is the idea of ranking for the bestest of the best keywords going to happen or even be able to drive the best customers to your site. Search marketing is about researching and testing and continuously optimizing to keep up with the ever-evolving user.

Piling up the goodies just because it looks or sounds good just won’t do the trick anymore. More than likely it’ll give you a bad case of indigestion and the saying “I won’t be doing that ever again”. That’s pretty much bang on to what I’ve heard from a lot of people who tried all different kinds of search marketing tactics without a sound strategy.

The Ever-Yummy Dessert Bar

Oh glorious day! For every plate you’ve licked clean and every delicacy you have sent on the journey to your tummy culminates with the finish line – the ever-yummy dessert bar! There’s ice creams, cakes, pies and little 2-bites that must all be indulged. And why the little plates? Why not just sneak over to the hot food table and get a real plate, a large plate big enough to hold every tasty morsel of sugary goodness.

Do you know what I like to compare the dessert bar to? That’s the sweet time when the leads are rolling in, your search marketing strategy is on point and you’ve done the right things to lead up to this point that would allow those sweet treats to flow like the chocolate fountain you’re gazing at right now. You didn’t overdo it on any of the other sections of the buffet. You were strategic knowing that the dessert bar was the ultimate goal. You may have sampled a few things but you filled up on what was best to make sure you had the room to enjoy your “just desserts”.