Is ‘SEO’ Still the Correct Term?

Over time SEO has evolved; however, the job title has remained the same. So does the term ‘SEO’ truly reflect what we do now?

In the past SEO primarily focused on optimising landing pages, building links and conducting audits to fix technical on-site issues. These still remain a vital part of the job however the activities which add to this list have extended. We now focus on creating quality content, optimising across multiple devices and focusing on the customer journey. Overall, we now market and optimise websites for humans, not search engines!

A modern SEO now wears multiple hats across the digital marketing spectrum with skills in content marketing, conversion rate optimisation/UX and social media marketing. The evolved SEO role is now more complex than ever before however a number of aspects have been streamlined thanks to SEO friendly CMS websites like WordPress. CMS websites and readily available plugins fix a number of the technical issues and basic SEO elements which SEO’s in the past used to invest a lot of time optimising and solving.

To summarise, SEO is now the practice of creating a great user experience along with knowledge across a number of marketing channels that work together to enhance search engine visibility compared to previously just optimising webpages for search engines. Is it time that we re-evaluate what we call ourselves?