Is SEO a Marketing Channel?

Yes. Put it on the report, the budget, the org chart. Organic search is one of the ways customers arrive at a business, so it earns a line beside the others. Nobody is being sloppy.

Where SEO sits inside digital marketing is settled elsewhere, as is whether it counts as performance marketing.

So the word is right in almost every room it gets used in. Then there is one room where it quietly costs money.

A Channel Is Something You Can Hand a Message To

Look at what the word does rather than what it means.

You have something to say. A sale ends Friday. Somebody wrote the sentence, and now it has to get in front of people.

Then the channels turn up. Email takes it. So does radio. A flyer takes it, and so does an ad.

Each one is a place where you hand the sentence over.

That is the whole service. A channel accepts your message, then delivers it. Whatever gets delivered is yours. Every word of it, on a morning you picked.

Notice that none of it depends on anybody wanting it. The email lands in an inbox that never asked. Whether the message works is a separate matter. Delivery, though, is the thing you are buying.

So a channel is a promise about arrival. That promise is the product.

Nothing in Organic Search Takes a Message

Now walk the sentence over to search.

The ads take it. Paid search will carry your sale gladly, which is exactly why nobody argues about whether that one is a channel.

Then look an inch further down the same screen. There is nowhere to hand it in.

You can write a page about the sale. Publishing is easy. Only nothing happens afterwards, because publishing is not sending. The page sits there. It waits to be asked for.

No amount of money changes that. Spend heavily on SEO and the page still meets nobody in search who did not first type something. Somebody has to go looking, in their own words.

So the one thing every other channel sells is the one thing search does not have. Delivery.

Somebody Will Point at the Keywords

A fair objection. You do choose. Targeting is a choice, and keyword work is a considered one.

Look at what you are choosing between. Questions people already ask. Words typed before you woke up. You wrote none of them.

So the choice is real. It is a choice about which existing question you want to be the answer to.

That is selection. Selection was never sending.

One Carries What You Want Said

Every other channel carries what you want said. Search carries what somebody else wanted to know.

They are not the same object. A message is a thing you want heard. An answer is a thing a stranger went hunting for. So you can be excellent at one while holding nothing for the other.

Which is how a marketing team gets a superb quarter and a bare search presence at once. Nothing broke. The two halves were never made of the same material.

The Room Where the Word Costs You Money

Picture a campaign meeting.

Somebody says what the message is. Then it gets cut to fit. Something short for the ad. A longer version for the email.

One message, several channels. That is what a campaign has always been.

Then the channel list gets read out. And SEO is on it, because SEO is a channel.

So the question arrives. What are we doing on search for this?

The answer, often enough, is nothing. Not through laziness, nor because the SEO person is being difficult. There is no version of the announcement that organic search will carry, since nobody is asking about your sale. They have not heard of it. That was rather the point of the campaign.

The word put SEO on the list. Meanwhile the meeting had already settled on the one thing search cannot use.

It rarely gets noticed, either. The budget line stays. Reports keep arriving. So the work carries on quietly, aimed at whatever it was aimed at last quarter. How often SEO reports arrive is another question entirely.

The Half a Channel Never Hands You

Something comes back the other way.

Go looking for the question your message answers. Sometimes you find it, so now you have a page worth writing. Other times a different question sits where you expected yours. Customers are asking about the thing beside your offer, or about the worry underneath it.

That is information you cannot get by sending. A message that goes out reports on how your own sentence performed. It never reports on what anybody wanted to know.

So the exercise pays even when the answer is no. Instead of a delivery, you came back with a list of the things people want explained.

Where the Marketing Channel Argument Stops

None of this makes the word a mistake.

Open the report and organic search really is one of the ways somebody got here. That traffic is real. Comparing it against the other rows is what the column is for.

Nothing here is an argument about how a page ranks, either. Positions still answer to content, to links, to the same patient work as ever.

You also choose every word on the page. That part is entirely yours. What you never choose is the question sitting above it.

There is also one place where a campaign and a search meet. Somebody hears the name, then types it a fortnight later. Real enough, covered elsewhere. Notice, even so, that it is a want the campaign created rather than a message search agreed to carry. Whether SEO counts as paid media is a related argument, settled on another page.

Read Your Last Campaign Line Out Loud

Take the last thing your business sent out. The subject line, or the flyer’s promise.

Then go hunting for the search somebody would have to type for that sentence to be the answer.

Perhaps you find one. Then you have your page, and the two halves of your marketing lined up for once. Write it.

Or nothing comes back. Which is no failure of your SEO. Rather it is the word channel doing its quiet work. It persuades a room that a message pours into search the way it pours into everything else.

No statistic about other companies settles that one. Yours is sitting in your own sent folder. The way SEO benefits other marketing channels is a separate matter, and a friendlier one.

How SEO Company To-The-TOP! Runs the Two Meetings

The fix costs nothing. It is a question, and it belongs at the top of the agenda.

Every other channel starts with what do we want to say. Search starts with what are they asking. Two different questions, so they deserve two meetings. The second opens in keyword research rather than in a message.

SEO Company To-The-TOP! has been doing search engine optimization in Calgary since 2007. A written campaign, beside a channel list with SEO on it, turns up often enough. Often enough the useful hour goes on pulling the two apart. One half is what the business wants said. The other is what a customer wanted to know.

Say a message truly has to go out on a date. Then a Google Ads campaign will carry it. The To-The-TOP! portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached. No guarantees, and three to six months before much moves.

Common Questions About SEO as a Marketing Channel

Is SEO a marketing channel or a strategy?

On a report it is a channel, which is the sense most people mean. Trouble starts when a campaign treats it as somewhere a message can be sent.

Can I run an SEO campaign?

You can run a program of work. Whether campaign is the right word is doubtful, since a campaign has a message and a date. Search has neither.

Why can we not include SEO in the next campaign?

A campaign starts with something you want said. Meanwhile search hands over what a stranger asked about. Nobody asks about a launch they never heard of.

Does that make SEO the weaker channel?

No. It makes it a different purchase. What you buy is a standing answer rather than a delivery.

Should SEO still get its own budget line?

Yes, and its own meeting too. The budget line was never the problem. It was the agenda.