Morpho Designs

SEO and the Pizza Parlor

I was talking with my friend Todd, today. I was on a little rant about how - despite my efforts - too many of my customers and prospects just don’t get the whole traffic business. During this exchange, I compared SEO to pizza parlors. Besides making Todd hungry, this analogy brought an epiphany: SEO is becoming irrelevant.

Here’s what I said, “SEO, by definition, speaks to the wrong party. [Receiving] organic traffic via SEO is like driving past a pizza parlor and smelling the food. You’ll still be hungry.”

What I was getting at, perhaps a little obliquely, is that you still have to take action to convert organic traffic. As with the pizza parlor, you have to make a decision to stop, park the car and go into the shop. Once inside, will the display of freshly sliced pies entice you into ordering? Will the crowded dining room full of happy customers influence you enough to stay? How about the customer service? Does the proprietor greet you with a hearty welcome?

Here is another way to use the pizza parlor in a mouth-watering analogy:
If you want pizza, you have choices that don’t necessarily include national chains. Besides the neighborhood parlor, there’s always the freezer section of your supermarket. Heck, you could make your own, with Boboli, Ragu and Kraft mozzarella!

People on the web have choices, too. Website owners know this but, those who don’t understand how to promote their sites insist on becoming the next national brand for their product. “Niche” is a foreign word to them. “My product benefits everyone!” “I just need to get more people to my website.”
Arrgh! Says I. What you need is for your happy customers to tell everybody about your website.

If I’m on a forum discussing games, and I see a post asking about the best place to buy an inexpensive simulation of space trading, I can reply enthusiastically, diogames.com. I would extol the joys of playing Orbital Trader. I would talk about the free upgrades and slick interface. In other words, since I know about the quality of the game, I have no problem recommending it.

The interesting thing about all this is that successful businesses have had this referral benefit all along. Surely they pre-dated Google?

I could go on and on but, do you get it? If you do, maybe it’s time for me to put my proposal on a take-out menu.