SEO Is In Its PMM Era

SEO is not dead, it never will be, it’s just always changing.

It’s going through its different eras. Ya know like Taylor Swift! That’s what all the cool kids talk about, idk not really a fan but she moves the needle so let’s combine T-Swift, SEO & PMM!

SEO is a weird industry that is somehow on the cutting edge but also stuck in the dial-up days. There is very little agreement on what works and what doesn’t. Someone could publish a great study about doing “x task resulting in a major lift” and there will still be people telling them they are wrong and/or stupid on Twitter. I want to get people out of the old days of just SEO content and focus on Product (or Service) Marketing Management. Cross-functional digital marketing lead by someone used to diving deep into various areas of marketing (content, PR, analytics, etc.)

SEO is changing and it’s turning into Product Marketing Management (PMM) or Service Marketing Management depending on the business.

Product Marketing Management Is SEO

“A product marketing manager (PMM) or product marketer’s job spans sales, product, marketing, and customer engagement. Marketing products and services beyond the launch date. Reviewing revenues, pipeline, usage, or other metrics to understand the impact that product marketing activities have had. Scaling products across business lines and regions.” – Qualtrics

This is what my job has been since I started in SEO.

• I work with the Sales and/or Product to understand what is being sold.
• I work with Digital Marketers to develop a content and marketing strategy that could span email, social, paid ads and more.
• I work with Analytics to understand customer engagement to better develop the strategies above. What channels work? What content resonates? Where do we need to invest or improve?

SEOs are weird in the best way. We are super curious by nature and want to be involved in everything related to digital. And guess what, Google is heading that way.

“SERP features are now responsible for a staggering 65% of a SERP’s visibility.” – Stat

Look at all these SERP features.

Gone are the days of 10 blue links from websites. There are so many ways to show in the SERPs now, many of which have nothing to do with your website. Social Media, Videos, Ads, Local Listings and Overviews are taking over. Those arent traditional SEO, but you need to optimize those for the search engines…

What’s Next for SEO As PMM?

Find trusted sources that are thinking ahead and not just doing what’s been done. Find people that solve for their customer base. At the end of the day that is what Google & Bing are trying to do. They may not be great at it sometimes, but their goal is to provide information for users to solve whatever their problem may be (finding a product or service).

Mike Ciffone is a great SEO thought leader that I highly recommend following. Below is an amazing post about “should I do this for SEO?” which I have to answer all the time. The response always is “does it help our users?“.

This shows we have moved on as SEOs to Product Marketing Managers. We are managing the entire digital experience for our users to solve whatever problem they may have. We are cross functional with the entire business with the sole purpose of putting our best foot forward.

Another incredible follow is Chloe Smith. Not sure why I can’t embed her post, but the screenshot below is another great representaiton of how we should be framing SEO tasks as Product or Service tasks that help our users.

I’ll admit that im still guilty of doing this sometimes. Saying “this is good for SEO” or “this is an SEO best practice” when trying to push a task through. Rarely does that have any success. But the longer I have been in-house the more I understand that tasks are pushed through based on the value to the business and the users. “This is good for SEO” is not as powerful as “Creating this content will draw more users to our website allowing them to take a desired action“.

Shoutout Chloe for the Sunny reference!

I don’t need to hype up Ian Lurie, he’s a must follow and hopefully you already are! His post below on Digital 101 sort of conflicts what I’m wirting here that SEO is in a different era, but still supports the argurement that we work for users. You as a business either has a service or product that solves a problem. What is the problem? How do you solve it? How can users move forward?

Last post is from Carrie Rose about the state of the SERPs today. As I linked above the SERPs are drastically different today and if you arent getting on board with that you’re not gonna have a good time.

“Costco Nugget Couch” is searched 2,900/month according to SEMrush. The second result is a bunch of random TikTok creators with actual experiences using the product. This is the direction search engines and really all of digital marketing is heading. Real experiences that people can relate to. Reddit is covering the SERPs for almost all queries, so is TikTok and Twitter. This may not be the strategy for everyone, but it very clearly shows that SEO is not just publish content on your website anymore! Find where your customers are and be there ready with your marketing message.

My Take On SEO & Where It’s Going

We as SEOs have always been involved in other areas of digital. This shouldn’t be too big of an ask to start adopting other channels as part of the marketing strategy for organic search. This is more for those looking to start working in SEO or taking it on as a new marketing investment. Dont just blindly follow advice like ‘content is king’. Thats way too broad and likely will not work the way you think it will.

Find trusted sources like I linked above who are constantly testing and iterating their strategies for a sustainable approch and not just going after whats hot now. Ask your customers for feedback and adapt your strategies. SEO won’t ever die, but it will always be changing. Solving your users problems however will never die.

No real Taylor Swift comparisons besides the Era’s thing, sorry if anyone made it this far and is a big Swiftie!