The Search Economy: How to Explain SEO Like You're Talking to a Toddler

You can learn a lot about marketing by moments spent with your children. I’m extremely fortunate to have two daughters (2.5 years and 7 months) who are my everything. They give me moments every day that are rewarding, challenging, and without a shadow of a doubt memorable. One of those moments happened to me yesterday morning when I was driving my daughters to daycare. My oldest daughter, Jolene has reached the point in her life where she’s got an opinion on everything. Most specifically, she’s got an opinion on my driving and what music she wants to listen to while in the car. I wasn’t expecting what followed to be a lesson for me on how to think about being a better marketer.

She yelled, “Daddy, I want Daft Punk”. I have to laugh as I type this. Like what kind of 2.5 year old not only knows who Daft Punk is, but requests it on the Bluetooth on her way to daycare? Needless to say, I’m a music junkie and have tried my best to bring awareness to all of the great music that exists outside of the mainstream. I hit play on “Around the World” and she started smiling until we hit a red light. I was stalled behind a Ford F150 and she screams out, “Daddy, don’t stop, go!”. I let her know that I had to stop on red and brushed it off until the next stop light. Once again, “Daddy, don’t stop, go!”. This was the moment where I uncovered something amazing going on in her brain. She was wired to think that I couldn’t stop the car if Daft Punk was playing and Daft Punk meant we were always in motion. The result of this moment was an education on how traffic and stoplights work. I told her green means go, yellow means slow down, and red means stop. This is pretty basic information that I’ve always just taken for granted until my toddler needed a quick tutorial on how driving on a public road works. 

Explaining SEO Like You're Talking to a Toddler

I couldn’t stop reflecting on this moment on my drive home. My brain wondered about my professional life. I thought about all of the complex and complicated things about marketing that people don’t take the time to understand because they’re not explained in a way that’s easy for people to understand. I started to think about topics like AI, marketing attribution, and distribution. Inevitably, I started thinking about SEO which is a big topic for me in my new role at Pneuma and also an extremely challenging discipline for most marketers without subject matter expertise. Typically, SEO isn’t explained in the green means go, yellow means slow down, and red means stop way. When you consume content on SEO it goes in one ear and out the other. Many agencies who provide services in SEO make understanding it too complex. I've been on the other side of these conversations and within the first 5 minutes my eyes start crossing. So, I’m going to activate my “talk to my audience like a toddler” mode to explain the easiest way that we should be thinking about SEO. 

Social Media Starts Conversations. SEO Makes Your Brand a Part of Existing Conversations.

The proliferation of social media has changed the way companies think about creating awareness for their brand. When you post on social media your intention is to start a conversation. You're trying to get your audience’s attention to begin to start a dialogue online about ideas, problems, or topics that are adjacent to what your company can help solve. It’s become more and more of a challenge to not only earn attention with social media, but to start conversations because everyone is doing it every day. It’s undeniable that social media will be a piece of creating brand awareness for the foreseeable future, but have you thought about how you’re capturing existing conversations about the topics that your brand is an expert on? 

This is where SEO fits in and becomes stupid simple to understand. We use social media to try to start conversations. We use SEO as a channel to enter conversations that already exist. We’re living in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲. Your next customer is spending more time online than ever before. Your next customer values access and convenience. When your next customer has a problem they are going to Google and whoever shows up at the top of page 1 has the strongest chance of getting the first “at bat” for their business. The conversations are already happening. SEO is your wedge into that world of conversations. 

You don’t need to become an expert overnight. You don’t need to understand the changes with Google, the technical side, or the intricacies of how SEO works. You just need to be in the right place at the right time when those existing conversations around topics that you can help with are happening. This is where SEO becomes a super power for growth. 

Daft Punk jokes aside, you don’t need a robot to do it. You just need a team that can help you get in front of your next customer and explain to you like a toddler how they’re doing it. 

If you want to quit losing to your competition and start capturing demand, book your free traffic audit today.