When trying to secure more enquiries from a website engaging content is more important than ever. This has resulted in a change in the relationship between businesses and the agencies employed to deliver an improved website rank on the search engines. This article discusses the key changes and suggests a revised business/agency relationship.

There are two key elements to search engine marketing known as On-site and Off-site SEO. On-site SEO is well understood and has changed little in recent years. It is associated with website code and how it is interpreted by the major search engines. Page content is probably more important than ever, but the meta title and meta descriptions are still relevant. Meta keywords still have a role, although their importance has significantly reduced over time.

Offsite SEO for any business is associated with building site credibility as measured by the search engine algorithms. Traditionally, this was measured by the number of incoming links to a website. Over time this measure improved to cover the number, quality and relevance of incoming links. It is less about links and more about how users engage with a website.

Relevant content, both on and off-site, should engage users as search engines attempt to measure this engagement. There appears to be little doubt quality incoming links are still important. But now content and how that content is shared and engaged with is key. There is much hype about content marketing and social sharing content via the various major social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and (key for business) LinkedIn.

The implications for traditional search engine marketing agencies are major. In the past, an SEO agency could optimise a website co (onsite) and build quality inbound links (offsite) with minimal reference back to the client. A business could engage a marketing agency to improve the position of the business website and leave them to deliver.

With the increasing importance of relevant content, it is no longer possible for a business to simply hire and forget an agency. The business is in the best possible position to generate content (and lots of it). The marketing agency role is to set the content marketing strategy and formulate a plan, enhance basic content delivered by the business and distribute that content by the most appropriate media to secure engagement.

For successful search engine marketing, a partnership is required between the business and the marketing agency. Between them, engaging content must be generated and delivered to potential customers on an ongoing basis. Appropriate media (including social media) must be chosen to ensure the content reaches the target audience.