SEO was simple compared to today's standards, and media, while in digital marketing, was not yet the behemoth that it's today.. Then Google shook things up with their Panda and Penguin updates, had positive impact on SEO industry.. These new challenges SEO led marketers to what they believed were greener pastures, meant Facebook, with its massive built-in audience and scary-effective targeting capabilities.. Many marketers thought, Why go through all of the time and effort to create great content and then build links to it that meet Google's guidelines when I can just build Facebook page for my business and rake in tons of free traffic... In either case, the result was amazing — nearly all of your audience would see most of your page's posts, making it easy to drive tons of highly relevant and engaged traffic to your website.. This is why, addition to the obvious channels for marketer, I also conduct networking, outbound sales, and even have in print publications, and recommend that our clients do the same.. In fact, as we've seen recent years thanks to the introduction of things like structured markup, voice search, and intelligence, the role of professionals. Many marketers who left SEO have been driven back thanks to Facebook whittling down their organic reach to virtually nothing, and for simple and logical reason — it's still incredibly powerful and reliable channel.. That's not the case however, because they can change the rules at moments notice, nullifying all of the time, effort, and money you've invested.. Sure, your rankings may fluctuate based on number of factors, including algorithmic changes, competition, and your efforts, and unless you engage in spammy, high-risk tactics, you're unlikely to disappear from the search engines..
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