By now, if you haven't heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you need to stop letting your mother buy your clothes and get out more.

SEO is what an organization does to help other people find the organization's website more easily.

SEO is what an organization does to help other people find the organization's website more easily. It involves everything from adding website content to putting good search words in page titles to creating links elsewhere that point back to your website. But you probably already knew that.

From a perspective specific to SEO, the organization exists in one of three trimesters:

• Trimester I: From the very birth of the company all the way to a basic established product and first customers.
• Trimester II: From established product and first customers to just before you have brand recognition in your target market.
• Trimester III: From brand recognition in your target market to the end of time.

SEO is Public Relations, not Advertising

Search Engine Optimization is for organizations in Trimester II.

You don't yet have a brand, but you do have at least some established customers. You know your product or service back-to-front, and you understand exactly why your customers choose your product or service over alternatives. You don't yet however, have brand recognition. For example, everyone knows that British Airways flies from London to New York, so British Airways doesn't need SEO to tell people that. Or more specifically, British Airways doesn't need search engines to tell people that British Airways will fly you from New York to London. (They do need advertising to remind people of what they already know and believe, but advertising has little to do with SEO, so I won't get distracted by that for the moment).

...SEO helps search engines match your product or service with someone looking for a solution to the problem you solve.

Trimester II is a kind of "between world" where you are not yet recognized for the terrific product or service that you know you have, so you need more potential customers to find out about you. You know when that happens, they can become prospects and eventually, happy customers. You just need a way to help them find you, and that is where SEO comes in by performing the role of "Matchmaker". The potential customers want to find you and you want them to. All SEO does is help search engines match your product or service up with someone looking for a solution to the problem you solve. They just haven't heard of you yet.

When is SEO not as useful?

If you don't yet have a product or service, you don't yet have anything to sell to your customers, right? So why would you go looking for customers.

In order to "attract the right mate", you first need to understand what your main attraction is. The better you understand who you are and what you have to offer, the better chance you have of attracting the right person. It's the same with SEO. So, if your product or service is not yet ready, you might wait until you've got that all squared away -- complete with established, well understood customers -- before you go looking for more of them.

Does that help at all?