This article and below infographic from seobook.com, are quite enlightening, as they provide unique insight (at least for me) and puts Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in perspective, and within the confines of traditional marketing.

The takeaway for me was there always has been, and always will be, behind-the-scene forces at play within marketing and associated tactics (call it manipulation or influence if you’d like).  For an end user, marketing / ads should always be consumed with a grain of salt, as nothing is as it may seem.

If you practice marketing tactics, including SEO to promote your business (or other people’s businesses), it may be helpful to keep marketing efforts in perspective for your own sanity, and/or that of your customers or clients.

The following from Seobook.com is worth a review as it may help align marketing tactics with business objectives, and hopefully provoke ideas on how to better leverage both traditional marketing and SEO by how things are, and can be “influenced”.

Marketing vs Manipulation