Quite often optimization and marketing are confused. This error has been made by both those in the industry and John Q. Public.

There can be quite an overlap in their functions (and optimization should be an integral part of any marketing methodology) and the two definitely blend together and work hand in hand. Much of the discrepency can be attributed to the fact that many organizations with a presence on the web have neither the luxury nor the bank account to be able to hire on separate development and marketing teams.

And there you have it, optimization is a function of the development team and marketing is generally a separate entity. Never forget that marketing is generally the engine that drives most things, and your website should not be different. The marketing department is responsible for the corporate image, the various campaigns and therefore should provide the outline and overseaing of the development and design of the website.

The development team (including design) is responsible for adhering to and accomplishing the goals set out by the marketing team. It is the development team that should be coding to standards, using industry best practices, ensuring that the site is developed incorporating accessibility standards, and ensuring a high degree of usability is included. Essentially development should know the optimization requirements for the site.

Marketing on the other hand, while providing the initial guidelines regarding look and feel of a site to attract and keep the correct demographic on your site, should focus on content development. Part of content development is speaking to your audience, ensuring that the website has value to the visitor and provides the information required. The other part of marketing a website includes focusing your content on the specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business, website and industry. Often this is simply an effort in focused writting, paying close attention to what you are saying and not allowing your thoughts or content to wander off topic.

Once killer content has been developed, marketing will develop appropriate titles and meta tags (descriptions and keywords) for each page of the website. The last stage is the physical submissions of the website into the correct category(ies) on the search engines and directories.

That, in a nutshell is the basis of organic search engine optimization.