Better ROI: SEO or Social Media Marketing?

Image Representing Social Media Marketing return on investment

Today’s post is by guest blogger, Steve Floyd.

Better ROI: SEO or Social Media Marketing?

Many social media marketing and SEO companies have debated the benefits of SEO (search engine optimization) versus the use of social media marketing when promoting websites, products, services and entire brands for years. The Internet marketing community’s opinions have shifted with each new technological development, leaving unanswered questions and the truth of whether one option is better than the other.

The Benefits of SEO

Implementing search engine optimization into any website is a way to drastically increase the number of visitors and page views a site can receive. With the proper formatting of SEO in your website, it is possible to find your website’s URL within the first page of search results on popular engines including Yahoo, Bing, and Google. SEO is a way to build your brand by appealing to a specific audience that is interested in the type of products, services or content you are providing. The more relevant the keywords are that you select to promote, the more likely you are to receive genuinely interested visitors to your site who may make a purchase or become a loyal follower.

Why Social Media Marketing is Important

Social media is vital when it comes to Internet marketing. It is also cost-effective and can help you to expand to multiple platforms online when promoting your brand. Using effective social media strategies is a way to instantly connect with a variety of groups, giving you more exposure compared to traditional marketing and advertising tactics. When you use social media marketing, it is possible to gain even more virtual followers and online customers with the use of virtual “likes” and having those who enjoy your brand “share” the updates you post with their own family and friends. Social media can help to increase awareness of a brand while also building online credibility and a reputation to help with making potential sales or attracting new clients.

How to Combine SEO and Social Media Properly

Combining SEO and social media properly can be done by creating a marketing plan that focuses on a specific audience or group of consumers by streamlining the focus of your updates and the keywords used in your website page titles.

When you are sharing content within social networking communities, using the proper titles and headers that are relevant to the content you are posting will allow you to easily gain traction within search engines. The more frequently you update your social media pages, search engines are more likely to virtually store your website’s URLs, helping to increase your SEO overall. Matching SEO meta tags, keywords and page titles with the titles of your website’s updates and content can greatly increase your viewership and exposure in all search engines available today.

Ultimately, understanding how to balance the implementation of SEO and social media is a key factor in finding success, regardless of the type of website or brand that is being promoted. Effective Internet marketing can be achieved only when a synergy between social media marketing and SEO is found and used properly to help attract the right audience.

What are your experiences using social media marketing and SEO? Have you had successes? Share by commenting below.

About The Author

Steve Floyd is the Leader of the Dallas Content Strategy Meetup Group as well as the CEO of AXZM, a Dallas search engine optimization boutique.

 

By Wanda Anglin

Wanda Anglin has a passion to help businesses and non-profits reach their goals by attracting more of the right website visitors. Her empathy and understanding for small business challenges comes from a background in project management, sales support, accounting, and business ownership. When not helping clients, Wanda is traveling, fixing her home, or tending to her 900 trees (really).

4 comments

  1. Initially, I always have more success with SEO rather than Social Media Marketing. If you’ve got the time and staff to dedicate to it, then Social Media will pan out in the long run. However, I’ve found that a ton of people would rather have an “instant fix” to their online branding.

  2. So are you saying that when you post on social media sites you should be using the exact words for your website’s page title and that will increase your SEO rankings? If so, how will using the exact words help? I would think using the keywords would help but many page titles like this one (Social Media Marketing vs SEO) are not complete sentences.

  3. Excellent post Steve and good question you have raised here on SEO vs social media, and who gives better returns. Well till now even I agrees with SEO only but from last few months mixture of social media marketing along with SEO gives amazing results and good fan following.

    Even search engines now publicly said that they are giving priority to no. of likes and shares to any online post.

  4. Hi Steve,

    I think I have more success with SEO content. At least I give it a much more attention than social media. I realized it’s not enough to just share my latest post link with social networks. I have retweets and likes but it’s not like ‘going viral’. I agree that combining SEO and social media is the key to success. Right now I decided to focus more on the quality of my content.
    And one question. What do you think about social media softwears like Tweet Adder?

    Thanks for the post
    ~ Dragan

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

X