There’s a never-ending debate as to which of these two is more important. Well, SEO is important because it attracts people to your blog or website, where you want them to land up. Similarly, if you have a well-optimized Social Media profile, there are chances of ranking high in the search engines. That’s because social media websites are themselves optimized and they help to bring a lot of incoming links to your site/blog.
However, social media may not take into account certain factors which search engines consider while making your content visible to others on the web. What I mean is, search engines do have algorithms based on which they’ll consider whether or not to rank your web page in a certain position. But with social media, you make your content visible to a wide range of web users. Here, the search engine algorithms have no role to play. However, the content quality should be high, as because you won’t have too many people spreading the word about it across social media networks.
So, the fact remains that both SEO and SMO contribute towards making people view your content more, thus driving in more traffic to your website/blog and helping you to convert them into regular visitors or leads. Whether you’ll give more emphasis on SEO or SMO depends on the goals you have, the kind of traffic you’re looking for and what you want the traffic to do for you. The key is to make the best use of both processes. In fact, it is possible to make both of them work for you as they have more similarities than differences.
Similarities between SEO and SMO
Search engine optimization and Social Media Optimization seem to have more things in common as compared to their differences. Given below are 4 similarities between the two.
1. Both need you to produce quality content
If your content isn’t good enough, your web pages won’t get linked to and you won’t find your pages visible on the search engine results page. Also, you won’t be able to promote the content in social media networks because people will not “like” it or “tweet” about the content. In other words, you won’t find people sharing your content across the web.
2. The trust factor plays a big role in both cases
If a site looks reliable and trustworthy, it gains organic links more often and hence ranks higher on the search engine. This brings more traffic to your site/blog from the search engine.
Similarly, if you’re able to build trust amongst your fellow members in social networking sites, they’ll find you credible, click your links more often as well as share your posts amongst their friends and audiences. This way you’ll get more traffic from the social media. Moreover, if your fellow members consider you as an influential person, they’d like to build relationships with you. This can further help to promote your brand, be it your website, blog or your product/business.
3. You need to work both on-page and off-page
Be it search engine optimization or social media optimization, both need you to work on-page as well as off-page. In search engine optimization, on-page work involves using the target keywords of a page in the title, meta description and content appropriately. Off-page work includes building links for your website or blog.
In social media optimization, on-page work involves creating quality content that people would like to share with others. Off-page work includes networking with others through social media sites, blog communities, etc.
4. Both SEO and SMO increase visibility across the web
While search engine optimization increases your visibility by helping you to get ranked higher on the search results, SMO enables you to promote your content and get it shared across the web. The more your content is shared, the more people know about it. This way your visibility on the web increases. So, you’ll have many to recommend you or your work to others.
While search engine optimization increases your visibility by helping you to get ranked higher on the search results, SMO enables you to promote your content and get it shared across the web. The more your content is shared, the more people know about it. This way your visibility on the web increases. So, you’ll have many to recommend you or your work to others.
So, SEO and social media are complementary to each other. Both of these are effective in giving you long term success. So, if you consistently provide unique and quality content, focus on what your target audience is looking for and make the best use of SEO and SMO, you can expect long term success in your venture.
