Social Media vs SEO
There has been a continuing “war” between Social Media & Search Engine Optimization and to be honest and realistic, Social Media is more and more becoming extremely important for any internet marketer or webmaster. This can be seen from different points of views however I would like to analyze and give you my personal opinion on why social media is getting so popular and will outrank in the coming years completely search engine optimization
The scope behind Social Media is quite obvious, interaction among different people and sharing information in real time. On the other side Search Engine Optimization is a longer process which actually takes months or even years to build baclinks and rank on top of search engines
Let us see the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media vs SEO
Advantages of Social Media
- Your Word Goes Viral (Twitter , Facebook , Reddit , Digg , StumbleUpon etc)
- Traffic starts coming to your site at the moment you tweet, post an update, submit it on digg or any other social bookmarking website)
- Inexpensive and can be easily done with a couple of basic Internet skills
Advantages of Search Engine Optimization
- Long Term & Highly Profitable (If done right)
- More formal & professional
- Can’t be easily done (this is an advantage for the ones who know SEO)
Do any search on Google regarding a problem you have or a “how to” question, you will see that Yahoo Answers is almost on TOP of every other website, this shows once more the supremacy of social media sites
With the actual changes on Google where they are showing real time discussions from Twitter, it is doubtful whether you can actually outrank high authority social sites such as Digg , Twitter , Facebook and much more plus another factor which actually affects directly search engine optimizers is the fact that Google algorithm is changing frequently and who knows, in the future the actual tactics might not even work anymore
What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you doing SEO or Social Media ? If both, from which type of marketing are you getting the most traffic from ? Please comment below
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December 23, 2009 at 22:18 | Brian
For Long term results we focus on SEO , for more immediate success Social media is used. Any good SEO will tell you a combination of both when implemented correctly is the path to take. Thanks for the insight.
December 23, 2009 at 23:56 | Erick Pettersen
Oh, I definitely agree that there is a bridge between SEO content and social networking; though, I think asking which one is more important is like asking what is more important to a steak dinner–the steak or the steak knife.
When it comes to what shows up on the SERP, Google scours the actual sites, but it finds the sites through links. Even sites linked to by many social networking platforms. So, I think while SEO content is the steak you put on the plate (one’s site), Social networking is a type of steak knife that allows Googlebot and users to find the site.
Of course, web masters can always go on a link campaign, and those are more authoritative than social networking; though social networking (i.e. microblogging and social bookmarking) does let search engines know you’re making an effort. The point is that having great SEO content without letting people or search engines know it’s there is like having great steak without a steak knife.
Erick
http://www.seobridges.com
(editing helps, too)