SEO and SMM are two vital pillars of Digital Marketing where the former positions your website to #1 rank on Google while the latter helps you get an avalanche of followers on social media. This post discusses the much-hyped topic on the internet regarding subtle differences in the traffic leads of SEO and SMM.
Search Engines can’t read our blogs and websites of their own, so we need to embed certain clues (keywords) and structures to help bots understand our content. This addition of relevancy in the content refers to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and helps the search engines to produce results as per the queries.
Using Social Media platforms as medium of marketing to increase sales, connect audience and generate brand awareness can be termed as social media marketing.
So, SEO helps you get discovered and SMM helps to stay connected with your audience.
One of the top bloggers on Neilpatel.com, Chloe Mason Gray, explains in her post that people are exploring myriad ways to search the relevant content on the internet. It’s time that bloggers and webpreneurs should broaden their horizons about social and search. The smart brands should start incorporating SMM in their SEO strategy from day one and think about SEO while designing their social signals.
It has been seen that millennials and Generation-Z prefer social media marketing while the older (experienced) generation has an affinity for SEO. There are basically some parameters that help you decide the type of traffic you need such as time, reach, topic, intent and audience. Let’s delve a bit deeper.
1. Research Vs Emotional Advantage
Social Media is capable of triggering an emotional response and make people feel connected with the product/services. The content ignites emotions such as anger, awe, anxiety and helps to make the content viral with more likes, clicks, shares, etc. Trending topics get a massive response on social media.
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How-to’s, listicles, instructional posts, detailed content and blogs answering common questions perform best in search engines. Research-based content and evergreen topics often outperform in search engine optimization.
Search engines are used when people are looking for information about a particular niche/product. People don’t use social media for searching; rather they need it for socialization and entertainment. The traffic that comes from social media is just due to curiosity or prompt interest.
No long-term interest, No long-term commitments! The decisions are usually impulsive and quick.
2. Highly Personalized Vs Generalized
While the traffic from social-media is short-term, it is highly personalized. This means that the audience is heavily interested in knowing the ins and outs of a particular topic. On the contrary, the same may not be true for SEO.
In fact, there is virtually no upper limit on the amount of traffic a page can get from social media platforms. Millions of people sharing the content would turn it viral resulting in heavy footfall on that page. But you can indeed anticipate the amount of traffic that could be generated from search engines. The search volume for a phrase can help you to understand the maximum traffic that can be generated for a page from search engines.
3. Engaged Users Vs New Users
The traffic coming from social media is already aware of the business and is engaged with the brand indeed. Hence, the chances of conversions are high. The audience is usually keen to know more about a particular blog/service/product and is often directed from a social media ad or post.
The traffic from search engines needs to be presented with more information (almost from scratch and basic introduction). It would take more time for conversion. On the contrary, traffic coming from social media does not require any introduction as they are already engaged with the same on social media platforms.
Read More: How to Combine SEO and Email Marketing to Drive Traffic and Boost Rankings?
Conclusion
While SEO helps to bring long-lasting results to business, SMM helps drive short-term but heavy pertinent traffic. Both strategies are valuable in their own ways. By understanding the subtle differences between these two, webpreneurs can make better-informed decisions.
Social media allows trending content to grab more visitor attention and fetch likes, shares and comments. People having social media handles are often ranked higher when people search for brands and businesses. For SEO, blogger relations, mentions, backlinks, online reputation, etc. are critical to pitch an astounding SEO.
It’s really hard to bet on which service is better than other. SMM and SEO benefit the user in its own way. A combination of SMM and SEO tactics will take businesses to the zenith of success and gain brand awareness in the digital landscape. If SMM gives you stronger online brand visibility, SEO is needed to sustain that brand power in the longer run.
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