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SEO Or Social Media Marketing. Which Is Better?

Sukanya Mukherjee -

Difference Between Search Engine Marketing And Social Media Marketing.

  • Is social media or SEO the best way to boost your digital marketing?
  • Are both the tools necessary for online success, or is social media the new SEO?
  • A lot of bloggers, small business owners, webmasters, and other digital marketers seem to be confused about the role of social media and SEO in the digital marketing process.
  • They wonder which of these is a value for investment and will give better results.
  • It is indeed a bit confusing for brands and creators to distinguish between both—where to invest and how the outputs will be!
  • In this article, we will see which of these two is better and how.
  • Before diving deep into the details, let's quickly understand what SEO and social media marketing are.

What is SEO?

  1. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
  2. It comprises the quality of traffic, the quantity of traffic, organic results, and loads of algorithms of the search engine.

What is Social Media Marketing?

  • Social media marketing means using social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.
  • This includes publishing the latest content on your social media handles, listening to your followers and interacting with them, analysing the metrics, and running social media advertisements.
  • Currently, the most used social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.

Which One is Better- SEO or Social Media Marketing?

Content

The phrase “Content is king” holds for both SEO and social media marketing. The content itself will engage the audience and get responses.

SEO

  1. Content that ranks well is pre-researched and written with SEO in mind.
  2. Such content is detailed, organised, and presented in a manner that will clear all your doubts and give you the answer you were looking for.
  3. When you’re writing SEO content, keep in mind that readers are searching for something specific, and they want to find all the information they’re looking for without having to go through a ton of pages.
  4. The title has to be eye-catchy to make the visitor instantly click on your website.
  5. The major rule of SEO says that long-form content works in the long race.
  6. The more detailed your article is true, the more doubts you will clear, and hence, the visitor will give positive responses.
  7. The longer your content is, the more time the visitor will spend on your website, thereby increasing your rankings.

Social Media

  • Content for social media has to be relatable.
  • People spend a lot of time on social media platforms to explore a range of things.
  • They browse for entertainment and relatable content.
  • That’s why content with emotional stuff tends to get viral as people share it rapidly.
  • The kind of content that works well on social media includes short, condensed thoughts, catching headlines, and, the most effective visuals.
  • Photos get more likes than other types of content, like texts or videos.

In Other Words

  1. You can use both SEO and social media marketing to promote your site content.
  2. Make use of the content you create for each of the marketing methods to supplement the other.
  3. For example, you could link an image in your post for your social media campaign to an article of long-form content on your site.
  4. When someone sees your image on social media, provided it’s eye-catchy, there is a great chance that they will end up on our website.

Audience

You need to know your targeted audience and then choose where to find them quickly.

  1. SEO- Ideally, you’ll write your content based on what your target audience is looking for, what they want to learn, and even what kind of behavior they have. Your target audience has questions that they want to know the answer to. The more accurate and relevant to your answer, the more are they likely to trust you and your services and become loyal customers in the long run.
  2. Social Media- Social media is the quickest way to reach your targeted audience. Most social media platforms provide ad features to directly customize whom you want to show your ad to. For example, on Facebook, you can display your ad to executives living in the bay area aged 40 to 50 who play golf on weekends or new moms living in Sweden and show them ads for baby essentials.

In Other Words

You can drive people from social media to your website to convert a sale.

Success Rate

The success rate is different in both methods. Let us see how.

SEO

  1. An enticing feature of SEO is that it is rewarding.
  2. People will trust a long, detailed article about a product more than a random social media ad popping out of nowhere.
  3. SEO requires a lot of time and patience.
  4. It takes a few months to actually rank an article well for some keywords.
  5. But once you’re on the top, traffic will start driving in.
  6. SEO is an optimal method to gain visitors, and once a page is live on your site, it has the opportunity to rank highly for the keywords it targets.

Social Media

  1. Social media is best for creating brand awareness among your targeted audience.
  2. People need to see, hear, and read your brand name a few times before they actually buy from you.
  3. It is quick and doesn’t require many efforts like writing along with content and waiting for months for it to rank.
  4. The disadvantage is that the content you post will get subsided by the new content that gets posted every few minutes.
  5. Social media platforms demand an ongoing effort from you to post regularly in order to lead a successful social media marketing campaign.
  6. It also means that you’ll have to pay special attention to when your target audience is most active on social media to ensure that they see your content before it’s at the bottom of their feeds.

In Other Words

  • Social media has an engaging audience.
  • People like, share, and comment more on such platforms rather than reading a long post and sharing it further.
  • If your image or infographic is exciting, there will be a curiosity in the mind of the reader, and he or she is likely to reach your website and read more.
  • Additionally, you can use social media to build relationships and increase the number of influencers, backlinks, and reviews.
  • These improvements will also boost your rankings and help you perform better in terms of organic searches.


Also, so according to your needs, expectations, niches, and budget, you can choose what you should prefer.

Budget Wise

  1. If you are looking for no investment, we would suggest you opt for SEO.
  2. Though it takes time, it is much cheaper than starting an ad campaign.

Time-Wise

  1. If you want quick results and responses, opt for social media campaigns.
  2. For example, if you want to advertise your Christmas stuff, you cannot wait for a few months to rank your website.
  3. Instead, run a campaign and reach your targeted audience effectively.

Niche Wise

  1. Niches like clothes, jewellery, and stuff need to be seen on social media more rather than SEO.
  2. In case of technical details, finance, and investment niches, you should trust SEO since you cannot convey your message through a post.

In Conclusion

  • It’s difficult to point out which is more efficient—SEO or social media—as each of these strategies has its pros and cons.
  • The best way is to use both of these methods together.
  • Use social media marketing to increase engagement, attract new influencers, and gain traffic to your web content, and use SEO to optimise your content for search engines.
  • SEO will make sure that your content is search engine friendly and will give you much traffic than a social media post online, whereas social media will help you get your content in front of people faster than SEO.
  • The more people will see a page, the more chances of clicking the link and heading on the website and sharing to social media or engaging with the content.
  • So according to your needs, expectations, niches, and budget, you can choose what you should prefer.

Also Read:

How to Learn Social Media Marketing? A Complete Guide.

How Many Social Media Sites Can I Promote My Online Business On?

What is the Risk of Not Using Social Media for Business?

FAQs

Q- What is digital marketing?

Ans- Digital marketing comprises advertising or promoting your brand or company through internet-based platforms.

Q- Would my business benefit from digital marketing?

Ans- Definitely, Yes. It’s the age of social media marketing. You grow more investing in social media than in a newspaper.

Q- What does SEO stand for?

Ans- SEO stands for search engine optimisation.

Q- Why do I need SEO for my business?

Ans- Through SEO, you reach people faster and target those who are genuinely interested in what you offer, thereby boosting traffic, trust, and eventually, sales.

Q- What are keywords?

Ans- Keywords and keyword phrases are elements of SEO. These are catchphrases to search for a specific topic.