SEO or Social Media: Which Matters More
This topic was already on the plate for this week, but in my daily blog reading I came across an interesting post by Cori Padgett on Big Girl Branding that does a great job of raising the question. She beat me. 
She wraps up the post by explaining that both SEO and social media matter, because they both exist to make you “popular” or really, to drive more traffic to your blog or website (or even an article; any URL, really).
I view the issue differently and take a slightly different approach to answering the question.
Photo Credit: Todd Klassy (flickr)
SEO vs. Social Media: Science vs. Art
SEO is important. But is is a science, not an art form. It can be exacting, and there are certain things you should always do and there are certain things that you should not do.
Social media is different. Using social media as a way to increase readership for your blog is more an art form that a science. Each of you will find that you have a unique taste, an original way of connecting to your readers through social media. It’s not one size fits all.
SEO vs. Social Media: The 20/80 Rule
Spend 20% of your promotional time on SEO and 80% of it on social media. Another way of saying this is that for every 1 minute of time you spend on SEO, spend 4 on social media.
Why: SEO is cut and dry, so it shouldn’t take you as long. As a blogger, especially if you are using WordPress, you have a plethora of tools available to you for optimizing your blog and its posts for search engines. Create a system for doing it right and then follow that system.
Social media is not cut and dry. It is always changing. There are new tools, new theories and new influencers popping up weekly. Not all flavors of social media will appeal or even apply to you. So, reserve the extra time to get it right. Additionally, your social media habit will soon turn out plenty of back links to your blog, which will improve SEO.
When SEO Matters More
SEO and social media are not equal players all of the time. Sometimes, SEO matters more than social media. Here are the situations in which I think SEO wins:
- Product review blogs that are monetized: If you write reviews with the intention of making money from them, you will really need to focus on SEO so that people looking to buy your product will find you in search engine results. You could adopt a strategy that incorporates social media, of course, but your reach is simply far greater with search engines.
- Real estate listings: Agents and brokers have a challenging situation because the nature of their business is largely based on personal connections. With so much search engine competition, however, it’s essential that real estate listings be optimized.
- Promotional/Sales blogs: If your blog focuses on a niche product and its sole intention is to sell that product, spending more time on SEO than social media could be the way to go. I’m torn on this one; this is a gray area that really depends on the product.
What Social Media Really Is and Why It Matters for Your Blog
Social media is not a synonym for social networking. I define social media as a broad, umbrella term for media that is shared in a community and the methods by which it is shared (hence the term social). Videos, music, podcasts, art, articles (including blogs) and photographs are just some of the forms of media that have been part of the social media movement. The channels for distributing media socially are sites like YouTube, Flickr, EzineArticles, Last.fm and Scribd (and many more).
Twitter and Facebook are sites that facilitate the spread of the media.
What you need to know about social media is that it has the potential to be one of the fastest ways to get your blog noticed – even faster than search engines.
If you publish a new post, sure, you should optimize it for search engines, but considering how many new posts are published on any given day in your same niche (and possibly with your same title and keywords), you can’t really afford to sit around and wait for it to be indexed and ranked by a search engine. Instead, use sites like Twitter and Facebook to broadcast your post, with the intention that your following will like it and continue broadcasting it to their following and so on (viral marketing).
Bottom Line
Keep in mind that SEO and social media serve very different purposes. SEO is to improve search engine visibility, indexing and rank. Social media can actually help with that, when used properly. It’s not so much a matter of either/or, but a matter of priority in terms of effort and energy. My advice is to find a solution that will assist you with SEO so it is out of your mind, and then focus on your blog, its content, and how you can increase its importance among your readers through social media.
Thoughts? You know I want to hear them, so feel free to agree or disagree, or ask questions below!
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Perfect definition for SEO blogging and Social media blogging.
Thank you, Ron!
I believe SEO and social media both have specific goals to fulfill.the goals of both SEO and social media are to make you popular, which, hopefully helps you make more money in whatever your business happens to be.however Social media can be a bit more time intensive than proper
optimization…primarily because social media is people driven, not really
tech driven I think.
seo is nothing but the engineering to make your visitor happy by giving result what he is really looking for when you post unique information then automatically seo is done but now a days seo is all about keyword stuffing aggressive spam link submission sending automated queries thanks for sharing very interesting post.
i will give first priority to SEO at all times , social media comes next
I use precisely that one Tia – Subscribe to Comments by Mark Jaquith. Is that the plugin you are using now?
Hi Tia, I did a bit of blog commenting and since then the comments on my own blog have risen very nicely. And that was only at Mamma Italian Chef (Michelle) and Gera’s blog too. I’m sure Gera is on tenter hooks right now, what with his football team up against the Dutch in the next couple of days!
Robit just mentioned that he sees comments like “Social Media is going to kill SEO”. Yes, I’ve seen that myself too. Its not at all the case however, and I totally agree with Robit. SEO is so very different to Social Media – the mind-set is very different indeed, just for starters – as you have highlighted time and again.
One final thing Tia, when I receive updates regards to comments on the post I am subscribed to from your blog, I am getting 2 emails which are the same. Not sure if others are seeing that, but you may wanna check it out. Feeback is always important, after all
Hey Jo – Which plugin (if any) do you use for the Subscribe to comments? Maybe I’ll just use a different one. I can’t moderate the settings, so I am not sure what the problem could be.
I very well agree with you. I have seen topics like Social Media is going to kill the SEO industry and other..I think people fail to understand that both these work for different aspects and we must pay attention to both these fields rather than ignoring anyone.
Actually, you got that spot on Tia! I’m trying to outrank Ashok on the top commentors table! ;-0
I’m awaiting your feedback re my feedback on your Facebook “wall”, please and thank you.
And its obvious you had a massive climb in blog readers from (mainly) the StumbleUpon post you made – just check out your new Alexa ranking – a climb up of around 20k in about a week or so. Incredible!
Ya, I know folks disrepute Alexa, but there’s got to be something in it, I feel anyhow. Its showing on your blog, that is for sure!
Wow, Joseph. Thank you for pointing that out. Are you referring to the StumbleUpon post I was referring to in Facebook? That was actually on my other blog, tiadpeterson.com. I really have no idea what to think of the huge jump in Alexa for BizChickBlogs, other than I had taken a really lazy 3 weeks and hardly did anything, and have just recently come back from that.
Plus, a LOT of bloggers have been including my posts in weekly wrap ups, and that’s been bringing nice traffic each week.
Yes that is the SU I was referring to but I did not realize it was not aimed at this blog Tia. Your Alexa was sitting around 209,000 for a while, but suddenly its jumped up (yesterday it was about 291k) to 187k today.
Whatever you are doing its working! I would be checking out my analytics which is what I bet you are doing right now!
Thanks for the comment-back on FB. I’Il get back to you soon on that!
Weekly wrap ups like i Kristi’s Kikolani blog?
Kristi’s, and Gera from Sweetfoods has linked here a couple of times, and a few others! Has been very nice. Off to check out your AdSense Income post.
Tia my dear, just one thing I want to “gently” disagree with and that is SEO evolves fairly quickly too, so its not necessarily cut and dry (isn’t there a french fry called “cut and dry”…?). You gotta keep on top of the changes or you will lose out to those who do – your competitors.
It was Matt Cutts (the Google spokesman) who said recently that in general, Google updates its algorithm some 400 times or there-abouts every single year. Not to say you’ve got to keep abreast of all those changes, but if you miss out on some of the bigger ones, you’ll be in for trouble fairly soon (severe loss in visitors for little apparent reason) – that could well be the case anyhow.
Your points about when SEO matters more are excellent Tia – even now I on occasionly forget those golden rules, which is kinda dumb really. But then we all have our “brain dump” moments, don’t we? lol!
Short and sweet from me today (I bet you are sighing relief!) – I’m bushed! I’ll catch up with you soon!
Thanks for another very fine post – always such a pleasure to “indulge” in reading them!
Oh shucks, I’ve already commented on your post here a few days back. I thought it looked familiar!
Maybe you’ll have me down as a persistent spammer…
Shucks, shucks…
Yes, I think you just like commenting here.
It’s OK to disagree! I still think that basic SEO applies; I just don’t see any signs of that changing. I know that people insist certain things don’t work any longer and new things matter more. Still, to me, good on-page SEO is pretty basic. It may change every so often, but not as often as off-page SEO, and what’s more is that once your site has been indexed correctly, the on-page SEO doesn’t need to change. I think that’s what I am really trying to get at in this post.
Back linking can in fact become a worthwhile benefit and help out with off site internet marketing. Have you ever witnessed back links result in a reverse affect on Yahoo rankings? And do you know if there is a way to reveal when Google Adwords is better than natural rankings? I myself operate various webpages and even manage a links building service. Yet, I at times find it useful to use PPC over backlink building.
Well, you could use Market Samurai to figure out what the commercial intent is of certain keywords, but the thing is, the higher the commercial intent, the more expensive Adwords is.
In my honest opinion, it’s almost never better to use Adwords over natural search, unless the cost is very low, the competition is very low, and the search volume is high. And that is rare.
Yes, great post indeed! And great commenting to match!
Up till now I worked on SEO and nothing other than SEO. Its my comfort zone simply because I have poured heart and soul into learning it – the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the nuances and what to expect from your efforts.
But, as time goes by, I sense more and more the value of embracing SM stuff. I’m fed up of creating 5 page product – based sites that I have no interest in myself. Where is the fun in writing 100 articles on… barbeque kits, for example? Its the buzz of seeing my SEO results that really wins out for me, and of course getting a few AdSense clicks here, or a few Amazon sales there.
We as SEO’ers are always told not to try to embrace SM sites and SM wares. Why? Simply because this sort of visitor “does not convert”. Now I say to this, hogwash!
Its not the visitor conversion we should be sooooo focused on after all, its the value of having the visitor in the first place. After all, the more visitors we have on a regular basis to our blogs and websites, the better they will ultimately do within the search engines. Its a bit of a generalization there (it will not work for everything by any means, but offer up real value to your visitors and you are onto a winner), but over-all, I am a firm believer in this and I have good reason to be too.
Oooops, I hope this post is not too long Tia. I’ll copy it before posting, just in case, haha.
Kind regards
Joseph
.-= Joseph Archibald´s last blog ..Press Releases for SEO =-.
I think that’s Social Media is great but I also think that it goes hand in hand with SEO as well
.-= Kharim´s last blog ..How To Increase Google AdSense Revenue =-.
Kharim – Me, too! They really go hand in hand and a high level of social media engagement will really improve your SEO.
If we want to build a credibility we shall concentrate on Social Media otherwise just SEO.
.-= Fazreen´s last blog ..My Secrets to Dominating Blogengage.com =-.
Fazreen – Agree! SEO has a very different purpose and affect.
Good article on Search Engine Optimization. I am an owner of a web directory and completely understand the importance of high Google PR and good SEO.
I am glad that Tia mentioned some times when SEO might be more important. If you are building certain kinds of niche websites, it is very difficult to merge social media with them properly. Not to mention, the social media traffic simply doesn’t convert on many types of niche sites. SEO traffic converts much (much) better. That makes SEO number one in my book for niche websites with commercial intent.
I guess it all really depends on your goals for a website. If you are monetizing traffic a certain way, then one medium is probably better than another.
Hi Tia, Thanks for the info. I find social media to fun and a great way to interact with people while SEO is just the opposite. I have a subscription to Lynda.com (which I love) and I struggling to get through the tutorials on SEO, simply because it’s pretty boring…
I know it’s something that can’t be ignored, but for me it’s very counter-intuitive. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
.-= Ileane´s last blog ..SEO Site Tools Finds Google Page Rank =-.
Ileane, you’re welcome! And no problem for getting it off your chest. Hopefully you feel a bit relieved, and the PDF doc should be pretty helpful. Using that with a simple plugin like All in One SEO or Meta SEO Pack (which is what I use) will go a long way.
Also! I forgot that you may want to purchase Scribe SEO if you have no idea what you are doing and want to bring your blog posts up to par. The link is http://scribeseo.com/tour/
.-= Tia Peterson´s last blog ..The 5 Unmistakable Signs of a Lazy Blogger =-.
Hi Crystal – I’d recommend starting with my Quick On-Page SEO tips guide. Here’s the link.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29416436/Quick-on-Page-SEO-Tips-for-Your-Blog
For off-page SEO, I’d say start with building up your social media and social bookmarking to build backlinks, and go subscribe to Michelle MacPhearson’s blog at http://www.michellemacphearson.com/ as she’s one of the most brilliant and realistic people out there who will tell you about SEO.
.-= Tia Peterson´s last blog ..The 5 Unmistakable Signs of a Lazy Blogger =-.
Great information! I need a solution for SEO as I know nothing about it. Is there a service you suggest? So share.
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