This is a guest post by Noah Mark Rodolfo from BestOnlineBusinessGuide.net
Social networking is one of today’s biggest arena when it comes to online marketing. It’s been an effective gauge for Internet businesses, not only for e-commerce sites but also for bloggers. Facebook, Twitter and even Google+ are making a big impact on the Internet and many practical users are taking the bait. So the question is – “does SEO still have relevance for your online business?”.
SEO against social networking is an interesting topic especially if you are looking for the best way to market your website business. If you want to promote your brand using social medias, then you certainly have to build your social network profile to develop both yourself and your site. Otherwise, you’ll have to stick with search engine optimization which is more complicated compared to social network marketing.
If you have a brand new site, the first thing that comes to your mind is to optimize every page of your site to increase its search engine rankings. Ironically, social media networks can highly aid your SEO needs when it comes to off-page optimization. It is good to note that search engines especially Google, gives a lot of attention on these social networking sites. So instead of focusing in SEO, you have to first try the waters of social networking because it also benefits your off-page optimization efforts.
So is SEO really the thing of the past? No, not yet! While it is easier to carry out a large social network marketing campaign to increase your site or blog’s traffic, it still has its limitation. Plus, not all people in your network are “targeted” people for your business. Social networking needs to be maintained through expanding continuously without delay. If you are unable to cope up with every changes in the social networking landscape, your business will also be affected. This is the reason it is called “networking” in the first place.
But SEO can be a daunting task as well especially if you are a newbie. There is two types of SEO namely – on-page and off-page. Google is not highly particular with on-page factors these days so off-page method should be your number one priority. Off-page means link building and that is the hardest part. If you know various tricks on how to get backlinks from various authoritative sites, then your site will become popular in just a few months. I mean “months” because you will have to wait for your turn to get higher rankings in the search engines. This is another drawback when it comes to SEO.
So What Is The Catch?
With search engine optimization, you can be a big player if you obtain good rankings in a certain keyword which gets millions of searches per month. But profitable keywords also have stiff competition from thousands of websites. So if you want to be a dominant site in the search engines, you have to take a lot of effort to build thousands of backlinks for your website or blog.
With social networking, you also start small and you have to build your network in a slowly but surely manner. What I meant was to get people on your network which has similar “interests” as with your business. Your site’s traffic has potential to receive tons of daily traffic if you have a big “network” on each of your social media profile. If you were able to achieve a big network in a short span of time, you can build good reputation about your site and your business as a whole to all those people within your network.
In summary, SEO and social networking methods are both essential to your online business success. If you can do both, then you will have better marketing program for your blog or e-commerce business. Remember that a business takes time to nourish and should not be rushed. Whether it’s SEO or social networking, the important thing is that you have to strive harder and put a lot of effort to reach your goal.
Do you imagine what your business can achieve if you were able to reach your goal in both SEO and social networking? Yes, Internet business can overwhelmingly reward you financially. So which is better, SEO or social networking? You decide!
I’ve read at several places that Social Networking is decreasing in its efficiency. Do you feel the same?
Sorry for the late reply.
I don’t think that social networking is decreasing its efficiency. There are many new social media sites that are making waves across the web such as Google+ and Pinterest.
Thanks
I choose both seo and social networking for internet business and to have exposure. They two are both important point when it comes to ranking and to have loyal readers.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this great post.I definitely agree with the conclusion of this article.One should look at internet marketing in a holistic way of integrating different techniques together. Social Media and SEO should be part of the whole Internet marketing plan.Thanks for this article.
SEO and social networking can be a cooperative process to help us achieve our internet marketing success. SEO needs social activities. For example, blog commenting is both SEO and social networking. Although Social networking seems to be an additional work, we should adapt to it if we want to survive. But both SEO and SMO are essential to our survival.
I actually believe that traffic from Social Media is mostly targeted. Say, you post something on facebook or twitter, the one’s who don’t have interest on your post will likely ignore them right? And the one’s who have interests on your topic will likely visit your link.
The only difference of the two is, in SEO you get a good targeted traffic when you get the 1st page – people are really looking for it. While in SEM you get a targeted traffic even though the reader is not looking to buy your product at the moment, although they are interested in it, but they’re not searching for it. They just stumbled upon it.
– Addie
Both are really essential…each works in different journal SEO is like an universe and social networking is a planet around it..both cannot be compared
I dont think there is a clear winner between seo and social media to be honest, i think if used correctly both can be a ver powerful marketing tool. Its just what techniques you use how to achieve the results.
I think the main difference between the two is the constant flux that SEO is in. All your SEO work can potentially be just one Google update away from being washed away. Usually people you’ve grabbed through your smm campaigns are there to stay.
Of course you have to stay on top of the new stuff that seems to be constantly coming out. This new Pinterest site is killing me.
I think once you start spending too much time working on SEO, you lose sight of the importance of quality content and connecting with your readers, so I think social networking is more imprtant 🙂
I believe SEO is alot more beneficial towards internet marketing, using google analytics and adwords allows me to track stats of how my site is doing and i can use keywords to attract visitors from search engines to the site verse twitter and Facebook only being able to interact with me while i spam myself for friends and promotion that people never want to see while their talking about the heat fom last night. SEO wins for m