For many of our clients, the lines between search engine optimisation and social media appear to be somewhat blurred. The confusion seemingly lies between where one starts and the other stops - if both are effective ways of generating traffic then what is the difference between the two, and why is it so important to use both? Whether you regularly update your Facebook status, or tweet to tell the world what you just ate for your lunch, social media will undoubtedly have influenced you one way or another. But the real question is, if you already have a good SEO campaign in place that is generating traffic to your site, need you bother with social media, and vice versa?
The Role of SEO
Search engine optimisation uses a myriad of techniques to ensure that your site ranks highly with search engines, so that more traffic is generated for your site. However, it is too often assumed that some careful search engine optimisation will see your website at number one on Google by morning. Unfortunately, it takes a little more than this, and though it is equally time consuming and may take just as long to yield results, social media is often a very worthwhile string to add to your bow.
Whilst search engine optimisation centres on the novel concept of placing your business where people can see you, and waiting for them to come looking, social media works to promote your website via the more traditional strategy of word-of-mouth. And although many of these social networking sites may seem rather ineffectual as they are in fact invisible to search engines, this word-of-mouth tactic can certainly still work to generate traffic to your site.
The Role of Social Media
With literally millions of people contributing to blogs, forums, social network sites and communities on a daily basis, social media can spread the word like wildfire – something that can be particularly important in the travel industry where people’s choices are often influenced by other people’s suggestions. The power of third-party recommendation should not be underestimated, and with the ability to set up anything from fan clubs to groups to discussions on these sites, there is potential to communicate with an astonishing number of people – an opportunity not to be missed. These sites also provide a chance to take a more personal approach with your customers, communicating regularly, building a relationship with them, and perhaps even gaining their participation by means of competitions, reviews or polls. This in turn will also achieve more traffic to your site.
So how do you know whether to generate traffic using social media, search engine optimisation, or even both? It is certainly the case that some products are more suited to social media than others; social networking sites work as communities, and as such if your product is something that a collection of people might have in common, such as walking, or surfing, social media is your medium, generating links by getting people chatting about you and your website. It is arguably less likely to be successful for more general products; for example, package holidays, for which people often employ a random shopping technique, are perhaps more suited to a strategy of search engine optimisation, generating traffic to your site by placing it where people will be looking for it.
However, we at Lead Generators have always found that an integrated approach is the best way forward. True, search engine optimisation can work to achieve more traffic to your site, but it can’t communicate directly with your customers. On the other hand, whilst social media may not always be able to directly improve the ranking of your site, it helps to build a relationship with your customers.
Finding the Right Balance
As both of these strategies result in the same thing – directing traffic to your site – it is too easy to muddle the two. But we have found time and time again that though search engine optimisation and social media endorse your online presence in different ways, they do in fact complement each other perfectly, just like strawberries and cream.
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Social Media and Search Engine Optimization
