Can Social Media Marketing and SEO still be considered separate subjects?

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January 21st, 2012 by Rory

Recently I posted a blog called ‘Can SEO still be effective without social media‘, and a post I created about this blog on LinkedIn sparked a huge debate between various members of the online marketing and search engine optimisation community. Obviously there were two identifiable sides to the argument, those who thought that SEO can still be effective without social media marketing, and those that don’t believe SEO can be affective without social media. However, at one point in the debate, the point was raised about whether SMM and SEO can still be considered separate subjects, and that is the point I’d like to focus on this SEO blog.

Those arguing that you can’t separate the two focus mainly on a comparison with on-page SEO, as opposed to off-page. When you think about constructing an SEO campaign, there are always defined targets and objectives that an online business sets themselves. How successful a company is in reaching these objectives is determined by the various online analytics reports that are available for measuring things like ROI, bounce rate and traffic volume. In the earlier days of SEO, this was an exclusive feature of search engine marketing, because they were the main provider of these analytical reports. As time has passed, search marketing agencies have become able to develop these reports internally, and produce them with a great deal more clarity than the search engines provide in a raw form.

More importantly, however, as the social networks have developed over the years they have developed their own analytic reports based on social-specific measurements and metrics. I have written about how Facebook Insights improves social media marketing, but the important thing to remember is that the social networks, and various third parties are able to produce robust and reliable analytics reports regarding a businesses social media activity. This is no longer a feature exclusive to the search engines, and it means that potentially, a business could conduct all their online marketing on a social network (although, this really isn’t advisable!).

Another feature intrinsically linking social media marketing and search engine optimisation is that they are both long-term commitments. SEO requires lots of moderation and constant improvement and tweaking to succeed, and social media marketing needs the same. Both require fresh, unique and valuable content to be shared regularly if returning customers are going to be engaged enough to value your business.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you think Social Media Marketing and SEO are separate subjects?

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