Remember the old Reeses Peanut Butter Cup ad? “You got chocolate in my peanut butter! No, you got peanut butter in my chocolate!” Like chocolate and peanut butter, organic search engine optimization and social media marketing are two great tastes that taste even better together. When you combine organic SEO with social media marketing, you get more bang than if you use either of them alone. Here are a few reasons why it’s important to focus your online marketing efforts on a comprehensive approach rather than the disjointed approach that’s so often recommended.
Social Media Matters
Search engines are relying more and more on social signals – incoming links, social media mentions and numbers of engaged followers on the various social media platforms. This is especially evident with Google+, which is only to be expected. After all, Google has easy access to the mentions and metrics there and an easy way to funnel them into the algorithm that determines search engine results.
Other social signals that Google is incorporating into its algorithms include the authorship metric. Authors with higher social standings end up with pages that rank higher in the search engine results.
The Chicken, the Egg and the SEO/SMM Connection
An author gets higher social rankings by having more readers who follow his blogs and articles. Higher rated websites and blogs attract more readers, who follow the authors they like on social media so that they can get updates and news. The updates and news bring readers back to the websites and attract new readers which increases the search engine rankings for the website which increases the social media ranking of the authors on the website which… you can see where this is going. Organic search engine optimization is bait that attracts readers/customers. Social media marketing is glue that keeps bringing them back.
Organic Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Tags
Organic SEO experience can also help your social media posts find an audience. Finding and using the right hashtags is very similar to researching and using keywords on your Web pages – and has similar results. In fact, Google+ now automatically tags some of your posts using common hashtags, and Facebook pages are showing up in Google and Bing searches more and more frequently, so it makes sense to optimize your social media content the same way that you use organic search engine optimization on your website.
When it comes to online marketing, it’s no longer a choice between social media marketing, organic search engine optimization and paid advertising. If you’re not using an all-of-the-above strategy, you’re not getting full value for your marketing efforts.
