Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing: Two Important Aspects of Internet Marketing

Two concepts have become unavoidable for a successful internet marketing campaign today: search engine optimization and social media marketing. Previously considered two separate concepts, the two have become intertwined and together make a powerful tool for making your business’s online presence more visible and bringing in relevant web traffic. SEO experts till now, used to concentrate on either search engine optimization or social media marketing as a tool for increasing relevant traffic. Now, however, onsite and offsite SEO as well as targeted promotional campaigns on social media sites like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube etc. are getting equal importance in internet marketing.

Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process of driving maximum web traffic by making the website rank top on the search engine results. It deals with optimizing the website, its content, its meta tags with relevant keywords. Organic SEO is generally considered a passive resort to bringing in traffic, assuming that if one builds the right site, the right traffic will automatically come in. It basically aligns with the ‘pull’ strategy of internet marketing.

Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing, on the other hand, is active internet marketing, with companies proactively utilizing social media sites to mark their online presence. It includes promoting website and services or products through related forums and inviting people to link back to the website’s useful content. With social media marketing you can interact with targeted prospects and get them involved in talking about your business/brand so that they may recommend your company to friends and people around them. Such ‘snowball’ effect is what companies hope for when they use social media marketing. Active link building, blog promotion and new and interesting content for relevant topics builds up trust and draws in relevant traffic, through which popularity amongst online users increases and search rankings also improve.

A Combination of SEO and SMM
Neither search engine optimization nor social media marketing alone can become an effective internet marketing tool. Good SEO helps the website rank higher on the search engine results, but it does not make the website popular or generate personal recommendations from the users. Social media marketing, on the other hand, can popularize the company’s brand or products and services. But it may fail to get a good website rank in the search engine results, in which case the site will lose its visibility.

The goal of attracting relevant traffic to your site can be fulfilled only if both search engine optimization and social media marketing run concurrently. Both are the perfect partners for getting the site on top rankings as well as building up an informal community of visitors. The millions of online users make internet marketing a powerful and compelling tool to get prospective customers involved with your business and turn them into customers.

Plan out your SEO campaign with a professional SEO consultant and ensure that you include use search engine optimization as well as social media marketing for all your internet marketing efforts.