SEO vs Social Media: Who is dependent on whom?

Search Engine Optimization and Social Media have become the most important buzzwords on the internet today. Since every company and business wants to make the most of the kind of visibility that the internet offers today, businesses and website owners have turned to using both SEO as well as Social Media to promote their wares.

What is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimization is basically a way to ensure that the content on a website or webpage is so presented or written that it appears as a “top result” when a relevant keyword is searched for by a user.  SEO used to be all about keywords in the earlier era of the internet though in recent times, it has been redefined to mean a set of practices that ensure that a webpage is optimized in more ways than one.

Thanks to the Penguin/Panda updates that Google has introduced recently, bad SEO practices that favor boosting SEO through artificial means are penalized and web pages need to focus more on making their web pages more organically original, “fresh” and interesting to show up in top results. Also, by allowing a customer’s location, past search preference etc. to dictate search results, search engines have ensured that webpage owners need to work harder to make SEO work for them.

What is Social Media?
Social Media is essentially the term that is used to describe the creation, sharing and promotion of ideas on the internet that are generated by users of social networking sites through those platforms. Initially, business-centric social media was limited to blogs where the blog owners could broadcast their views on particular products and services.

Since blog owners earn money on the kind of pageviews they get, blogs became the perfect way for both blog writers as well as businesses to gain customers’ and potential customers’ attention. These days, social media is the term that is used to describe a group of platforms including social networking sites as well as blogs that are used for promoting a business.

How do social media affect SEO and vice versa?
When one talks of social media and SEO together, one has to remember that social media isn’t being talked about here in the context of being a tool in the hands of the public. In fact, some of the most successful blogs in the world are run by professional writers that are paid for their opinions and are encouraged to use SEO to promote a business. These days, businesses are encouraged to include company blogs and social media profiles as a part of their SEO tactics.

Hence we have a situation where a business that deals in, say auto accessories, has a full business website that basically features its catalogue ad e-store, a blog that is dedicated to educating readers about auto accessories (which ones you need, which are “mandatory”, which ones are in vogue, which ones are the best to buy, which ones a celebrity uses), a YouTube channel that features videos tutorials about installing auto accessories and Twitter/Facebook profiles that help the business “promote” its goods, its blog posts and video tutorials.

Now, the important thing to remember is that by promoting a website, blog post, social profile updates, video, etc. across other platforms, a company is able to make the most of the search engine optimization tactics that it used in its “source” and does not need to be careful about keywords stuffing during this process.

This can be understood by using the example of the auto accessories business again. Say the company paid someone to create a search engine optimized website/e-store, blog and video channel. Since each of these platforms are essentially unique, the company is able to use the same keywords (“best wet tires”) in the content on their website, their blog and their video channel. When promoting these posts on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter etc., the company can again use the same keywords (“best wet tires”) in the caption along with a link to the blog page/website/YouTube channel without throwing up red flags for search engines.

The whole point of using SEO and social media for a business is to obtain profits by a) getting more customers/potential customers to visit the business’ website to boost sales of the product and b) by earning money through ad revenue that the internet traffic brings.

For the time being, SEO and Social Media appear to be mutually interdependent to an equal degree. But a search engine update could ban the use of SEO in the future if search engine companies begin to consider the use of social media an artificial means of boosting internet traffic.

About The Author: Allie is a writer blogger. She loves writing, travelling and reading books. She contributes to punchh