Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Marketing? Every business comes to question the benefits of SEO and Social Media Marketing and which is best for their own business. Digital marketing companies often recommend both and simultaneously. While this does put a strain on startups with a tight budget, it is important to know how things work with both these strategies to understand why digital marketing companies recommend you do both, SEO and Social Media Marketing simultaneously.
SEO focuses on optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results. For a startup, this involves creating content for your website, optimizing the content, and website to improve technical SEO. SEO is content-driven and the better your content, the higher the authority. This directly impacts your ranking and your visibility in organic search. SEO provides consistent, long-term organic traffic which is intent-based, from people searching for specific information, products, or services. SEO is theoretically free for life but requires time and effort.
On the contrary, Social Media Marketing, especially paid Social Media Marketing, focuses on building brand awareness, creating a community, and generating traffic through shareable content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It is creative and engagement-driven and best suited for rapid visibility and direct interaction with your audience. Social Media Marketing is often effective in the early stages of the marketing funnel to generate interest and interactions. The downside to Social Media Marketing is that you pay for the clicks and compared to the ROI of SEO in the long run, Social Media may seem expensive. But when you have to get a startup to generate visibility and revenue from the get-go, Social Media Marketing is often the best way to go.
Why combine SEO and Social Media Marketing for startups?
The most effective digital marketing strategies combine both SEO and Social Media Marketing for immediate results followed by long-term success. SEO ensures your content ranks well for relevant search queries while Social Media Marketing amplifies your reach, engages a new audience, and supports brand loyalty. While you have immediate results from Social Media Marketing, you will reduce spend on ads through SEO in the long run. High-quality organic traffic targeting user intent and conversions through SEO combined with the brand awareness, engagement, and community-building features of Social Media Marketing yields the best results for comprehensive digital marketing success.
Cost Comparison: SEO vs Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses
A small business runs its marketing campaigns on a tight budget. Small businesses have a clear timeline and a goal they want to achieve, and this could be good but restrictive in most cases. SEO and Social Media Marketing work differently. Social Media Marketing may require a higher upfront cost while the cost of SEO may be relatively low, but the results of a Social Media Marketing campaign are almost immediate, while SEO is a long-term strategy.
SEO Cost Profile
The cost for SEO mostly goes towards content creation. The initial optimization charges may vary depending on the amount of content on the website and the technical feasibility of the website itself. Some websites may require a complete overhaul from UI/UX to the platform used. This may add up to the cost of SEO. But if your website is stable and has no major changes required technically, most of the spend is on content itself. SEO costs are phased out for technical improvements, content creation, website optimization, and link building. Some agencies may recommend that you create more content, especially if you are a startup with no online presence. The strategies change to link building if you already have good content but no links and presence on other websites. The cost for link building varies based on strategies. Link purchases, though frowned upon, are effective and may cost just as much as spending on Social Media Marketing, and the results are not immediate.
Hiring an SEO agency is often the right way to go but not necessary if you have an in-house team or expertise personally. Most SEO tasks are relatively easy if you know what you are doing and how to do it. Unfortunately, SEO takes anywhere between 3–6 months to materialize. This is provided you have good content in terms of quality and quantity. If your content is not sufficient your complete time and effort are focused on content creation. Ongoing costs in SEO are related to maintenance of the content, optimizing existing content, creating content based on content and keyword gaps, and monitoring analytics.
ROI is generally higher over time with SEO if done right. Most websites that have a well-optimized website see constant traffic to their websites for years, provided they add and update their content and keep their website in good health.
Social Media Marketing Cost Profile
Social Media Marketing offers faster results through paid ad campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The traffic from organic posts depends solely on machine algorithms, your post content, and the number of followers/community you have built. Paid social ads, on the other hand, provide better exposure to a wider audience with similar interests but this requires continuous budget allocation. Once the spending stops, the traffic and leads drop quickly too. Average cost of Social Media Marketing campaigns depends on the platform of choice and how much you are willing to pay per click. Organic reach on social media requires consistent content creation and community engagement. This requires time and resources. SMM is perfect for brand awareness, engagement, and audience-targeted advertisements. Costs can escalate if campaigns are not managed strategically. ROI on Social Media Marketing diminishes once your ad spend is reduced or content activity declines. Social Media Marketing too requires regular content creation and this requires time and effort.
For small businesses that often look for quick results, Social Media Marketing is highly effective. This improves product awareness, brand awareness, and more visibility among prospective audiences. SEO is more about intent-targeted audiences and often comes with long-term sustainable results.
How to Combine SEO and Social Media for Faster Growth
For small businesses, the key is to optimize your marketing strategy to include both SEO and Social Media Marketing with minimal effort. This should include redistribution of content to various platforms, social media profile optimization for SEO, link building through Social Media Marketing, and promoting your website through social media websites. Leveraging Social Media Marketing with SEO ensures a smooth balanced approach for immediate gains and long-term success.
So what do you have to do to combine Social Media Marketing with SEO?
- Optimize your social media profiles for SEO: Your social media profiles are not just for displaying what you sell and listing all your posts. It has a great purpose with more exposure to your search engines. If it’s possible to list your profile on organic searches, you should try your best to get yourself out there. More often than not, this is an easy way to build brand recognition and traffic to your website from your social media profiles. This also ensures a slight bump in site authority signals.
- Create dual-purpose content: Creating content is often time-consuming. Business owners often find it difficult to create content even when they have a good strategy. Optimizing content and redistributing the same content in different formats helps reach more audiences without straining on content ideas and mental blocks. Develop content that serves both search intent and social media interests that are keyword-rich and engaging for social media. Craft headlines that work well for SEO click-through rates and catchy enough for social media users and recreate content with multimedia elements, images, videos, and optimize it with SEO-friendly alt tags and descriptions to enhance both user experience and algorithm rankings.
- Leverage analytics for continuous optimization: Not all social media platforms work for all businesses or industries. Ranking for keywords varies too based on the age and authority of your website. Understanding what works and improving areas when possible helps achieve better results. This is only possible with data insights. Constantly review your social media profiles and website data with analytics to understand what is not working and improve on your strong areas to achieve better results. When required, drop social media platforms that aren’t performing as well or fine-tune your strategies for success.
- Encourage user engagement for SEO benefits: Google is becoming intelligent. Your ranking is not just dependent on content alone. Your ranking depends a lot on how users interact with your website. Social media posts also focus on content that has better interaction and engagement. More likes and follows are promoted more often than those that do not. Search engines too are following the same principle to rank your content better organically when the interactions are higher. Focus on user-generated content, comments, shares, and discussions on social media to increase brand awareness and social proof. These engagements lead to natural backlinks and higher search engine ranking.
By aligning your social media efforts with SEO, you increase your ranking for SEO while improving your overall Social Media Marketing efforts.
