The Necessity of Integrating SEO and Social Media

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a marketing tactic that is imperative to the success of small to medium sized businesses today, along with a strong web presence and advertising campaign. A successful SEO strategy can provide a business with the profit, growth and wealth it deserves even if it doesn't utilize social media, but integrating social media is a growing need for SEO campaigns, merging the two worlds as one and delivering a SEO campaign like no other. In fact, integrating social media and SEO can provide a faster success rate in your marketing campaign. 

While this is true, though, 50% of companies that struggle with SEO are not integrating social media, according to a recent survey. A research agency surveyed almost 600 business and marketing professionals in June 2013 and found that 15% of these professionals were "very successful" with SEO while 18% said they were not. 

According to the article below, the biggest difference between the very successful and not successful is their use of social media within their SEO campaigns: 

The biggest difference between the “very successful” and “not successful” companies is their use of social media as part of the SEO strategy. As the chart below shows, 38 percent of those “very successful” with SEO are doing extensive integration of social media, compared to only two percent of the companies that aren’t succeeding with SEO.
And a full 50 percent of the latter group — the ones not succeeding at SEO — aren’t integrating social media at all.

That chart only compares the successful and not-successful companies. Elsewhere in the study is a chart using the whole group of respondents, which shows that almost one-quarter of the group aren’t integrating social media at all into their SEO strategies.

Our columnist Trond Lyngbø just wrote about this last week, in fact. In his article, You’re Dead… If You Don’t Integrate Social Media & PR Into Your Local SEO Strategy, Trond said
A couple other interesting notes from the Ascend2 survey:

• 48 percent of all respondents said “creating original content” is the most effective SEO tactic — the top answer

• only 19 percent said “external link building” is the most effective, but that may be due to difficulty — 45 percent said it’s the most difficult tactic, more than all the other tactics they could choose from

• at 48 percent, “lack of budget and/or headcount” was listed as the most challenging obstacle to SEO success

Social content ranks well on search engines. What happens on TripAdvisor (a social review site) and Yelp (a business directory) stays on Google (a search engine). What people say about your business — their feedback, the ratings they leave — everything — is publicly accessible to your prospective buyers. And this, of course, impacts the research/purchase cycle.

You can read the rest of the article here.

As a small to medium sized business it is important for you to implement a social SEO campaign so that your company can experience the growth it deserves. Both inbound and outbound marketing is a way for you to build relationships with your current or prospective clients and grow your business -- faster than many of your competitors. Today there are many companies that you can hire -- and for a reasonable price -- to manage your marketing campaigns, like Classic Image. These companies will handle the day-to-day marketing needs of your campaigns while you can focus on what matters most... growing your business. In many cases you can get a reasonable quote to jump start your campaign, ensuring that you don't break your bank.