REVENUE DRIVEN FOR OUR CLIENTS
$2,416,945,839
CLIENT LOGIN Get a free VIP consultation
888-601-5359 Get a proposal
WebFX
Digital Marketing
That Drives Results®
CLIENT LOGIN
  • SEO & Lead Generation

    Organic Search

    • SEO Services
    • Enterprise SEO Services
    • Local SEO Services
    • Google Local Services Ads Management
    • SEO Audits
    • Page Speed & Core Web Vitals Optimization

    Digital Advertising

    • PPC Management Services
    • Enterprise PPC Management Services
    • Programmatic Advertising Services
    • Competitor Geofencing Services
    • Addressable Geofencing Services
    • Employment & Recruiting Marketing

    Social

    • Social Media Advertising
    • Enterprise Social Media Advertising
    • Social Media Management
    • Social Media Design
    • YouTube Social Media Advertising
    • Online Review Acceleration

    Learn

    • Our SEO Results
    • Our SEO Case Studies
    • What is an SEO company?
    • How to find the best SEO company
    • SEO guide for marketing managers
    • What is digital marketing?

    21%

    Average Traffic
    Increase for Clients

  • Ecommerce

    Digital Marketing

    • Ecommerce SEO Services
    • Ecommerce PPC Services
    • Ecommerce Social Media Advertising
    • D2C Social Media Advertising
    • Video Commerce, Connected TV & OTT
    • Ecommerce Marketing Resources

    Commerce Platforms

    • Facebook Marketplace for Business
    • Shopify Optimization Services
    • Target Plus™ Marketplace Management
    • Walmart Marketplace Advertising
    • Shopping Feed Automation

    Amazon

    • Amazon SEO & Product Optimization
    • Amazon Advertising Management
    • Amazon Stores & Marketplace Launch
    • Amazon Marketing Resources
    • How to Open an Amazon Storefront

    B2B Ecommerce

    • B2B Ecommerce Enablement
    • Digital Transformation Solutions
    • Ecommerce PIM
    • B2B AR & VR Solutions
    • Where To Sell Online in 2021

    30%+ increase in ecommerce sales

    Read our case study
  • UX & Interactive

    UX & Web Design

    • UX Website Design
    • UX Website Redesign
    • User Experience Testing
    • Landing Pages & Funnels
    • Conversion Rate Optimization
    • Rapid Web Design

    Content Marketing

    • SEO Copywriting
    • Content Marketing Services
    • Personalized Web Content
    • Infographics & Motion Graphics
    • Web Video Production Services
    • Voice Search Content Optimization

    Development

    • Digital Experience Development
    • Shopify Ecommerce Development
    • Web Infrastructure & Maintenance
    • Content Management Systems
    • Voice Assistant Skills Development
    • ADA Compliance Services

    Learn

    • Our UX Design Portfolio
    • My Website Doesn't Drive Leads
    • My Website Traffic Is Going Down
    • My Website Doesn't Convert
    • My Website Isn't Making Money
    • My Website Isn't Showing Up on Google

    The WebFX Portfolio

    View design portfolio
  • Our Technology

    Revenue Acceleration Platform

    • MarketingCloudFX Revenue Platform
    • CRMROI
    • Customer Data Platform (CDP)
    • Lead Management & Scheduling Solutions
    • CRM Retargeting Technology
    • Data Warehouse & ETL Pipelines

    Analytics & Attribution

    • Web Channel Call Tracking
    • Channel Partner Sales Pipeline Management
    • SEO Reporting & Forecasting
    • Channel Attribution & Forecasting
    • Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis
    • Digital Due Diligence

    Marketing Automation

    • Account-Based Marketing Services
    • Lead Nurture Email Marketing
    • Email Marketing Management Services
    • Email Marketing Testing & Design
    • Salesforce Marketing Automation
    • Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Automation

    Industry-leading revenue acceleration platform

    A next-level approach to digital

    WebFX's proprietary digital marketing platform makes it easier than ever to track digital marketing performance, conduct industry research, calculate ROI, and make strategic decisions.

    View MarketingCloudFX
  • Who We Are

    Who We Are

    • Contact Info
    • Careers (We Are Hiring!)
    • About Us
    • Portfolio & Case Studies
    • WebFX Reviews
    • Awards

    Community Impact

    • Company Values
    • Community Impact
    • FXBuilds
    • Equality at WebFX
    • STEMFX Program
    • WebFX History

    Pricing Guides

    • How much should a website cost?
    • How much does PPC cost?
    • Email Marketing Pricing
    • Social Media Pricing
    • SEO Pricing
    • Local SEO Pricing

    Content Library

    • Our Blog
    • SEO Checker Report
    • KeywordsFX Keyword Research Tool
    • Fix Your Funnel
    • FaqFox
    • View all tools

    Best Place to Work in PA

    View Careers
REVENUE DRIVEN FOR OUR CLIENTS
$2,416,945,839
Get a proposal

Home > Blog > Social Media

SEO vs. Social Media: Which Is Better?

By Kelly Bowden on February 12, 2020 ~ 7 minutes to read
Kelly is an Associate Copywriter at WebFX. She has a bachelor's degree in linguistics and has taught a course on introductory print publishing and layout at Brigham Young University. When she's not writing, you can find her reading, redrawing portraits with ballpoint pens, collecting anything fox related, and creating and studying languages.

There’s an ongoing debate about which marketing strategy — search engine marketing or social media marketing — marketers should put the most time and effort into to generate the highest return for their investment.

To answer this question, we’ll explore what makes each marketing strategy unique and the benefits of each. First, let’s look at the purpose of search engine optimization and social media marketing:

  • Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is about showing up in Google search results for your audience’s search queries. Your ranking dictates how much traffic you’ll drive to your website.
  • Social media marketing: Social media marketing is about building relationships and brand awareness while engaging with your audience on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Now that we’ve established the different qualities of each, here are the three most significant differences between search engine marketing and social media marketing.

1. Content

Content is key in both SEO and social media. Read on to learn more about how content affects each marketing strategy.

SEO

Content that ranks highly is written with SEO in mind and is informative to your target audience and based on research. Pieces of content that work best are ones that provide in-depth definitions and answer common questions, like how-to articles, for example.

When you’re writing content with SEO in mind, remember that readers want to know something, and they want to find all the information they’re looking for without having to read multiple pages. They want to be in-and-out with an answer to their question without having to click on more than one link in organic search results. If your content is uninformative, they might leave your site.

Long-form content (at the very least 1500 words) that is relevant to your target audience (aka properly keyword optimized) tends to see the most success in search results.

Social media

Content for social media, on the other hand, sparks empathy. The focus on some emotional response — anxiety, anger, awe — drives engagement.

People on social media browse to look for entertaining and engaging content, and nothing is as satisfying as being able to relate to something emotionally. That’s why content that provides emotional response tends to trend, and social media is all about trending topics.

Content that works well on social media are short, condensed thoughts, emotional headlines, and, most effective, visuals. Photos on Facebook garner 53% more likes than other types of content.

In other words

You can use both SEO and social media marketing to promote your site content. Use the content you create for each marketing method to supplement the other.

For example, you could link an infographic in your post for your social media campaign to a piece of long-form content on your site. When someone sees your infographic on social media, the link makes them more likely to share it and head on over to your site.

What a way to increase awareness and drive traffic, all at the same time!

2. Audience

Knowing your audience is crucial to both your SEO and social media marketing strategies. Read on to learn more about how planning with audiences in mind helps direct and focus both marketing strategies.

SEO

When optimizing content for users, it takes some time and research to determine your target audience, so your SEO strategy should include creating marketing personas.

When you create marketing personas, you create fictitious, customers that have the same characteristics as your ideal customer. From then on, you’ll create a marketing strategy that is based on your target persona.

Having that fictitious target audience member makes it easier to make marketing decisions and helps you better understand how to advertise your business.

Ideally, you’ll write your content based on what your target audience is looking for, what they want to learn, and even what kind of behavior they have.

Your target audience has questions that they want to be answered, and the more accurate the answer you provide, the more they’ll be likely to trust your brand and become a paying customer.

You’ll also want to be sure to use Google Analytics to see how your content performs after it’s been published, you can optimize your content so it better matches the intent of your audience.

Social media

Social media allows you to target your audience with ease.

Most social media platforms have built-in targeting options for marketing, as well as well-documented demographics on what kind of people visit each social media platform, which helps you learn a lot about who they are.

People on social media share, interact, and engage with content. In fact,  74% of social media users use social media to make buying decisions. That number continues to increase for several reasons such as influencer suggestions and the rise of social marketplaces.

In other words

You can use social media to find your ideal target audience to target with SEO.

3. Success rate

The measurement of success is different for both SEO and social media marketing. Read on to learn more about how the differences in measuring success rate can help determine which marketing strategy to use.

SEO

Success for SEO is a slow but rewarding process. It takes a lot of time — likely a few months, but potentially years —to gain enough credibility to rank well for competitive keywords. Not to mention, search engines take time to find and index your content, as well.

SEO requires steady effort, but it often draws more conversions than social media marketing.

SEO is an excellent method to generate visitors, and once a page is live on your site, it has the opportunity to rank highly for the keywords it targets.

As another plus, traffic and visibility for your content are easy to track.

Social media

Social media takes planning and effort but is a great way to build brand awareness and interact with your target audience. People can share your content to the point that it creates a mini viral event that gives your brand an enormous boost.

However, the content you post will get drowned out with new content that gets posted every few minutes.

Because of the ephemeral nature of social media content, you’re required to make an ongoing effort to post regularly to have a successful social media marketing campaign. It also means that you’ll have to pay special attention to when your target audience is most active on social media to ensure that they see your content before it’s at the bottom of their feeds.

The idea of posting on a schedule might sound daunting, but just know that several social media management tools like Buffer.com exist to help you manage and schedule your posts.

Another option for you is to outsource your social media management to digital marketing companies like WebFX.

While social media might have a smaller return than SEO, it takes less time to post content and see the interaction. You will need a bit of time to grow a following, but you can upload a post instantly and see engagements in real-time.

In other words

As a social media marketing bonus, engagement levels (likes, comments, and shares) are easy to track.

And social media has an impact on ranking in the form of links. As more people spend their Internet time on social media, more people will head to your site from your social media marketing efforts. The links you gain from social media will help boost your rank.

Additionally, you can use social media to help you build relationships and increase your influencers, backlinks, and reviews. These will also boost your rankings and help you perform better organically in search.

Do you need help deciding on SEO vs. social media?

It’s hard to say whether SEO or social media is better — each strategy has its pros and cons.

The best way to have success in either marketing method is to use both together. Use social media marketing to generate engagement, new influencers, and traffic to your web content, and use SEO to optimize your content for search engines.

Or you could let someone do all the work for you.

WebFX is an excellent choice for all your marketing needs. With over 20 years of experience in managing digital marketing strategies for clients, we’re well qualified to make your marketing campaign a success.

Contact us online or give us a call at 888-601-5359 to find out more about what outsourcing your marketing campaign can save you!

WebFX Careers

Join our mission to provide industry-leading digital marketing services to businesses around the globe - all while building your personal knowledge and growing as an individual.

We’re Hiring! View 30+ job openings!
  • Work With Us
  • Social Media Marketing Agency
  • Social Media Marketing Services
  • Social Media Design
  • Social Media Advertising
  • Continue Reading
  • Social Media Resources
  • Social Media Blog
  • Facebook Ad Cost
  • Instagram Ad Cost

Get posts by email

Be the first to know when we publish a new blog post!

  1. Previous
  2. Next

Share this article
Subscribe to our newsletter

Join 150,000 marketing managers who get our best digital marketing insights, strategies and tips delivered straight to their inbox.

How is your website's SEO?

Use our free tool to get your score calculated in under 60 seconds.

We've driven over 6,271,747 leads for clients. Discover how we can help your business grow

Hear from over 500 WebFX clients

  • WebFX did everything they said they would do and did it on time! The whole process was very easy!
    Owner
    Arizona Garage Door Supplier
  • The entire staff at WebFX has been phenomenal. They are quick with their replies and incredibly helpful.
    Marketing Specialist
    cable company in pa
  • WebFX has been excellent to work with! Very knowledgeable about the ever changing algorithms that make up SEO!
    Marketing Director
    Alarm System Provider in MA
  • WebFX has been a pleasure to work with on our SEO needs and I look forward to working with them on future projects.
    Operations Manager
    Metal Stamping Service

View 500+ Client Testimonials

awards logos

Ready to speak with a marketing expert? Give us a ring

888-601-5359

1.6M

Hours of Expertise

300

Digital Marketing Masters On Staff

1,128

Websites Launched

Services
  • Digital Marketing Services
  • SEO Services
  • PPC Services
  • Web Design Services
  • Social Media Services
  • Digital Advertising Services
  • Content Marketing Services
Knowledge Base
  • Internet Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Web Design
  • SEO
  • PPC
  • Amazon
Company
  • SEO Agency
  • PPC Agency
  • Content Marketing Agency
  • Digital Marketing Agency
  • Internet Marketing Agency
  • Locations
  • Industries We Serve
Resources
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • SEO Checker
  • Tools
  • Marketing Guides
  • Careers
REVENUE DRIVEN FOR OUR CLIENTS
$2,416,945,839 i

WebFX® 1995-2021 | Celebrating 25+ Years of Digital Marketing Excellence

Call Toll Free: 888-449-3239   Privacy & Terms of Use   Sitemap