Small businesses, by their very nature, have limited resources to devote to advertising. As changes to traditional marketing stack up, many companies are faced with the choice between a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign and Social Media Marketing.

That isn’t to say that both can’t be done, but since many of the factors that determine the strength of each campaign don’t translate well to the other, it can be relatively expensive to do both at the same time. Maintenance costs and time also have to be taken into consideration when choosing whether to attempt both or deciding which forms your advertising will take.

Google or Facebook?

Social media marketing is good at increasing your brand exposure and gaining market insight. It is different from SEO in that Google and other search engines do not – currently – use social media sites to determine relevance. Having a great Facebook advertising campaign with a loyal community and active blog posts will not directly enhance your SEO ranking.

What it will do, however, is drive brand recognition and create sales leads for your business. Google rankings drive hits on your website. It focuses on searches to give potential customers the best information possible on where their queries can be answered. Facebook, and other social media, assumes that the customer has at least some knowledge of the brand and creates niche marketing to enhance that knowledge.

Crossover Appeal?

There are, of course, certain areas where both SEO and social marketing have commonalities. The importance of strong content – whether blogs or articles – is critical to success. Without authoritative content neither marketing models have a base to build from.

Since content is the most important thing for both SEO and social media marketing, the case can be made to focus on SEO, but maintain an active social media presence. Without duplicating effort, you can get the best of both worlds. However, as importantly noted by SEO experts Sydney, the strength of your social media marketing will not have a direct impact on your SEO.

Making The Best of Both

Startups looking to expand their customer base should concentrate on building a strong SEO campaign. Create content, establish a network of links and backlinks to strengthen the authority of your posts and concentrate on increasing their Google ranking.

The same content can be posted to social media sites to increase brand awareness and create a community for marketing and new customers. Over time the indirect results of social marketing will be felt in your SEO campaign.

Once you have a strong SEO presence, resources can be moved to social media marketing to fine tune your brand appeal and strengthen your customer community. Although patience is required to conduct this type of advertising campaign, it has the potential to dominate two different advertising venues and strengthen your brand recognition and loyalty.

About the Author

Amir Noghani is an online marketing specialist at Green Web Marketing SEO Perth. Along with holding a master degree in Engineering, he has been working in the field of marketing and communications for over seven years and developed strong knowledge and skills in Online Marketing and Public Relations and also writing journal articles and blogs.