The Relationship Between SEO and SMM
It’s a lot closer than you might think

Digital marketing relies on the synergy of its separate parts to provide a strategy that is holistically sound. This is true when you look at the relationship between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SMM). Although these operate as two distinct branches of a single entity, they have a close relationship with plenty of crossovers.

In this article, we’ll look at the parallels of SEO and SMM and, when used together, how they can provide a cohesive function that can ultimately impact your businesses online.

Similarities Between SEO and SMM

The Internet Entry Points

A study by Reuters has shown that a growing number of people in the UK now use social media as their main source of news. Both social and search channels are the initial entry points that Internet users will access to start their browsing.

Google, the world’s most popular search engine, processed 3.5 billion searches per day in 2012. The massive figure is continuously rising as data now suggests that roughly 5 billion searches are processed globally on a daily basis. There are 3.5 billion social media users around the world – equating to roughly half of the world’s population; suggesting why digital marketers have such a keen interest in the two marketing features.

Got a Query?

The primary purpose of search engines is to answer user queries. Search engines are useful in this sense as users can either input simple keywords or enter a semantically sound question to find an answer to their question. The same question-and-answer format isn’t available on social media but users typically log in to satisfy any curiosity. A good example of this is Twitter where a continuous stream of up-to-date information from around the world is constantly flowing in a linear timeline.

Brand Relevance

Within a few clicks an Internet user can quickly and easily check the competence of a business. Searching for them using a search engine or taking a look at their social media accounts will give you a pretty good idea of their operational standards. A search engine will show you their ranking in SERPs and the website structure, the same can be said of their social accounts. A business that’s difficult to find on social media will give browsers a bad impression and damages their credibility.

How Do They Support Each Other?

Keyword Application

What does your customer want to know and how can you deliver it to them?

Effective use of keywords goes hand-in-hand with SEO and SMM. Understanding the terms and phrases that a target audience enters into a search engine is important to optimize the content that you provide. If a particular phrase or word is used often, you can adapt your content and target these high-density keywords. The same can be said of social media, but in this case, it’s hashtags. Effective use of hashtags can drive engagement and increase the visibility of your brand on more user feeds.

Importance of Social Signals (Likes, Shares, Votes, etc.)

The traction your content gains on social platforms can impact your ranking in the long term.

Google claims that social signals do not contribute towards a website’s ranking potential. However, Hootsuite, a social media management platform, suggests that there appears to be a strong correlation between social activity and ranking. Although clarity regarding this relationship is still cloudy, we believe social signals indirectly impact a website’s ranking. Put it this way, social media is not a factor that Google considers towards ranking; however, it magnifies other factors that Google does consider.

Increasing the Click-Through-Rate

Google can recognise an over-saturation of keywords in an attempt to boost its visibility to more users. Instead, SEO should involve polishing headlines and meta descriptions to attract interested users. Google will weigh up a link’s click-through-rate (CTR) and page bounce rate. This will heavily impact ranking.

The same can be said of SMM. Standing out from the crowd with the ability to attract attention and compel users to click your profile can affect ranking in the long term. Adopting a particular angle that resonates with a large number of users for your meta descriptions and headlines should improve click-through-rate.

Wrap Up

The viability of an effective digital strategy could rely on the complimentary facets of SEO in Dubai and SMM in Dubai. When used in tandem, these two separate marketing aspects converge to create a single homogenous content marketing strategy that can maximize the penitential of your brand online.