SEO Works best with Social Media Integration: Study

At the social media, SEO meet ups I go to, there is always one guy who pops this question, how does SEO and Social Media work together? Do they? Do they not?

Although it is a relevant question, considering the fact that social media remains an undefined chapter, or rather a “bracket-less stream”, experiments and data are probably the best ways to find clues to this answer.

The SEO side of me suggests that yes Social Media helps leverage SEO but the ardent Social Media fan suggests that I’m over-doing it with SEO. Clearly, there is a sweet spot that every marketer should figure out themselves. And it is a moving target for most business streams.

But the common agreement is that, Yes, SEO and Social Media go hand in hand – complimentary to each other.

A recent research done by Marketing Sherpa, seals this idea.

In a recent MarketingSherpa study, they asked marketers for insight into their organizations’ thoughts and practices in the area of social media integration. The results of this study revealed that while three quarters of organizations think integration of SEO and social is essential, more than 50% are not involved in inbound marketing or, worse, they don’t even know what it is.

That means, many folks have still not figured out how to crack it.

Well, my opinion, like I said, is all about finding the sweet spot between the two. Going aggressive on SEO will anyway only get you flagged at Google. Gone are the days when you could amass one thousand links in a month and gear up to Google’s front page in a rush. Google has more signals to track now, that suggests popularity of a website, and Social Media sits right on top.

Focusing on a good, scalable Content Marketing strategy is probably your best bet when it comes to Social Media integration with SEO. Benchmarking your brand with others on SEO metrics and taking one step at a time overdoing them is probably the safest way to go, but you could move the switch more or less aggressive based on your bandwidth.

For more insights, check the research article here – SEO and Social Media Integration Study.