Why Successful Social Media Marketing Have Poor SEO Scores

By Daniel Wood

When internet marketers started talking in 2009 about the “new” SEO (search engine optimization), a lot of people panicked and wondered if they needed to revamp their blog or web site to cater to the new environment of Web 2.0 media. While some argue today that the so-called revolution has not really taken place, the fact is that now, SEO 1.0 or less is still widely practised and many have failed to adapt in their attempt to apply rules of the older Web to the new world order.

Those blogs or web sites who have focussed on Social Media, in particular, have struggled to keep up with SEO. The underlying reason is of course that many have failed to understand that Social Media Optimization is not the same as SEO. SMO and SEO should definitely run in tandem and can sometimes work in parallel to achieve the same goals, but it is very important to realise that they are almost completely different things altogether.

Blog owners or webmasters need to realise that depending on their goals, they may not need as much SEO as SMO, or vice versa. Here are some differences between SEO and SMO that will help you understand better which option to go for, or how you can tailor each to better suit your overall blog or web site needs.

1. SEOs depend on automation 

Social Media is about interaction with an interactive audience. It’s impossible to automate this type of vibrant, dynamic system of communications. SEO is based on rigid sets of rules and methods that would simply not compute when faced with the evolving nature of Social Media.

2. Social bookmarking register on SEOs as web directories 

Very few surviving web directories are in active use nowadays. While die hards still use DMOZ, Yahoo Directory or even AltaVista, all these web directories receive very few new users each year. Most people don’t even know that anything exists outside of Google and such search engines show no sign of slowing down in growth. In effect, to Google and the majority of internet users, web directories are obsolete and useless.

The problem is, SEO doesn’t agree. SEO assumes social bookmarking sites to be the Web 2.0 directories. So SEO submits your post or entry to many other social bookmarking sites, instead of to directories. And because social bookmarking aims not for multiple posts on multiple sites but the number of user votes on a single site, this does not help your cause.

3. SEOs are solitary

Many SEOs are extremely competitive with each other, much unlike the sharing, collaborating nature of Social Media. For example, it is considered good Social Media Marketing to promote links of peers and related blogs or web sites without any expectation of returning favours. SEO, however, recommends that you check your links to always make sure that the other site or blog links back to you, otherwise it would be considered a free PageRank boost to competitors.

4. SEOs prioritise numbers, not values

While many website factors taken into account by SEO are good signs of a web site’s relevance or success, they are often misleading. How many times have you clicked on a link that showed up as a PageRank 3 link, being #1 Google, and having hundreds of thousands of daily visitors… only to find that it was just a junk web site full of ads? Unlike Social Media marketing, SEO success doesn’t guarantee that the web site or blog has any real authority.

5. SEOs prioritise commercial success

Most web sites that want to be an SEO success generally need it for sales, or conversions. The case is quite different in Social Media, where you’ll often find people want to get the word out on their site or blog for more altruistic reasons, or even just for the sake of a hobby. Word of mouth tends to spread the news faster on these sorts of sites.

So if your blog or site relies on sales, or ad revenue, then it’s most likely that you would concentrate on SEO, and not Social Media.

6. SEOs do not rate content or design

Many blogs that aim for SEO fill their pages with endless amounts of content that’s probably empty in practical information or repetitive, yet rich with keywords that score high on search engines. In the same way, SEO can’t judge design aesthetics as design doesn’t factor into SEO.

On the other hand, Social Media puts content as king. Well written blogs or informative web sites will get shared more and have increased exposure, while good designs will encourage visitors to stay. Conversely, terrible content will generate negative feedback and keep people away from your site or blog, while clunky, clumsy design will frustrate people, hindering them from visiting you.