Many SMBs choose to focus on a single aspect of marketing with a smaller marketing team when they begin their businesses. Some of them end up in a dilemma where they have to choose between organic SEO and social media marketing (SMM). Social media can be a powerful tool for businesses, while search engines have billions of people relying on them to get answers. Focusing on one marketing plan is considered more likely to yield great results for a business in infancy.

When it comes to social media marketing Dubai, businesses compete to present themselves in the best possible way in marketing channels like Facebook and LinkedIn. Social media marketing is pretty much the norm for Dubai-based enterprises. 

Despite both having advantages of their own, it’s not easy to pick one over the other. Search engine optimization is focused on search engines, and uses various techniques to promote web traffic, ultimately helping your page rise up in search engine ranks and appear in the first page of search results.

Social media marketing is about creating content that can attract users, keep them engaged, and have them share the content in their own social media profiles to reach more thus increasing the business’ visibility. 

Here are a few insights on the connection between the two. 

Social media signals do not influence website rankings

Businesses looking to take advantage of social media should know that it doesn’t influence site rankings. However, both social media and SEO are still connected as SEO can only be truly effective after harnessing social media channels. 

Many experts believe that blogs written for SMM can attract visitors from social media channels and perform better in organic search, more so than SEO blogs. This is because the more engaging the SMM blog is, the more backlinks and referral traffic it can procure, subsequently rising in ranks organically.

SEO can be to find product/service but social media is for recommendations

People search for all kinds of things on search engines including businesses. This is why businesses compete to rank well for their target keywords. But social media is a different case. 

Facebook, the biggest social media network, has billions of active users. These people will be talking about businesses too. They might even like, share, or mention a business page which their connections would see. The business gets more visibility and potential customers in the process. Many people go through peer reviews about businesses before actually approaching the business, and they do this through their social media channels.

SEO and Social Media are in fact opposites

While SEO is all about convincing a search engine robot that a website needs to go up in search engine ranks, social media is about convincing people themselves that they can trust a business to provide the kind of service they want. 

SEO doesn’t give immediate results. Organic SEO is a slow process that will yield results eventually. But social media activities happen in real-time, where posts appear instantly and people can react or respond in no time. Though people browsing their social media profiles don’t necessarily make a decision to purchase when they see a business, it’s likely that they will spread the news if they like the news. They influence potential customers to make the decision to purchase.

However, social media marketing requires more effort and planning as the actions are generally short-lived. Posts on social media can make an impact if done properly though it won’t last long. Meanwhile, SEO efforts can keep a page ranked higher for months. Consistently good SEO practices can sustain high page ranks longer. 

Conclusion

Making this choice isn’t easy just by comparing the two. It is up to the business to figure out what works best for their online presence – either leverage the web or make themselves more visible through social media. The recommended approach would be to combine both, though it should be done smartly. Those who are ill-equipped to manage both can rely on a good SEO company or a digital marketing firm to do the job.