ACtion Magazine - June 2017 - 12

Angie Kilbourne

Social media vs. SEO: Which
is the best trafﬁc source for
your business?

earch engine optimization (SEO) and social media
are two of the best sources to drive traffic to shop
websites. "The problem is that not every business
has the resources to focus on both channels," explains Lilach Bullock, a social media consultant, influencer
and speaker. "In such cases, a business owner has to look at
the two with an analytical eye, weighing the pros and cons of
each in order to determine which one is the best traffic source
for its needs and audience."
"Social media traffic has been growing year by year," she
notes. "Overall, it's now become the top source of all website
referral traffic. But those are general figures. The top driver
of your shop's referral traffic might actually be SEO. That's
why it's important for businesses to do their own analysis,
weighing the pros and cons of each."

An organic process
Social media has many upsides. It can:
● Help your business gain more influence,
increase traffic and grow. That in itself has an
attractive spinoff: Increased visitor traffic can improve
a website's search engine ranking.
● Become search engines within themselves. For
example, a business can use its presence on Twitter
to see the biggest trending news of the day or easily
search for great content, including search by location.
● Allow your business to exercise more control
over its success than SEO does. Social media
platforms are less affected by changes in SEO
algorithms, which can undermine or completely
destroy a strategy. A business can find new ways
of improving its marketing strategy, learn from its
mistakes and successes, and, as a result, improve
traffic.
"Arguably the biggest downside to social media is that it
can take some time to get it right, learn which platforms your
customers and prospects use, and to build a big enough audience," Bullock says. "Another downside is that fierce competition is inherent to social media. There are numerous other
profiles just like yours, sharing similar content and sharing
the same audiences. To get good, quality traffic consistently,
it's critical to make your content stand out."

SEO success
Like social media marketing, SEO has a number of benefits beyond increasing website traffic, including:

ACTION * June 2017

● SEO is great for building brand awareness and
trust with audiences - provided you can get in the top
search results. Focus on usability and readability, as
they are integral to search engine rankings.
● Search engine traffic also can be more targeted
than social media, and it can get you more high-quality
traffic than social media. But this too is dependent on
your actual search results' ranking.
● Results are easy to measure and quantify
using readily available analytics tools (e.g., Google
Analytics), but it's not as easy to pinpoint exactly how
much money SEO is actually bringing in.
"One of the biggest downsides to SEO is the
constant changes being made to search algorithms by
providers," Bullock cautions. "Google is constantly
making changes to their algorithm; they seem to come
out of nowhere, and they can drop your rankings
by five, 10, even 15 points. It can make businesses
feel like they need to start optimizing all over again.
Staying in the top rankings is another challenge
critical to successfully gaining traffic. But if you can
get SEO right, it can truly be an amazing source of
traffic."

Making the verdict
Choosing between SEO and social media is a difficult
and situation-specific decision for each business owner, says
Bullock: "The truth is, you'll eventually need both in order
to truly grow and scale your business. But given limited resources and time, you may have to focus on one more than the
other, at first, and at several junctures in the future."
Where do you start? Look at your site's traffic, determine
where that traffic is coming from, and then focus on the source
of the best quality traffic. "After all, no matter how much traffic you're getting on your website from a source, if that traffic
doesn't take some sort of action that moves visitors along the
sales funnel, then it won't help you achieve your overall business goals," says Bullock. ❆

According to Google, 28% of
searches for something nearby
result in a purchase. (Source:
HubSpot)

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ACtion Magazine - June 2017