You may have seen the recent string of posts about SEO vs. Social Media, starting with this effective, but poorly argued controversy-bait, which was excoriated by Elysia Brooker and Hugo Guzman, then followed up with a more nuanced view by Darren Rowse. While I'm not particularly interested (nor do I think there's much value) in re-hashing or arguing these points, I did think the topic warranted attention, as it brings up some excellent points marketers should carefully consider as they invest in their craft.
We Search for What We Want + Need
The search for information and answers has been essential to humans since time immemorial. And there's no sign that our latest iteration, web search, is losing any steam:
Even as we've reached a maturity point with broadband adoption and online population, searches are rising. We're not searching less every month; we're searching more.
Search is an intent driven activity. We don't search casually (much), we search to find answers, information, goods and services to consume. The power of search marketing - whether paid or organic - is simple: Be in front of the consumer at the time of consumption. There's no more effective time to be present and no more effective way of knowing what is desired. All the social graph analysis in the world won't tell you that Sunday evening, I got fed up with my current selection of footwear and, after some searching, spent a few hundred dollars on Zappos. But being front and center when I queried mens puma shoes brought them some nice business.
We're Social to Discover and Share
Social media - whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, StumbleUpon or something else - is about connections, interaction, discovery and distraction. We hardly ever use these portals as a way to find answers, though they certainly may provide plenty to unasked questions.
Social media marketing advocates often make the case that social is how we find out about new products on the web, but, at least so far, the data doesn't back up this assertion:
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ATG Study on How Users Discover Products via SearchEngineLand
However, I am strongly inclined to believe the claim that social media is how we find out about new content on the web, particularly when we're not seeking something in particular (as with a search). Blogs, pictures, video, research and the like are surely seeing an increased share of their visits from social, and that branding exposure is definitely valuable.
Some recent GroupM Research helped to shed the light of data on this supposition, noting that:
- The click-through rate in organic search results for users who have been exposed to a brand's social marketing campaign are 2.4X higher than those that haven't; for paid search, it showed a jump from 4.5% to 11.8% (in both cases, this is for branded queries)
- Consumers using social media are 1.7x more likely to search with the intention of making a list of brands or products to consider purchasing compared to those who do not use social media
Ben Yoskovitz talked about this value in his recent analysis:
Based on the information in this report, it’s reasonable to argue that social media marketing can increase the quality of leads (and not just the volume). It’s possible to hone in on, and understand intent through search and how social media exposure affects that intent. And as people are exposed (and I would say involved with – since exposure sounds like you’re just broadcasting stuff at people, which isn’t what social media is about) to social media their intent is more focused and driven towards lead conversion
That's the kind of social media marketing value I can get behind. Get exposed to potential customers through social so that when they build their consideration set, search and purchase, you'll have a leg up on the competition.
What Drives Traffic (and Converts) for Whom
It pays to understand the bias of this flare-up's instigator, and I've got plenty of compelling data myself to see his perspective. Last weekend, I started publishing content on a personal blog - no domain authority, no links and little chance of performing well in search. But the results from social media - Twitter, Facebook and Hacker News in particular - are fairly remarkable:
The search traffic demand, all 78 visits, was generated from the articles that went popular on Twitter & HN. The site itself still doesn't rank for its own name. Yet, social media sent 22,000 visits over 9 days. No wonder bloggers, in particular those that monetize through advertising, sponsorships and other traffic-driven systems, have a proclivity for investing in social traffic. Perhaps it's not so crazy to suggest on Problogger.net, a site about growing blog traffic and improving monetization, that social can be "better" than SEO.
I'd still argue that overall, referring traffic of all kinds sent from social, particularly from the largest network (Facebook), is only a fraction of the visits Google sends out each day (unless you're in the business of appealing to the Facebook audience biases - I was a bit frustrated with how the data was clearly manipulated in the reference piece to fit the story). But, social does eliminate some of the inherent biases that search engines carry and let content that appeals to social users flourish no matter the site's ability to grow its link profile, make content accessible to spiders or effectively target keywords.
Now let's look at an example on the opposite end of the spectrum - conversions for a B2B product.
SEOmoz's PRO membership may not be a good investment unless you're a marketer actively engaged with SEO, but given that both the search and social traffic our site attracts likely fall into this intent group (interested in SEO and likely to be in web marketing), a comparison seems fair.
First, I did some prep work in our Google Analytics account by creating an advanced segment called "social traffic" that contains any referral source with "twitter," "facebook," "stumbleupon," "linkedin," "flickr," and "ycombinator" - these represent the vast majority of our social media sources. Next, I compared this traffic quantitatively with our search referrals over the past two weeks:
- Social Traffic - 26,599 visits from 30 sources
- Organic Search Traffic - 102,349 from 20 sources
I then compared the percent of these reaching our landing or purchase pages for PRO membership. Here's organic search:
And here's social traffic:
Here's what I see:
- 4.5% of organic search visitors considered a purchase
- 1.3% of social traffic considered a purchase
- While I can't disclose full numbers, I can see that a fair number of search visits converted vs. zero for social.
In fact, looking at the entire year to date traffic to SEOmoz from social sources, it appears not 1 visit has ever converted for us. Social may be a great way to drive traffic, build branding and make a purchase more likely in the future, but from a direct conversion standpoint, it doesn't hold a candle to search. To be fair, I'm not looking at full life cycle or even first-touch attribution, which makes this analysis less comprehensive, though likely still directionally informative.
Takeaways
Given the research and data here and in the posts/content referenced, I think we can say a few things about search and social as marketing channels:
- There shouldn't be a VS.: This isn't about pitting web marketers against each other (or perhaps, more accurately, themselves, since our industry survey data suggests many of us are responsible for both). There's obvious value in both channels and to suggest otherwise is ideological nonsense and worse, self-defeating.
- Search Converts: $20 Billion+ isn't being wasted on Google's search ads - that sucker send intent-driven, focused, conversion-ready visits like nobody else on the web.
- Social Has Value: Those exposed to a social campaign are better customers and prospects; making social not only a branding and traffic channel, but an opportunity for conversion rate optimization.
- SEO Is Hard in the Early Stages: Without a strong link profile, even great content may not perform particularly well in search results.
- Segmenting Search and Social is Key: Unless you separate, analyze and iterate, you're doomed to miss opportunities and falsely attribute value. I'm particularly worried about those marketers who invest heavily in social to the detriment of SEO because the immediacy of the rewards is so much more tangible and emotionally compelling (He's following me on Twitter! We have 200 Facebook fans!) - make sure appropriate effort goes where it can earn ROI; it's our job.
For another interesting (and more social-media biased) perspective, check out Search vs. Social from Bradford Cross.
I'd love to hear more from you on this topic, too.
Personally I've never seen Search and Social as two competing marketing disciplines... and usually I frown to those ones exalting one over the other, and many friends who are Social Marketers are quite "exalted" ;).
What I believe is that Search and Social should walk together and complement one the other.
Let find what is the final purpose of any website which is not strictly personal: to convert.
And a conversion can be a purchase, a subscription or any other possible thing.
Therefore what is central for a business online? Its own website.
How Internet Marketing can help to put in front of the public the website?
Search is essential, because right now it is the only way to allow your site to be found when people are looking for things it offers (as Rand says), and it is needed in order to create a base of customers that can turn in followers and likers, in order to build your social critic mass presence (well, if not maybe you are CocaCola, but even in that case... just think to Apple.com)
One consideration... when a business builds its Pages in Facebook what is the first suggestion Facebook give? Promote your Pages with FB Ads. And is not FB ads somehow a Search derivation in the Social Graph, even though tecnically the impressions are not a conseguence of a search?
But, on the middle/long term Social too is essential. To what? For branding mostly, Imho. The most impressive quality of SMM is how it can be a great way to enhance the power of a Brand thanks to the word of mouth and how well the SMM plan is been deployed.
Maybe is not the conversion factor what as to be looked for in Social Media, but recognition of the voice of the business. The wrong would be to be just a voice, a not being able to create a loop traffic channel between the Website and the Social Media presence, the one feeding the other and viceversa.
Post Scriptum: In the case of Rand personal blog I think - dear Rand - that we have to remember that you are already a (personal) Brand (desiring it or not) and an Influencer that deal with others Influencers, which means that anything new from him with just a Tweet should have to have an instant recognition also thanks to Social Media.
Well said.
I have similar feelings (not exalting either), mostly based on the simple fact that they both interact with one another.
1. Social factors affect The Ranking Algorithms of major search engines (for Google, about 5.3% of it's algo, no?)
2. Social items appear in search results!
3. Links from Social Media sites are a big part of linkbuilding
4. Profiles on Social Media sites are common targets for ORM SEO projects
5. People share links to items they discover through search (meaning that search factors affect behavior on social networks)
And here's the kicker: Blogging is social media. And blogging is SEO.
There is indeed no reason to exalt one over the other! For they are different facets of the same jewel!
== Godspeed you SEO's. And best wishes. ==
I agree here as well. I see social as part of the holistic marketing approach. It works in combination with all online strategies including SEO, PPC, banner ads, email marketing etc.
I do find the information on conversion from social intriguing. As the post notes: "Social may be a great way to drive traffic, build branding and make a purchase more likely in the future, but from a direct conversion standpoint, it doesn't hold a candle to search."
This is important to keep in mind when working with a client's budget. Everyone wants to engage social, but it is essential to build the proper value proposition. If you have an inexhaustible budget to work with, then by all means full steam ahead on all initiatives (as we all know this is almost an impossible find). Personally I would walk the path of prioritizing budget based on ROI while building a well rounded strategy.
One thing that I couldn't help but think hard about/do a double take on was the following quote:
"While I can't disclose full numbers, I can see that a fair number of search visits converted vs zero for social."
One would expect that search is a more common method of finding SEO services, fair enough, but I think it's pretty important when considering a dollars and cents breakdown that whilst both social and SEO are important it is well worth breaking down the investments and measuring which ones deliver a tangible business return for any individual business. For some sites this may well be Social for others it may be search. Traffic is nice and we all know that social can be great for generating traffic- but converting traffic is even better so it is important that people keep track of this sort of thing.
Thanks very much for sharing this Rand- I really appreciate your views on this and I think it's certainly going to make people think a bit harder about their investments and hopefully try to map investments with outcomes a bit better.
Cheers!
Ciao Sam,
I think you're right... I believe that for those who are already engaged in the Search and Social fields with their business, the Analytics part of the job is essential in order to do what you say.
And, not because you are "Distilled", it is quite clear that makes even more important to know the first touch attribution of the traffic, especially when converting.
Infact, I found quite usual that SMM can generate traffic as direct traffic (aka: putting the domain name in the browser), especially in the case of Facebook when it is used as a Branding tactic and not directly from FB... and - if I am not wrong, please correct me if I am - also in the case of Twitter, all the traffic from Apps and not from Twitter.com are considered direct traffic. And that is why first touch is essential. Without, is just a game of guessing.
I'd agree - and this is something Social media "gurus" are constantly evading, whilst pointing out "Look at Dell's $1million twitter account".
IMO Social is great for branding, thought leadership and networking - erm... thats social. Its not lead generation or shopping, so in a B2B area I'm not at all surprised to see that SEOmoz has that result. What I would be interested in is 1st touch analytics or looking at how people who've visited your site via a social site "at some point" in the lifecycle convert.
Or better yet using something to tie together twitter API and google analytics API/Log files and look at how people who follow you on twitter/linkedin/facebook etc behave when on your site.
You are the master, Rand. I specifically like how your post illustrates the complimentary nature of Search and Social. It's not vs., like you said. Marketers should be working together to get out in front of search demand with a social presence so that the brand is top-of-mind when it comes time commercial searches. Let's keep that little secret within the Moz community though, eh? Let the rest of the marketing world fight each other while we all build synergy and goodness.
Insightful post. Thanks for sharing, Rand.
Re: "In fact, looking at the entire year to date traffic to SEOmoz from social sources, it appears not 1 visit has ever converted for us." I think that you're on point to call out the need for deeper attribution insight. From the "last touched" perspective, it is entirely plausible that social sucks as an acquisition channel. From a broader perspective, social can be extremely valuable as a qualifier and/or accelerator - just as you pointed on in your post.
I hate guys that shill for their product in the comments...but I'm going to do it anyway because this is the exact problem that we're building Argyle Social - https://argylesocial.com - to solve. :)
Eric Boggs, CEO, Argyle Social
Eric - that's a really cool product. I'm making it a direct link - https://argylesocial.com - thanks for sharing!
I've just signed up for a free trial. :)
Me too, it seems really an interesting tool. Surely one of a kind. I liked the phrase "we don't measure sentiments and trend": good way to distinguish yourself very easily.
Thanks for framing the argument by saying there really shouldn't be an argument. The two channels are clearly complementary, and if possible both should receive a high priority in anyone's marketing strategy. As you said, search is much harder to "break-in" for small company and/or startup with little track record online. It usually takes a long time and a lot of effort to knock your competitors down on the SERP's even if you do everything right. On the other hand, the barrier to social is pretty small - just takes imagination and a lot of work to raise at least some brand awareness. As you said, this doesn't necessarily translate into qualified leads, but it helps. So, we advise our clients to do both and we work very hard at the beginning to establish a winning social media presence to support SEO.
Great points. The whole SEO vs. social debate isn't much more than "controversy-bait" as you mentioned - it's like arguing cereal vs. milk. Two distinct things that work best when combined.
I also can't help but think that the two are becoming more and more alike. How long will it be until social signals are, in one form or another, important ranking signals (if they aren't already?) That's another topic entirely, but I think it's really important to keep front of mind.
And what about the Search signals in the Social Graph? Especially now that the Bing results are shown into Facebook searches?
Exactly! I think the FB/Bing partnership really validates the deep link between the two channels. The social graph is deeply influenced by search, and it's probably only a matter of time before search is more clearly influenced by the social graph. Heck, maybe we won't even think of the two as separate "graphs" a few years down the road! :)
it's like arguing cereal vs. milk. Two distinct things that work best when combined.
That's a great analogy Jeffrey. Cereal and Milk. Hmmmm. I can already envision some YOUmoz posts.
Is your SEO like Cheerios? Just going in circles?
My recipe for SEO Granola. Lots of ingredients that taste great.
Is your Social Media Campaign going sour?
[edit] I forgot one more SEO post title that old timers like CaseyHen would be able to relate to: Does your site have SEO that even Mikey doesn't like?
Those people who insist that search is dead are about as well studied on the matter as those who once insisted that the earth was flat were well studied on that matter. This argument is what I call a parrot argument, which is an argmuent not founded on research, rather it is spread by one person repeating what another person said.
I recently wrote a blog series in which I compared the top search engines to the top social networking sites according to Alexa. My study showed that search and social have become intertwined in such a way that the Internet has become a type of ecosystem in which they must coexist.
Here are the links if anyone's interested in reading them.
https://seobridges.com/2010/10/google-vs-facebook-the-battle-of-search-and-social/
https://seobridges.com/2010/10/yahoo-vs-youtube-the-battle-of-search-and-social/
https://seobridges.com/2010/10/twitter-vs-live-the-battle-of-search-and-social/
https://seobridges.com/2010/10/linkedin-vs-msn-the-battle-of-search-and-social/
Furthermore, the idea of social search is useful, but it is in its infancy. Just because I have friends from high school on my friends list doesn't mean we have anything in common 15+ years later. The only use for social search, in its infancy, is in helping people make better shopping decisions when shopping for friends.
I hope anyone who reads my blogs finds them useful.
Erick
"In fact, looking at the entire year to date traffic to SEOmoz from social sources, it appears not 1 visit has ever converted for us."
Perhaps that be more a reflection of your tone and content on social media? From your Twitter / FB page content right now, it looks like you're engaging mostly users who are already SEOMoz customers.
Thank you for the article, as allways I enjoyed a lot. Before I got to the "takeaways" part, I was wondering WHY is there so many people who still compare social and seo, talk about what is better and what worse. As you mentioned, these two channels NEED to work together, need to find a way to support each other and bring the whole marketing mix together.
It all depends on what user wants. If the goal is to search for a product, Facebook & Co. are simply (for now) not the right channels. They are rather in an exploring stage (at least here in Germany)... On the other hand building up a brand, talking to users, gathering reviews is what can start on social channels and later on positively influence my selection in SERPs (which only one case of a cooperation).
It would be cool to read one day about concrete steps how to connect and leverage social and seo.
And btw looking forward your speech on SMX in Munich next year! :)
Veronika
A few interesting things to note:
The conclusion in this article might be wrong because...
Notice how the data showing purchase influence from Social Media is skewed heavily towards the younger generation; the younger people are, the more likely they were to have grown up with Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. as integral parts of their daily reality. As this segment continues to become a larger proportion of the buying population, the statistics will start to move more in favor of Social Media - although the search will probably always dominate.
The Decline of Traditional Media
Notice the skew of Print, TV, etc. to older generations - ie. their importance as mainstream marketing channels are dying out slowly but surely, probably due to Onlien Advertising revealing just how poor they are in regards to ROAS.
Nice insight into SEOmoz experience with social referrals. I'd be interested in seeing a more thorough analysis of them at some point. Your numbers (zero) correlate pretty closely to what I've seen on various ecommerce websites.
As others have said, I think there is only controversy for the sake of having controversy. It's obvious to anyone that you should be doing both. I guess the only time there would be a question is if a small business has a $5000 marketing budget for the year, should they invest it in an SEO expert or a social media firm?
Yet, I haven't actually seen that sort of question raised much in these arguments.
I'd say that the answer to your question is that said company should hire a consultant that can execute a hybrid program that blends SEO and social media together (after all, there are quite a few social media facets that can impact SEO).
I'd also say that $5,000/year in marketing budget might not be enough. That's less than $500/month, which won't go very far. Perhaps a company with that type of budget is better of investing it in Adwords while learning/executing SEO & social media in-house.
Perhaps a company with that type of budget is better of investing it in Adwords while learning/executing SEO & social media in-house.
I'd amend your suggestion for the small budget only slightly Hugo. I'd split the bulk of the monthly spend between Adwords and Conversion Optimisation. Adwords with a lousy landing page can be nothing but a hole in your pocket. All the money you put in it drops through the hole.
But like you added, continue to learn and practice SEO and Social.
Good point. I sort of took it (landing page/conversion optimization) for granted when I mentioned Adwords, but you're right; if you put money into Adwords and send that traffic to a poorly constructed site/landing page you'd might as use that money as kindling.
I agree with you. Which leads me back to the point that there really is no controversy, just those creating it for the fun in it (and maybe to stir up social media / links).
The $5K was theoretical, but it never ceases to amaze me how many small-medium businesses don't devote enough money to marketing. I used to have a $2m/yr ecommerce client that hated spending $10K/yr on online marketing (yeah, not even 1% of their revenue). Dealing mostly with aged local businesses doing < 500K/yr it is difficult to convince them to spend on SEO - adding social in the mix makes them look at me like I'm a voodoo child from outer space.
So maybe there is a controversy, but among outsiders of the social media and SEO worlds?
Couldn't agree more, but that share of spend is going to change considerably over the next few days as "traditional" advertising/marketing channels are transformed into online marketing channels (TV is the big one).
I think I may have a contrarian view on Social Media in that social is best avoided by those with small budgets. I think a lot of people look at social and say it's free. As a result, a lot of small business owners get excited, spend a month tweeting up a storm and updating Facebook a dozen times a day. Then they get tired of it and quit, leaving a shell of an abandoned social footprint that makes their business look terrible.
There are exceptions, but for most businesses with small budgets I would advise AdWords / local SEO / CRO. Only after they have a bigger budget to devote a resource to social would I then look at social. Very, very few small businesses start and in-house social campaign, do it well, stick with it, and see results. I'm sure somebody could point me towards a hundred social success stories, but I bet there are a million abandoned small business Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Great point to bring up with that. I've seen this happen also, even with SEO companies who claim to be social media experts. What usually makes the difference between this and successful social?
A strategy and a commitment to sticking with that strategy. (Also applies to blogging, SEO, and generally success of a business.)
Great article mate, but I must disagree with these sources who focus their efforts on getting traffic from social networks. Yes, it's great, but the power of both SEO & Social Media is twice the power.
Personally, to our site we manage to drive 59% search engine traffic (mainly because of Google News, Bing News & Yahoo News) and these traffic spikes are way above the 2.8mill. While social networks (which we do heavily as well) is at less then 18%, while other referring sites which we get links from, quotations (HuffingtonPost.com, NBC, CNN, BBC that if u get a quote there you could get 20k+ hits within a day or so).
Well anyway, combine powers but don't make the SEO team do both.
Social media specialists should continue their way while SEO specialists continue to study the algorithm of a search engine.
Thanks for the write-up (and the mention) Rand!
It's funny how perspective works because I tried really hard to be respectful of the author of that piece, but I guess it still came off as highly critical. Glad to see that the conversation continues to carry on (both here and at Pro Blogger) because I feel that the marketing industry in general is still struggling to grasp the idea that no marketing channel should operate in a "us vs. them" competitive silo.
P.S. Analytics is always the foundation.
I would agree with the near zero figure from my experience, but I do think at a sub-conscience level people are using social badges - the number of "likes" in decision process.
Has anybody any experience in conversion rates with a highly visible "number of tweets", "facebook likes" etc against a similar page without?
As someone who's worked in SEO and with travel blogs, I think I can shed some light on why there is such a big disconnect in this debate on the SEO subject. This might also be true in lots of niche blogging topics as well, but I'm sure it's true in travel. Things to consider:
1 - Nearly every travel blog is originally started as a personal trip journal, rather than a business or commercial site. The better ones can gain a following far beyond their family and friends, so in some cases the writer begins to think they might somehow make a living at it, or at least make a bit of a salary for continuing with it.
2 - Once a site gets a bit of visibility, the writer starts getting emails and blog comments from SEO services. Some emails are sincere reasonable offers, though usually from companies that have no idea of the site's goals, while others are the "we'll get you to #1 in Google in one month!!!!" variety. Both types of emails look like spam to a travel blogger, so SEO instantly gains a reputation alongside V1agra and Acai Berry, as an expensive hoax. Sadly, this also means that some people completely ignore even the basic Google webmaster suggestions and guidelines.
3 - The "conversion" for a travel blog is often not directly related to money. Most bloggers realize that a full-time living is likely out of their reach, so the holy grail for these sites is often the free press trip. If you are struggling to make $50 a month in Adsense, and you hear about slightly-more-famous travel bloggers getting $1500-value free luxury trips, it can make sense to concentrate more on fame than small pageview increases from search traffic.
4 - Most travel blogs generally write about "Here's where I went recently" or "Here's what I think of this topic" so there isn't a lot of search potential there to begin with. Writing like an SEO-oriented travel guide can seem cold to many bloggers.
5 - The people who know about effective travel SEO practices have an incentive for others in the field to keep going down the wrong path, so they are often silent when bad advice is being given out.
6 - Travel bloggers almost all have only one site, or in some rare cases a few, so they have only a tiny frame of reference. One or two successful posts might make them think they've discovered the ideal way to work, so they just keep doing it.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Travel bloggers are rarely worried about converting into specific sales, so the social media thing (combined with basic SEO guidelines) can be the best use of their time.
Social Media Marketing is inherently more open to creativity - very often SEO and PPC can become slightly monotonous and it's more difficult with other online marketing channels to use flair. Social Media allows people that and doesn't require much knowledge to get started and most small businesses much prefer it to SEO... approaching things from the other side are big media companies and corporations who already have a huge base of customers and followers who they want to interact with.
SEO in todays world depends on a number of factors; but also depends on Social Media, with Google paying attention to the "buzz" surrounding a brand or its social relevance, add real time live search and its pretty important - but as a standalone activity it doesn't give a great ROI for MOST purposes.. SEO would cover more bases although I believe SM is going to develop further with trackable metrics (SEOmoz have already done a couple of good articles on the subject).
Just for the record - I don't think the original problogger blog was really dismissive of SEO, and the results were skewed with the type of traffic you were trying to measure. As someone already suggested above - why dont we have contest - pick a niche that applies to most people, with a new website - and try and see over a period of time which medium brings most conversions??
Excellent Information! SEO and SOcial Media Marketing and SEO go hand in hand. They compliment each other and serve different purposes but both are very important. Social Media is #1 in web traffic and generates a huge amount of revenue aloen when used correctly. Read my Social Media and SEO Blog here. Thanks for the article!
https://www.awoa.com/blog/social-media-marketing-by-fort-lauderdale-marketing-and-web-design-firm-a-work-of-art-inc/
I think lumping all social traffic into one segment is a bit naive. If you could create some "social-exclusive" offers for your product such as Dell's Twitter-only specials, this could really create some incentive for people to follow SEOmoz on social properties AND drive some sales. It would be best if you could segment the "informative/discussion" social posts and "offer related" social posts with Bit.ly links tied to GA campaigns and see how your offer related posts/links do. If you can't come off the price, maybe there are special addons you could throw in through a social offer, or perhaps a time-sensitive or quantity limited offer that would close a person who's on the fence about membership.
Social is becoming a hub for answers. An extremely potent one.
Examples:https://twitter.com/talktoqwest
@talktoqwest: Answers questions live on twitter and alerts about system problems.
https://twitter.com/xboxsupport
@xboxsupport: Again, answers questions live, and they even sent me a tweet to review their twitter service. WOW.
https://twitter.com/samsungmobileus
@samsungmobileus Again, live answers, support, updates about the galaxy tab launch.
Also, I was looking for updates to Alex Smith and his injury, no doubt twitter had the most useful and up-to-date information.
Now twitter and facebook have their limits. Not everyone uses them. But then again, how many regular people have blogs or personal websites?
I also expect twitter to launch a local review capability. If we are tweeting where we are, and what we are doing, why not be able to tweet a review? They would dominate local reviews over-night.
No doubt about it (In my opinion), search.twitter.com will get into the top 5 search engines eventually. Might take 5 years and some revisions to how you perform searches on twitter, but it's coming.
That thing youare looking for already exists and its name is Foursquare :)
Interesting service, I like it. Very impressive features. But it's more like a separate app, but you can share things on twitter? A native twitter feature built into a twitter app using gps data, would benefit from more users and since you just tweeted about dinner, it would benefit from the first-app-launched and more-used-app effect.
The feature also already exists on twitter. For example, (outside the food realm) there are literally thousands of tweets about kinect and how well it works (mini reviews). If those could somehow be transformed into more useful searchable/sortable data. I could use twitter to make purchasing decisions.
Yes you can share both Twitter and Facebook. And the reason of the success is exactly it's App nature, because won't have really meaning not paired to mobiles or wired apparels.
Rand, I completely with you on this one. Search & social are both important. From personal experience, social is much less likely to convert directly. It's later on, after the customers have heard enough about you, where this really comes into play. You're building a connection that may pay off in the future, not something that's really going to get your customer on your site buying today. It's definitely not the same as SEO, where you're basically trying to ensure you show up when someone is looking for you. Those customers are ready to buy. Social customers are much less likely to be in that stage. But both are very important.
Great post and heated debate..The facts are clear to see for all, yes facebook is open and kept open on a lot of users machines for social purposes, they are not using facebook or other social media platforms for finding products or services and I think that is why business conversion rates from social media traffic are low or non-existant.
I think the wikipedia definition is quite apt;
"In the absence of agreement about its meaning, the term "social" is used in many different senses and regarded as a fuzzy concept"
Go to ratings.twitter.com. Search "Seo Tools" it looks like like Seomoz has 1500 unique user mentions for "seo tools" with an average of 4/5 stars. (Now I hope you didn't just go do that, but if you could that would be cool). Something like this would probably improve twitter conversion rates.
Thanks for this article. There is a lot of excitement over social media at the moment and rightly so considering it can be a great place to spread the "right kind of message" like wildfire. That being said though, my gut feeling has always been in agreement with what your research is depicting that people don't actually go there to find answers. They are much more likely to "Google it" I'm pretty sure that expression exists for a reason. Thanks for providing some facts to back up the hunch.
Thanks for these ideas! I really appreciate the level of detail here -that makes the information really usable. I firmly believe that link-building is a very effective part of marketing, but it should be done correctly and systematically.
I haven't read any of your referenced articles Rand, so perhaps I'm being too simplistic, but at their very core, each discipline, SEO and Social, map directly to Sales and Marketing respectively.
Which is why B2B and even B2C should always have their SEO butts covered. If I were forced to pick between either of the disciplines for a B2B website, I'd always pick SEO. Like you said, it regularly brings in the prospect that is ready right now to buy.
I'm not disparaging Social and Marketing at all. In a perfect world, you'd have the budget to employ both disciplines. But having spent a lot of time as an outside sales rep, I gravitate towards sales related disciplines.
Most of my work, internal and agency side, has been in social, but I've moved to adopt search much more actively in the last year or so. Why? Because as the post and many of the commenters point out, there's no reason for these 2 to be pitted against each other. Different types of people, in different mindsets come through the different channels at different times in their days, points in their search archs, and so on. Why not devote a little bit of resources to both and give yourself the best chance to get all ranges of people, searchs, mindsets, etc?
Wow, I would never have guessed that there would be zero conversions from social... it's obvious from this article that social has value still, but its impressive that none of that traffic converted!
Great insight Rand. I can't help but think after you mentioned "zero conversions from social", isn't this an opportunity? Meaning shouldn't this be something that SEOMoz focuses on to try and convert those visitors better? I would have to think that something can be done to start capitalizing on that traffic from the initial point of visit.
Maybe because is not offering any special just for Facebook fans offers? That is almost a classic in Business Pages.
But maybe the reason can be found also in the function that SEOmoz give to Social Media: conversation and not commercial. In this sense, SMM seems to be an extension and a way to spread the community of SEOmoz: brand awareness, let's call it. And that not directly lead to commercial conversion, as having 40k more feed subscribers doesn't mean to have 40k clients... but could help in having 6k + Pro members.
In this sense, the use of Social Media by SEOmoz seems entering in a more general Inbound Marketing strategy.
But, yes, this is just my idea :), Rand or Jennita could explain it better (if possible).
Oh I agree with the concept of using as social and not promotional. However, once they click that link and come to your site, why not try to convert them to a user/client if they aren't already? I certainly wouldn't make the twitter/facebook, etc account all about the sales pitch, but maybe using a script that detects if they've come from these sites and then offer a promotion on that page if they have? Just a thought.
I agree - it is an opportunity, but I'm not sold on the idea of making discounts the cornerstone of customer acquisition through social. Since we're both a content portal and a software business, it's a bit challenging to try focusing visitors with the intent of consuming content on buying product. I would surmise, though, that if we had good first-touch attribution, though, we'd see that a lot of future buyers were touched initially via social - that's where it would really earn its meal ticket.
Wait a couple years until FB has their own search engine. Then this discussion will get a lot more interesting.
Therefore in a couple of years Social Media Marketing will need even more SEO.
If Facebook develops a search engine, I think we'd still have to call it SEO (not social media marketing). Just as SEO for Yahoo! wasn't "web portal optimization." It would be interesting to see them try to compete in that arena - feels like Facebook is trying to make their site "the Internet" (shopping, business pages, local data, Q+A, etc.), but I'm not sure how that strategy will play out long run.
They just came out with their new email system, so I would really not be shocked to see this. It feels like they are branching out into every aspect of the web.
While I agree that it will still be SEO, it will certainly have a different slant to it.
I have your same doubts. We SEOs, because it is also the "the part of the drama" we have to play are complaining about Google... but one thing as to be said: Google is not the Internet and even if it - with an in my opinion defensive counterattack in the web market - is showing the best self answering results it can in order to make people stay the more possible time on its pages, it gives somehow the free will to go out of Google itself to end the process of your search. And this fault of free will that inconsciously can be the biggest usability problem of Facebook.
Not saying that the search web panorama is going to be the one we are knowing today... as it's in its nature to constantly change, but what I think is that on the long run people (not simply "searchers") will start to need to break the (invisible) barriers the Facebook builds to retain users inside its sociable garden.
Because, and this is an innate quality of human being, people tend to break the barriers that block his natural need to discover things and answers (and I don't want to open the box of the privacy issue).
More common sense and reasoned discussion that you can shake a stick at - many thanks Rand et al. So here's the business school research project:"What lessons should Google and Facebook learn from the history and success of the open/closed technology strategy corporate battles between Microsoft vs Apple and MSO/cable TV vs "connected" IPTV?"
Cheers... Chris
Excellent post - finally someone who agrees Social "vs" Search is like comparing apples and oranges. I'm not at all suprised by the results for reasons you basically described as well. Social Networks are there for interacting, connecting with friends, chatting and playing games and is not an environment that motivates users to engage in the purchase process.
Search on the other hand is already part of the purchase process, and user's "searching" are motivated to get answers or solutions. In my opinion businesses can define which strategy appeals to them by asking a few questions about their goals.
If your business wants to make friends, support a cause or has an extremely specific target audience (ie. age 18-25 who parasail) then give Facebook some time and effort.
If your business wants to bring in new and qualified leads, and drive sales - then search is absolutely something worth looking into.
Thank you Rand for shining some real light on this somewhat irrelevant battle that I'm sure many working SEO's have had to deal with!
Cheers,
Kris
Isn't it worth noting the weight of the commitment being made with the conversion you are measuring? If the intended conversion is signing up for a free newsletter or making a comment your chances to convert on a social media referral are probably higher because the commitment is low.
I usually click on social media links on a whim, they show up in a feed, sound interesting so I click. I am a lot less likely to sign up for a recurring monthly charge service or make a large purchase on a whim like I click on the social media link. If the conversion you are measuring for SEOmoz is a paying service then it is not exactly fair to compare that rate of conversion from social media to another site who's conversion might be a free download.
Thanks for the post. I'ts great that your bringing this all out into the open for debate.
Dont you mean #seocialmedia ? As a demand fulfilment tool, the 2 are simply going to merge, eventually. People are searching much more and asking/telling their "friends" about stuff much more too. Will results be worked out more on likes and recommendations/ratings rather than links?
I see that happening, and it is obvious Google recognises the fact, and Wave proved Google arent affraid to fail trying.
Bing and Facebook is the first step and Google, for the first time, are facing a formidable opponent to their online demand fulfilment domination.
@illegalgoods
Great article, thanks for the info.
Here's a survey, sample size one. I have never bought anything from a click through Facebook.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Verdana}
Rand,
you have completely missed the point I was trying to make in my Problogger article. Completely. I think you and the other SEO's that went off saw my article as a slam on the entire concept of SEO and the SEO industry. That is not what I was saying at all.
I never said that SEO didn't drive a lot of traffic.
I never said that many sites wouldn't find SEO to be better than social media.
I never said SEO was bad or that SEO traffic was bad.
I never said that social media was ‘better’ than SEO.
Most everything you've written is try trying to defend the concept of SEO, which is something I was never attacking. All the other people who make money selling SEO services had their hackles raise when they saw the title of the article and went on the defensive as if I was attacking SEO and their livelihood and ignored the point I was making.
My entire argument was about bloggers investing their time where it had the biggest payoff. That's it.
SEO might very well have big payoffs, but the time investment required to get those results would be better spent on social media for most BLOGGERS. (that being the operative word)
Your new blog proves my point in spades. The time you put into Social Media delivered far more traffic than search engines did. In fact, your personal blog might never get 22,000 visits from Google in a similar time frame, no matter how long it exists. The question then is, how much effort did you put into getting that social media traffic? I'm guessing not very much. That is the point I was trying to make.
Providing data for a B2B product has nothing whatsoever to do with my argument. NOTHING. If I had a website selling a B2B product I'd invest more in SEO too. Same with restaurants, hotels, plumbers, dentists or any number of businesses. There are tons of examples where SEO makes more sense than social media.
Moreover, you (and other SEO's) have totally ignored my argument about competing against traditional media. SEO and internet marketing is a space where the only competition is online. This is something that most SEO's have never realized, because they've never been in any other environment. Major newspapers do not have sections devoted to SEO. The BBC and the New York Times don't write about SEO. There aren't entire publishing companies and sections of bookstores devoted to SEO. Google loves big media brands and you work in an environment where you don't have to compete against them on a regular basis.
Providing data from SEOmoz completely misses the point. You've proven that SEO's use search engines. That's like proving that farmers use tractors. It would be far better to get data from your wife's travel blog. Anyone who blogs about food, sports, news, politics, travel, celebrities or entertainment exist in a totally different environment than people who just compete with other SEO sites. In fact, i'd guess most SEO customers don't have to worry about it either because the BBC and New York Times probably wont rank for "Seattle Dentist" or "high quality ball bearings".
And what does "Facebook audience biases" mean??? Facebook is the internet. There are half a billion people on it. The audience is pretty much everyone. Appealing to their biases is appealing to the biases of……people. Facebook isn't a random sample of the population anymore. If there is such a thing as "Facebook audience bias”, who cares??? Its half a billion people. More than enough to sustain any internet site if you only got a tiny fraction of the user base.
You claimed that my article was poorly argued, yet you never address the main points I was trying to make: getting the biggest results for your investment in time (which you proved my point on your personal blog), trying to compete as an independent blogger vs large corporate companies (never addressed), Google's bias towards media brands (never addressed), and comparative advantage individual bloggers have over corporations in social media (never addressed).
One final thing, my post was addressed to bloggers, on a blogging site by a blogger who has experience blogging. I’m guessing that the vast majority of your customers are not bloggers. If I weren’t a blogger but selling a product, I’d put most of my energy into SEO…but I’m not. Talking about buying Puma shoes totally misses the point.
It is disappointing that you and the other SEO’s who bothered to write articles in response didn’t even understand my argument or the audience I was making it for. Rather, you and others went off on a tangent about the general benefits of search engine traffic, as if to comfort yourself and your customers that everything you do is actually worthwhile.
I stated in my piece that if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. I was directing that towards the SEO community. Your article sort of proves the point. Hammers are indeed valuable tools to have, but not every problem is a nail.
As a writer/blogger/etc it's irresponsible to defend your stance by saying (incorrectly) that the readers/responders didn't understand your point.
The onus is always on the author to communicate his ideas effectively.
What I would suggest is that you re-read the title of your guest post, re-examine your own approach to SEO for your blogs (as I mentioned to you previously, optimizing your title tags could pay big dividends for you) and rethink your philosophy on the definition of SEO and social media (with every passing day, they're more and more intertwined).
P.S. I get that your primary audience is the blogger that's not trying to monetize via product sales. But that doesn't really take much away from my criticism. A new blogger trying to grow his/her reader base will do best when he/she understands how social media and SEO intersect, not when he/she draws a line in the sand and chooses to invest in one and not the other.
I had enormous block of text dealing with each of the issues I've outlined. If someone chooses to ignore them, that's not my fault.
Also, I didn't pick the title of the post, the editors at Problogger did.
I don't think that changed the title tags of my posts are going to suddenly result in 100,000 visits a month to my site, which is what would have to happen if SEO overtook social media for me.
Also, I'm not drawing a line in the sand. You again are missing the point. i'm talking about investing your time where it pays off the most. I'm not saying SEO Bad, Social Media good. I'm saying in areas where many bloggers exist (travel, food, sports, news, politics, entertainment) the competition in SEO from major brands makes the investment in time in social media payoff more than SEO, which established brands have an enormous head start and more resources.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
I made a concerted effort to be respectful towards you in my original post and I have been biting my tongue for the most part, but since you insist, here's what I really think:
I think that you have some weird angst/distrust towards SEOs and the SEO industry in general. Why do I think that? Well let's see, the first feedback you gave me on my blog post response (via Twitter) was "let me guess? You charge for SEO services?"
https://twitter.com/EverywhereTrip/status/2486133548126208
Nevermind the veiled disrespect and callousness of that @ reply. What really struck me was the way you gave away your psychological position on SEO.
As if the only reason someone would critique your post would be due to self-interest and/or simply because they offer SEO services (guess what, my agency also offers social media services, so what's your point).
I also think that you don't really grasp the competitive SEO landscape in terms of how large traditional publishing brands fare against independent bloggers even in hyper competitive niches like the ones you've outlined. As I mentioned in a comment on my post, my agency works with a number of large, traditional publishers (we also pitch to win the business for many others). And guess what? Virtually all of them lament the fact that they are losing tremendous amounts of natural search volume to more nimble and SEO savvy independent bloggers.
I also think, once again, you fail to grasp the simple concept that there's no need to choose between social media and SEO. Might social media effort drive more ROI for a blogger than SEO? Perhaps (and perhaps not) but regardless, if said blogger learns how to compliment said social efforts by leveraging them for SEO gain whenever possible, than he/she has instanteously made those original social efforts more successful (which is why me and others are telling you that your post was poorly argued).
Lastly, your last comment more or less exposes what I pointed out from the getgo; that you don't really understand SEO nor do you truly grasp the concept that SEO and social media are complimentary.
Moreover, it shows that you're quick to dismiss ideas that go contrary to your existing world view.
For example, you ask if optimizing the title tags of your posts will generate 100,000 visits/pageviews per month, because if not (according to you) they won't match what social media generates for you. You also go on to say that in highly competitive verticals, it's hard to compete on the SEO front (which I can only assume is why you think that optimizing your title tags is not worthwhile).
Have you tested this hypothesis to be sure that your assumption is correct (e.g. that systematically updating title tags can generate that kind of traffic)?
Have you considered that when it comes to SEO, long-tail search phrases (e.g. longer than 3 words) account for 80% of search queries?
Have you considered that it is these long-tail phrases that would be focus of your title tag optimization efforts?
Have you considered that many of those big, traditional publishers you mentioned also don't know about the value of the long tail and/or fail to optimize their title tags accordingly?
Have you considered that even if optimizing title tags does not generate 100,000 visits/pageviews per month, it's still an incredibly small investment (probably about a minute per post) that a) will generate traffic b) will generate extremely targeted traffic from readers that may have never found your site otherwise c) will generate traffic that known for having a high conversion rate in terms of RSS subscription, etc?
I'm guess that the answer is to all of these questions is a resounding "no".
I applaud you for your success with your blog (as I did on my original post) and I wish you good luck with your future ventures.
However, what I don't applaud is your defensive and callous attitude and your unwillingness to entertain - even for a second - the thought that perhaps you missed the mark on your post and that there's something to what me and some of these other folks are trying to tell you.
P.S. Don't blame Pro Blogger for the title of your guest post. You're the author, so please show integrity and stand behind your work. If you didn't initially like the title you could have asked for a revision and/or if you agreed with the criticisms of it after the fact, you could have acknowledged as much here on this forum and on the post itself (as well as asked for Pro Blogger to revise it). I suspect that you loved the title of the post, since it was clearly intended to be controversial (which drives lots of eyeballs). If so, either stand by it or acknowledge its shortcoming instead of throwing your host under the bus to absolve yourself from any blame.
After I change my title tags, then what? I'm still going to put most of my time and effort into social media.
Yes, I'm aware that long tail searches drive most search engine traffic. What should I do about it? Do link building for each and every long tail phrase, or for every article I write?
As I stated in my original Problogger article, setup your site properly and then don't worry about it. If I have to fix my title tags on my site, then so be it. Maybe I'll get more traffic, but 90% of the people who visit my site will still do so through social media channels.
As for big companies being worried about bloggers, they are worried about the entire collective blogosphere, which I agree is probably on a par with a given big media outlet, or maybe several.
But they have resources to hire consultants like you and most bloggers don't. The very fact that you are talking about a client who had the money to hire a consultant sort of proves the point. Lone bloggers can't do that.
Also, you still seem to be missing my point. It isn't a matter of SEO being good or bad. I'm not anti SEO. I can grant everything you are saying about SEO.
Go back and read David Ricardo's theory of Comparative Advantage. For an individual blogger, the comparative advantage lies in social media.
What about better passive link building thanks to those one that found you on blogsearch in google because you rank well? I'm not saying to you to abandon Social if it works forcing, just saying why not complementing it also with a plain basic SEO, that ultimately doesn't cost that exaggeration you say. That way you will have the best of the two worlds. That is what we are saying, nothing else.
Just out of curiousity, since you've commented that ProBlogger came up with the title of your post and not you, would you mind sharing what you were planning on using as the original title?
P.S. Prior to entering the agency world, I personally built up an independent blog in an extremely competitive niche that hit 100K SEO visits per month and I know of others that have done 10x that in some of the very verticals you mention (and yes, these feats were accomplished by blending social media and SEO as opposed to either one in a vacuum). Moreover, your social media efforts have created a ton of SEO "potential energy" that is untapped at this point. You can either tap into that potential energy to drive massive amounts of qualified traffic on an ongoing basis or continue on your current path in an effort to uphold your preconceived ideals on what SEO is and isn't. The choice is yours. It's your traffic (and money) not mine.
Hi EverywhereTrip - I think you make some fair points, and certainly I recognize that you're arguing from the position of a blogger focusing on traffic as a key metric (my example re: the personal blog launch was intended to help bolster that point).
I intended this article not as a critique for your piece (in fact, I tried not to address, argue or rehash the points you made that the other blog posts disagreed on - and said as much in the opening), but merely my thoughts on a similar topic.
The one point I fully left out, which I shouldn't have (and may need to cover more deeply in the future), is how much social can help with SEO (which will then drive those direct conversions as a second-order effect).
With regards to SEOmoz -given the high percent of our audience that's responsible for social, uses our tools and metrics for social and connects with us heavily through it, I'm not sure I buy your point that we should expect not to have conversions. To me, it's surprising, but then, every other site I've seen also has very poor signups, conversions, etc. from most first-touch social engagement. I think social's a great way to build positive brand association and familiarity, but it's not a direct transactional medium, and treating it as such is going to make you (and your bosses) very frustrated.
Thanks for commenting here!
1) It would depend on what you are trying to covert. Word of mouth is often sufficient to get someone interested in something. There are some great examples of small businesses using social media to get the word out about themselves. Most people don't search for new restaurants, they just find out about it from friends. Often times, if you don't know something exists, you don't know to search for it.
2) To the extent you called my article "poorly argued controversy-bait" it is hard to take this post as anything but a direct response.
3) Even if conversions with social media are worse than SEO (something my experience disagrees with, but I'll grant it for the sake of argument), if you have to beat your head against a wall competing with huge media companies in the SERPs, then it really doesn't matter. The poor conversion rate is still going to be a better ROI than trying to spend massive amounts of time and money against larger companies in SEO. In my case I run a travel blog. Every major newspaper in the world has a travel section. There are cable TV networks devoted to travel, multiple, popular magazine, several publishing houses devoted exclusively to travel, and that is before I even get to the online powerhouses like TripAdvisor, which spends millions on SEO annually. USA Today just signed a content deal with Demand Media for travel content, which is going to pump more crap into the system.
It is like saying that the fertile soil of the midwest is better for raising crops than sand. That fact might be true, but it is meaningless if you live on an island. Sand is all you got.
I 100% grant you that in industries where you have limited or regional competition, SEO is probably a much smarter option. SEO is great for selling widgets.
I've never seen the issue I'm addressing above regarding competition against large media outlets addressed on any SEO sites (maybe I missed it or am reading the wrong things). It is something I think most SEO companies just never have to deal with.
As a blogger, it is something I have to deal with all the time. The payoff is far greater for me and other bloggers to do an end run around big media outlets and not try to play their game. It is a game I will lose, and expend a lot of time, energy and money in the process.
I just addressed your main point of contention above (that bloggers can't make SEO headway when up against traditional publishers) and I have the data and anecdotal evidence to prove it.
It's actually quite ironic since you're on here complaining that it's too hard to compete with the big bad traditional publishing brands while those very brands complain to me about how its too hard to compete against those light and nimble independent, niche bloggers.