Social vs. Search: Who is the King of the Technology Web Visibility Ring?
Social vs. Search: Who is the King of the Technology Web Visibility Ring?:
There is lots of debate about where high tech companies should focus their attention when it comes to being seen. Do you try and push your organic search and throw in some costly PPC campaigns to ensure you’re on page 1 of the Google rankings or do you go down the social media avenue, create a Facebook page targeted to your demographics and interact with your customers, in the hope that an engaging social media campaign will draw in your numbers?
Whichever you favour, the other will feel unloved and left out in the cold as you focus all your energy on the strongest of the litter. “Only the strong survive” – as Jerry Butler sings in his eponymous song – but, of course, he isn’t singing about boosting visibility!
Let’s compare the two and see how they fair. You never know, you might end up switching allegiances after reading this blog.
Social: Pros
- Can bring high amounts of upstream traffic to your site in very little time.
- Your blog is exposed to a new audience if hosted.
- Upstream traffic will help revenue on your main site.
- Social is free to start up and cheap to maintain.
Social: Cons
- Lots of time is needed in the initial investment to grow your ‘likes’ if you don’t pay for ads.
- Social media traffic is dependent on content and the traffic can peak and trough.
- Social media engagement can be time consuming and eat up employee bandwidth.
So there are lots of arguments for and against social media. What different techniques will search bring to the ring? Can it deliver a knockout punch to social media?
Search: Pros
- Search engine traffic provides long-tail targeted traffic to your website.
- Long-tail searches result in low bounce rates for your site. People know what they are getting.
- People who find you through search engines are usually looking to spend money.
Search: Cons
- PPC campaigns can cost you a lot of money for the search terms you’re looking for.
- Organic search may take longer than you expected to begin showing results.
- Writing PPC campaigns and adding keywords can be tricky and time-consuming.
You could say that search and social are as bad each other (strong words, I know). Both can do what the other does: long-tailed, targeted searches drive upstream traffic, increase revenue but both spend too much time trying to beat the other one into submission. It gets to the point where you spend so much time figuring out which is better than you totally forget to use your chosen weapon as you should.
Analytics company Hitwise blogged in January 2010 that Social Media visits would overtake search engine visits for the first time. Since then social media, through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, has grown exponentially. That was two years ago so I wonder how this graph would look now.
What it comes down to is this: both search and social are Number 1 contenders for the championship belt but neither can deliver the knockout blow. They go toe-to-toe and slug it out like heavyweights but they can’t knock each other down. What they really should do is combine and become a really effective partnership.
What’s to stop you using PPC to let people find your Facebook page? Search and social are both kings of the visibility ring and are just important to a company as the other. If you have a favourite, stick with it and fight its corner.
Image Source: Rafeejewell on Flickr/CC
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