Difference Between SEO and SMM - Which is Better?

When you are into digital marketing, you can adopt multiple marketing techniques like search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social media marketing (SMM) and so on. However, most of the businesses are investing in SEO and SMM. Both are playing a major role in the digital marketing of a business. But when it comes to choosing the one, people are confused about which is better - SEO & SMM?

Undoubtedly, both techniques are useful if want to increase your business branding and web traffic but both work on different strategies. In this article, you will get the knowledge about the SEO and SMM along with their working criteria and then you can decide which one is good for you - SEO or SMM. Let's start now.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is an organic technique that totally relates to your site. The primary purpose of this technique is to get organic traffic on a website by ranking the website on top for some search terms that users search and are related to your business. It is divided into two categories - on-page and off-page. When you are structuring and managing your website according to the search engine guidelines to rank in SERP, you are performing the on-page optimization. Some of the activities in on-page SEO are

• Content management and optimization
• URL structuring
• Heading Tags
• Meta Tags
• Keyword Density
• Interlinking
• Image optimization
• Technical SEO likes robots.txt maintenance, sitemaps, schemas, breadcrumbs, Google Analytics integration, and so on.

When you are performing activities on other websites to raise your website ranking, it is the off-page optimization that you are doing. The primary goal of off-page SEO is to build links and traffic for your website from other sources. Some of the off-page activities are

• Forum Links
• Profile Creation
• Guest Posting
• Outreaching
• Social Networks
• Discussions
• Business Listing
• Broken Link Building and so on.

SEO plays an important role in Internet marketing. With SEO, you can get organic traffic by doing brand promotion and awareness. Many small and big companies are doing SEO for their websites. This is the reason that competition is very high and everyday organic ranking is ups and downs. In this digital world, Without SEO you can't imagine that you can get online customers.

How Its Works

Well, SEO takes time. You can't expect instant results when it comes to SEO. SEO depends upon a lot of factors like but majorly it depends upon the content quality and the relevancy. Below are some points to show how SEO works:

• SEO Ranking factors depend upon search engine algorithms.
• SEO works on your content optimization and website quality. 
• If you want to rank your website easily then you should firstly focus on the on-page optimization techniques. 
• After doing On-Page, you should start link building, which is off-page SEO, to create quality links.

As specified above, SEO is an ongoing activity so it takes time to rank your website for keywords. For example, if I am targeting a keyword "SEO in Amritsar", it may or may not take much time for my website to get ranked.

SMM (Social Media Marketing)

SMM is a paid marketing. It is a process of generating traffic, leads and business by advertising on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. The main goal of SMM is to generate ROI (Return of Investment). Paid marketing provides instant results and in this era, when people are active on social platforms, SMM is proving to be beneficial for many businesses. Before starting SMM, you should be clear about your business goal and set up the campaigns accordingly. 

You should be clear about your budget and daily spent. The type of ads you want to create and the audience you want to target.  Only then you can expect good results from SMM.

How Its Works

These are key points that show how you can implement social media marketing:

• If you are new on social media then you should create brand awareness ads and get likes and followers.
• If you will create unique and attractive ads and target the specific audience for your business, then SMM will give you better results.
• Facebook ads are more popular in SMM, so be clear about your business goal and make the campaigns accordingly.

Conclusion:

Well, in my opinion, choosing one depends on your business type and requirement. For instance, if you have an e-commerce site then SMM will be a very good option for you. If you want to generate instant results, then you can go for SMM and if you need long term results, then you can go for the SEO. It doesn't matter which technique you will consider, remember both techniques will help you in revenue generation if implemented correctly.