Traditional SEO vs Social SEO
10 COMMENTS
The Rules of the game have changed and the Age Old SEO is a thing of the past, at least for some people. The new entrant is Social SEO. Social SEO is the social counterpart of old SEO.
Social Search Engine Optimization is a relatively new concept where the content is optimized for social media. The reason behind targeting social media is because of the launch of real time search engines like collecta. They will consider social media shares as an important factor to get indexed and ranked. And not only that, targeting for Social SEO can actually build more links.
The concept is similar to getting more retweets, the stress is more on a catchy title which can attract a lot of people, so they start a chain of sharing, so that the article receives a lot of traffic. Read more in this article about Social SEO.
Traditional SEO is the old form of SEO, the one that we are using for many years. Take a brief look about Traditional SEO in the following articles:
SEO for Beginner Series:
- Essential SEO Tips for Beginners
- Taking your SEO to the next level | Link Building
- Additional SEO Tips to Gain More Organic Traffic
A lot of bloggers believe Traditional SEO is of little use today and bloggers should change their SEO strategy and focus more on social SEO. Let’s compare the two and see which one is better.
Traditional SEO
1. Time On Site
The Time on site is a measure of the engagement of your readers. Obviously larger articles take more time to read and they hence have a large time on site. Usually users coming from search engines are looking for something and after reaching your site, they get what they were looking for and hence they are satisfied and hence they read more articles and increase the overall total time on site
2. Traffic
The traffic from search engines depends on various factors such as the amount of searches a particular keyword (The one you are targeting for your blog) gets, the position of your articles in search engines. If you get your website ranked in the first page in a popular search (like blog tips, make money online), then you are bound to get massive amount of traffic.
3. Subscriber Conversion Rate
The subscriber conversation ratio is good and it is comparatively high, but not as high as guest blogging. A blog can expect its subscriber number to grow if it is targeting the right keyword
4. Monetization
Pay Per Click Ads work best when the traffic source is search engines. And after affiliate income, pay per click ads are the money drivers for blogs and websites. So Traditional SEO is a great technique to monetize your websites.
Social SEO
1. Time On Site
The Traffic source for this type of search engine optimization is mainly social media websites and real time search engines. The problem with social media websites is that they are usually bombarded with huge chunks of information and hence each article gets very little attention, and hence the average time on site is usually very low and the bounce rate is relatively very high.
2. Traffic
The traffic from Social SEO can be very high and it totally depends on how much social search engine optimization you have done on your blog and which social media site you are targeting. The quantity of traffic is good, but it lacks quality (i.e. the visitors who are actually reading your articles seriously).
3. Subscriber Conversion Rate
The Subscriber conversion rate is particularly low and it increases once you have gained a reputation in social media sites. For eg. Twitip gets subscribers from search engines as well as from twitter.
4. Monetization
As the traffic lacks quality, therefore monetization is not very good. The only option is to have CPM ads which pay your per thousand impressions, but they are not a good as affiliate commissions and pay per click ads. Also you can sell your ads on a monthly basis rather on basis of clicks. This can be a good technique to monetize the excessive social media traffic.
The Verdict
Traditional SEO trumps Social SEO. The Quality of traffic is far more important than quantity and therefore Traditional SEO will stay until real time search engines completely replace the old search engines that rely on link authority.
The Best Solution
Why only one type of SEO, when you can do both. Use a catchy title for social SEO so that it grabs more attention. Use the title and meta tags for traditional SEO. By this technique you are targeting both the traffic sources and hence widening your blog’s spectrum and increasing it’s traffic sources.
Which type of SEO do you use? What is your opinion about them?
About the author
Gautam Hans is a freelance blogger and the owner of the Blog Godown where he shares Blog Tips and Social Media Marketing Tips. Check out his Wordpress and Social Media Marketing services. You can follow him on Twitter: @virtuosoblogger Facebook: gautamhans
| This entry was posted by Gautam on May 15, 2010 at 11:59 pm, and is filed under seo, social media. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 1 year ago
I was actually thinking about how search engine optimization and social media could sort of tie into each other. Crazy how you have an article about this now!
I think sites like Collecta will be springing up more and more as the year goes on. It’s not really something I have seen before, and I’m pretty fascinated by it to tell you the truth.
How exactly could we optimize our articles for search engines like Collecta? Just basic tricks like writing killer headlines? Or do platforms like this require more than just a nice headline?
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May 16, 2010 - 10:41 am
Yes, I wanted to do this article for a while now. Always love comparing two things which are battling in blog-o-sphere.
Collecta is an interesting interface and one gets awesome insight from it. And as the trend goes, they can replace search engines, but not for some time.
I think it is an indirect relation. These sites will rely on the number of social media shares.
As the number of social media shares increase, you will get your website indexed. Writing a killer headline and providing awesome content can help you get more attention and hence more shares.
Also, they also take into consideration, the authority of the people who have shared your articles. So, if a celebrity tweets your article, then it is more likely to be indexed in these search engines
Other than that, the real time search engines are still evolving and we have to see what happens in the near future.
.-= Gautam´s last blog ..Why Bloggers should be Entrepreneurs? =-.
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about 1 year ago
This is the first time I’ve heard of social SEO and I must admit, it sounds like it would be successful especially for my celebrity-focused blog. Thanks for making the comparison between traditional SEO and the new social SEO.
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May 18, 2010 - 10:10 am
I think It will be successful for your blog if you stay ahead and post breaking news or if you are controversial about it and write gossip pieces
.-= Gautam´s last blog ..Guest Blogging Contest Entries Closed, Let The Voting Begin =-.
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about 1 year ago
Do meta tags still works? I’ve heard people saying that most of the search engines (especially google) no longer take meta tags into consideration. I guess, now they take our blog title and post titles more seriously than meta tags.
I like this comparison, it’s written well! And comparison makes things more clear!
.-= Roshan Ahmed´s last blog ..Lockerz: a scam or not? =-.
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May 18, 2010 - 10:12 am
I know meta keywords do not work, but meta description still works and so optimizing is important and it is also showed in search engine results. A good meta description will ensure more traffic from search engines
.-= Gautam´s last blog ..Why Bloggers should be Entrepreneurs? =-.
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about 1 year ago
Absolutely agreed. Why settle for one type of SEO when you can have the best of both worlds, right? An addition to Social SEO would be to build your brand and get it on the spotlight. That would eventually help when Real Time really kicks in. Good post Gautam
.-= DiTesco´s last blog ..5 SEO Keyword Tools – Get Discovered =-.
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May 18, 2010 - 10:14 am
Exactly, You should have the best of both worlds and take benefit from both of the.
And Building a Brand is important to get a great conversation rate from social media traffic
.-= Gautam´s last blog ..What To Invest If You’ve Got No Money To Invest =-.
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