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Search engine optimization and social media marketing are two facets of an effective digital marketing strategy. Learn how to pair SEO and SMM effectively.
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Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are two digital marketing strategies that can seem to pull in different directions—the long-term demands of SEO pitted against the immediacy of SMM. Should you chase keyword-rich content to win organic search traffic or pump out TikTok-worthy videos in hopes of achieving virality? The answer isn’t either-or. It’s both, with intention.
Here’s how SEO and SMM overlap and where they diverge, and what it takes to make them work together for ecommerce growth.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines like Google and Bing. SEO attracts unpaid organic traffic by making your site more discoverable for users actively searching for keywords related to your brand or products.
Traffic from search engine results is valuable because those users likely already have a degree of purchase intent. Unlike interruptive advertising—like a YouTube ad that plays before a video—SEO connects you with shoppers actively seeking solutions. When someone searches for “best organic cotton blouse for sensitive skin” and finds your product page at the top of search engine results pages, that’s SEO working as intended—matching ready-to-buy customers with exactly what they’re looking for.
SEO includes four elements: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO.
1. On-page SEO involves optimizing your site’s content to make it relevant to users and discoverable in search engines.
2. Off-page SEO involves winning backlinks to your site from other reputable sites and publications.
3. Technical SEO focuses on back-end aspects of your site, like page load speed and mobile-friendliness.
4. Local SEO is relevant for businesses with a brick-and-mortar location, particularly when it comes to capturing users searching for products or services “near me.”
For entrepreneurs, SEO is a long game: It can take time for optimized pages to climb into top rankings, but once they do, they can generate sustainable organic traffic for months or even years. Investing now means building a foundation that continues to pay off long after the initial work is done.
In social media marketing (SMM), you use social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and X to connect with your target audience, build community, express your brand personality, drive traffic, and ultimately, generate sales.
SMM is fast-paced and dynamic, capable of delivering quick returns. It thrives on viral potential and the demand for fresh, engaging content. While it can generate instant traffic, social media accounts require constant attention and care. There are three main components of an SMM strategy: organic social posts, paid social media ads, and influencer marketing.
SMM on various social media platforms has a more immediate, though often more ephemeral, impact than traditional SEO. For instance, spotting a trending topic and creating a TikTok clip could drive viral traffic within hours, or a catchy Instagram carousel ad might prompt instant clicks and purchases. For ecommerce businesses, this speed means you can test messaging, gauge customer interest, and respond to trends in real time.
While SEO and SMM share the overarching goal of driving traffic to your store and building brand awareness, they work in different ways. Understanding both SEO and SMM—and how they compare—helps you allocate resources effectively.
Both SEO and SMM share some common DNA. Success in either channel starts with understanding your customers’ needs better than anyone else, and neither SEO nor SMM works without quality content. Product photography, video, and writing are fundamental for success in both spheres.
In both cases, you’re playing on someone else’s turf: SEO strategies must adapt to changes in the Google algorithm, while social platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram can change without notice, and their priorities—keeping users scrolling—don’t always align with yours. In either case, visibility is a privilege, not a guarantee.
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SEO and SMM can both target potential customers at every stage of the marketing funnel. For example, you can use SEO to gain top-of-funnel awareness by producing blog content relevant to your target audience’s interests—even if they don’t yet know your product exists.
At the opposite end of the funnel, product page SEO can help you capture search traffic from customers who are ready to make a purchase. SMM strategies function similarly: An effective influencer collab can get your brand out in front of a whole new audience, while social media ad retargeting can display your products in the social feeds of users who have previously browsed your website.
Both SEO and SMM require investment in content creation, but the timelines vary. SEO requires much higher upfront costs (anywhere from around $1,500 up to $20,000 per month), and it typically doesn’t begin to pay off for three to six months. That said, evergreen SEO content is arguably more cost-effective than SMM in the long run because initial investments can keep drawing organic traffic and delivering compounding returns for months or even years without additional ad spend. SMM, by contrast, is fleeting. Organic reach usually peaks within 24 to 48 hours, after which posts quickly fade from feeds.
SMM requires continuous content creation, often with unpredictable results and rapid but short-lived impact. It usually requires ad spend to achieve meaningful reach and scale on social platforms, and cost per thousand (CPM) impressions rates keep trending higher year over year.
That said, there’s flexibility; unlike SEO spend, a small investment in SMM can deliver immediate results. A sponsored post with a micro-influencer may only cost between $100 and $500, but it can get you in front of an engaged and interested audience right away. Or, you could start A/B testing PPC ads on social for as little as a few dollars per day.
The real secret to maximizing web traffic is a joint, unified marketing strategy: combining SEO with SMM. These content marketing strategies make SEO and SMM work in harmony:
Descriptive, long-form SEO content is pure gold for SMM. Don’t let that high-ranking 2,000-word blog post sit idle—the topic is already fully researched. Mine it for bite-sized insights, and dole out the riches to SMM, one nugget at a time.
For example, a blog post like “The Definitive Guide to Cleaning Hardwood Floors” could be channeled into the following SMM assets:
A three-part Instagram carousel on wood cleaning hacks
A TikTok showcasing the single most surprising hack
Five actionable X threads with tips from the guide
Your repurposed SEO content provides double value: satisfying search engines with depth while feeding the social algorithms with short, engaging content.
Use social listening to discover what people are talking about online. Social media chatter could give you a treasure trove of ideas for your next high-ranking SEO piece. Compile a list of buzzy topics, then use keyword research to assess their search volume and staying power. Instead of guessing what readers want, this lets you create content driven by real user interest.
Consider this scenario:
SMM observation. You notice questions in Facebook groups or TikTok comments like, “Is this brand ethically sourced?” or “Does anyone know where to find biodegradable packaging?”
SEO action. Turn these conversations into long-tail keywords and craft a definitive, keyword-optimized blog post titled, “The 2025 Guide to Ethically Sourcing Apparel.” By directly answering the questions people are asking, your post is more likely to rank well.
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Google treats links from other high-authority sites as valuable endorsements. But building those validating backlinks can take some time.
To compound the dilemma, links on social media posts are often “nofollow,” meaning they don’t pass link authority directly. This means your social links won’t directly boost visibility in search rankings—but they can still drive the visibility that leads to valuable backlinks.
Social media can boost natural link building by spreading content widely, increasing its visibility to bloggers, journalists, and industry influencers who may then create high-authority backlinks.
Consider this scenario:
By generating off-page SEO signals from social shares and linking them back to quality on-page content, you can boost visibility and achieve better search rankings. A Hootsuite experiment found that pages whose content was shared—organically or through paid social posts—gained more backlinks and tended to rise in Google search rankings. In a controlled test, those articles with social promotion improved more than ones with no social promotion.
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The questions you answer on social media often mirror what your prospective customers are searching for on Google. Use SEO to create long-term assets that answer the questions your fans ask on social media. FAQ pages designed for SEO, in particular, can be a valuable SEO resource.
Here’s what this strategy might look like in practice:
SMM stands for social media marketing. It refers to any activity that uses social networking platforms—including content creation, community engagement, and paid ads—to achieve marketing goals like driving brand awareness, increasing website traffic, and generating sales.
Neither is objectively better. SEO and SMM are designed for different purposes and stages of the customer journey. Use SEO for longevity, authority, brand building, and leveraging high-intent traffic (customers who are ready to buy). Use SMM for speed, relationship building, and brand discovery. The best strategy uses both—SMM to generate instant buzz and drive authority signals, and SEO to capture and convert that traffic into long-term, predictable revenue.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is about improving your site to rank higher with search engines like Google and Bing. Social media optimization (SMO) is about capitalizing on your presence on social media platforms.
SMO includes:
SEM stands for “search engine marketing.” Getting the visibility you want on search often requires a boost from paid search. SEM uses pay-per-click advertising (PPC campaigns), where advertisers pay only when a user clicks their PPC ads. Whether you’re running search advertising on Google Ads or Bing Ads, the goal is the same: immediately get your content to the top of search results.
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