SEO or SMO: What’s Best for E-commerce?

When you run an e-commerce website, you need to take care of different aspects including SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMO (Social Media Optimization). After all, doing SEO and SMO can improve traffic on your website which in turn will help you grow your business. But, as an e-commerce owner, you might be thinking–is it worth doing both SEO and SMO?

The question is valid. As a business person you should always focus on things that bring the best returns. You cannot expect the best results if you try to focus on SEO or SMO at the same time. In this article, we will be covering both SEO and SMO and learn which one is best for e-commerce. So, without further delay, let’s get started!

As a business, you should always focus on methodologies that offer you the best return on investment (ROI).

An Introduction to SEO and Its Benefits

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is carried out by almost every business out there. It helps businesses rank their web pages. It is easy to carry out but requires tons of patience as Google takes its own sweet time to rank content on their website. This makes SEO not as cost-effective as you need to invest month after month in order to get some results. Also, there is no guarantee that you will get those desired results.

So, why invest in SEO templates? Let’s check the list below.

Why investing in SEO can be a good idea

1. The long-term benefits of SEO are too good to be ignored. SEO enables you to rank your pages online and get almost unlimited free traffic for an extended period.
2. SEO traffic is also targeted and hence provides a lot of benefits when it comes to targeting your intended audience.
3. Establishing your brand can help you further improve your SEO rankings as high ranked domains start linking to your brand and boosting your SEO.
4. Target your terms so that you gain better conversions and ROI.

An Introduction to SMO and Its Benefits

Just like SEO, Social Media Optimization (SMO) is also popular among businesses. SMO is popular because it enables the business to bring steady traffic to their website. SEO, on the other hand, is focused on bringing more traffic but requires time to get going. But, that doesn’t mean SMO lacks traffic. The volume of traffic depends on the virality of the post or video. It can go viral and provide tons of traffic in a small amount of time.

So, what makes SMO a good choice? Let’s list a few points below.

1. SMO is considerably easy to do compare to SEO.
2. SMO’s are great for traffic spikes. It can go high when a post goes viral.
3. Networking is an essential part of SMO which in turn helps you create more valuable networking.
4. It doesn’t require time to get established. You can get high volume traffic from day one which can be transformative for a new business who wants to gain traction as soon as possible.
5. A robust social media profile will give you the ability to use it whenever necessary. It also opens the door to collaboration.
6. It is not as methodical as SEO. You can do great even with an average website structure.
7. SMO’s traffic can be cascading in nature. Once you start getting traction, you will see gradual improvements over time which can lead to improving visibility and presence in the social media sphere.

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SEO or SMO?

Now, that we have an understanding of what SEO and SMO offers, we are now ready to distinguish between them and understand which one is best for e-commerce.

Start with SMO

When you start an e-commerce site, you need some traffic to kickstart your business. If you take SEO, you might have to wait a few weeks or months before you start getting decent traffic. That’s not a possibility with SEO. In this case, you need to start with social media optimization. This will give you a head start to your traffic goals and also ensure that people know about your brand.

Many guides on e-commerce will focus too heavily on how much SEO is important for websites, but the tips are not ideal for websites that are just starting. You can find the same pattern in web hosting reviews where SEO performance is analyzed with no mention of SMO importance.

SEO - A long term focus

Even though SMO provides a lot of value regarding investment and result, it is not ideal to stick with it forever. To get the best result, you need to move into SEO strategy slowly. As SEO takes time to get the best result, you can start slowly with a limited budget.

You can start by identifying the keywords and the target audience. Once done, you need to strategize by taking the help of an SEO expert. They can guide you on the how to make the most of your limited budget.

Once you are established, and a lot of people know you on social media, you need to start focusing on search engine optimization. There are many online e-commerce SEO guides that you can follow to get the best results.

Can you do both SEO and SMO together?

In this article, we aimed to find out which one is the best for e-commerce. But, in reality, there is hardly one choice. To get the best result, you need to do both, but with careful planning and execution. These two work together and can provide the best possible result in the long term. You can start with small SEO work and maintain on-page SEO. After that, you can do link building and then focus on social media at the same time.

One good example of both working together is link building. Links can be built using proper guest posting. However social media profile creation also helps you get some backlinks that strengthen your e-commerce site SEO. Inbound links are one of the biggest factors for quality SEO traffic. Social traffic may also entice other bloggers or website to write about you which means more inbound links. In short, both are interlinked to some extent.

So, what do you think about the guide? Are you going to stick to one or use both? Comment below and let us know.

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