As you know, 3001Web doesn't offer site promotion as a service as it is a full-time job all on its own, however, of course we have people we can recommend to help you with marketing.
IMPORTANT TIP: Before you embark on either of these promotion methods, we HIGHLY recommend you hire professionals to implement your campaigns for you. You can literally lose your shirt financially on any kind of paid advertising if you do not know what you are doing. Every business is different and no matter which method you choose, for it to work you need a great long term strategy put together by a professional in that field. You may be tempted to try to save their fees by “Doing it yourself”, but trust us it will end up costing you more for poorer results, we have seen this over and over. These people are experts in their fields for a reason.
OK, back to the question at hand, “Should I Choose SEO or Social Media Marketing?”
In a word, you should be doing both. However, our personal recommendation is that you focus primarily on Social Media Marketing with your secondary focus on SEO here is why…
We are in a unique position here as, obviously, we host and talk to all kinds of businesses and most of them now lean more heavily toward social media marketing over SEO.
Personal Experience
MANY moons ago when I first started with websites (We are talking back in 2002, ouch I'm getting old) I owned a dating website and I invested a year of blood, sweat, tears and way too much money doing self-SEO for that site. I managed to get it to position 3 on Google for the term “Free Dating” I was so happy, then two things happened…
1. The traffic while improved was not anywhere near as impressive as I had hoped.
2. A now famous algorithm update, “the Florida update” came from Google after just two weeks of me hitting the number 3 spot. In an instant, my site was back on page 5, and I was devastated.
That was a whole year of insane amounts of time and money wasted, and moving forward my success would remain at the mercy of Google algorithm changes, over which I had absolutely no control. Algorithm changes increased in regularity, so It simply did not make sense to me to invest too much time and money into SEO moving forward.
These days, despite what the SEO industry will tell you there is no such thing as “the first page of Google”, results are now highly personalised. Because people visit their own sites regularly, they can quite easily show up on the first page of results for them but not for other people. We have experienced this many times clients happy they are on the first page, then they do the same search in an incognito window and their site is nowhere to be found.
Here is info straight from the horse's mouth on what Google are looking for, see the paragraph “Key best practices” this is SEO advice from Google themselves it is what THEY are looking for.https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
This is where I would recommend ANY website focus the majority of their marketing budget, for a few reasons:
1. You are reaching out directly to people rather than trying to beat an algorithm. As far as I am aware Google does not buy products or services, people do, so it makes sense to try to place your business where people hang out most and that isn't on search engines.
In recent years I have had many, many clients divert the lions share of their marketing budget toward SMM rather than SEO, and they say that they are getting much better results.
This is really up to you, again this is just our opinion based on what we have heard from our clients. The decision for your business has to be yours. Of course, know people who are experts in both these fields, so here are our recommendations:
You should definitely reach out to Simon Clark over at SDC Digital. He is an absolute guru at Social Media marketing, more importantly he is a lovely guy and as honest as they come. I would STRONGLY recommend you reach out to him and book some time for an informal chat about your sites' promotion. Mention that 3001Web recommended you for more favourable terms.
2. SEO Marketing
If you are looking for SEO then I would recommend the Canadian firm, Profit Parrot, again run by lovely reputable people. You can reach out to Jean-Marc Begin for a free consultation here. Mention that 3001Web recommended you for more favourable terms.
