Social Media vs. Link Building
The nature of media and advertising has been rapidly changing throughout the years. More and more people are connecting on the Internet and businesses are finding more and more ways to reach out to their target audiences. Research has shown that Internet log in time has increased by more than 121% in the last five years. That’s 30% of people in all age groups choosing to spend time online rather in front of the television.
With the shift from traditional to new media, new advertising platforms are being developed to keep in sync with the digital age. Coming out of online advertising are two types of virtual marketing contenders: social media and traditional link building. It’s up to you to decide which method works best.
What is Link Building?
Link building is like a popularity contest to determine the best websites on the internet. Link building consists of trying to gain links from other sites that are directed to your own website. This increases the amount of direct traffic to your site, and increases your rankings in the search engines.
There’s a whole sort of science to it, and there are tons of strategies when it comes to link building.
How does link building work?
Most digital advertising works in a way where there are hardly any fees to pay. Some sites might charge for you to advertise your link on their page but most do not. In fact, it is very similar to the old days of barter and trade. Your link on their site for their link on yours. This only works for related websites. It would be pretty off for you to have a link about ice cream on a car battery website.
What are the advantages of Link Building?
You increase traffic to your site. And these are quality visitors since they have been directed to your site for a clear purpose. They saw your link on a related website and clicked on it perhaps for reading, to make a purchase, or for later reference. On the other hand, if you have quality links on your page, your site will be considered as a valuable resource and a credible authority in the industry. It increases your sites visibility, public awareness and your search engine exposure. Coming out on top when certain keywords are typed in a search engine is a very important thing to a business online.
What is Social Media?
Social Media is a more personal form of internet advertising. It makes use of the current social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other blog platforms to create noise, forward a message and even stir up controversy. It is potentially more powerful than traditional link building. What you say or do may be recorded and uploaded in an instant and in a second be on different networking platforms.
How does Social Media Work?
Basically you try and get as many people to your site or page or wall. This can be done by creating a viral video which is a video that becomes so popular that it spreads like a virus online. If you are successful in creating one, you can get up to hundreds of millions of hits in just a few days. You can also create a buzz on your blog or Facebook page by constantly updating your status, sharing photos and communicating with your fans or clients.
What are the Advantages of Social Media?
One is the sheer number of hits you may get in a day depending on how clever your social media campaign is. Second is the speed in social media technology. You can literally make or break a deal with just the click of a mouse pad. If you are selling your products online, you can generate sales just by sending out a message to your social media followers. Your client base is the whole world and communication is never a problem.
On the flipside, remember that as with anything, there are dangers to watch out for. Especially on the web, it’s best to keep your company’s reputation and name protected. However, despite any dangers you should enjoy using social media as a platform to launch your online business to greater heights.
Jessica Powers is a freelance writer for various Internet marketing blogs. She also has her own blogs and likes to opine about clould hosting providers, business, marketing, and all things digital.
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18 Responses to “Social Media vs. Link Building”
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Thanks for the straight-forward explanation, we are working on building a social media profile at the moment it’s certainly hard work though to stay in the loop every day!
Social media is certainly more powerful and beneficial than link building. If you have time to spare, would you like build or go to Facebook and Twitter, – For sure I would go to Social media platforms and aim to build more connections and share useful info, this will help build my online brand. Even Search engines are reclining and giving more preference to social media.
Is this really an either / or decision? Is it worth putting all the effort into one approach? We know search algorithms change periodically. Even if the search engines currently value social mentions more highly than traditional links, that situation may not last, particularly if the search engines suspect the activity is artificially manufactured.
I think results of all link and social campaigns should always look natural. Start small and build. Be aware it’s hard for this to look natural if there is nothing of substance (i.e. limited or poor content) at the site receiving the links / mentions.
Relying on a video to go viral may not be the best strategy. The chance of this happening is very small. There are few instances where anyone setting out to get a viral effect has actually achieved it. Also, a popular video may drive significant levels of traffic, but how many of those visitors will be genuine potential customers. Many will just stop by out of curiosity, which is okay if you are working on brand awareness, but how many are visiting with a purchase intent?
Be careful with the actual message you send to your followers. Many don’t like being sold to, unless that’s what they expected when they decided to follow you. It’s one thing to announce a new product in a social message; it’s entirely a different thing to directly ask everyone to buy it.
Very difficult to SEO a website. i have tried many way to SEO my site http://www.4vip.us..
@Pea, I agree with you that it’s very hard to SEO a web site. That’s why I am thankful for Social Media because it’s undoubtedly the easiest way to create backlinks to your site.
Pea … part of optimising is page load times. For me, your site was extremely slow to load and that will prevent a lot of visitors from becoming regulars. It won’t help with Search Engines either. I looked at the page source of one the story pages. It is bloated. The content doesn’t start until very close to the end of the source. Try externalising the scripts and style definitions for a start. Then try cleaning up the HTML.
You are in a competitive niche. It won’t be easy. But even if you generate a lot of interest via Social Media, I think it will be difficult to keep the visitors.
Good luck.
Pea do not be concerned I think it is a learning process that we all have to go through. For sure there are very few definites in the world of SEO – Google is constantly changing it’s algoithm. That is what makes it fun for me. Good luck, and don’t give up!
Arthur
Hey, guys i read the article and comments as well. The article makes great sense, but can some body tell me how to work effectively on social media sites, i mean some useful tips and tricks for someone who is new on social media..
I think it’s definitely important to work on both. The one thing about social media though is that many people dive into it without realizing how it works, or that there really is such a thing as netiquette (internet etiquette). Even though you may be involved in social media for your business, people back away from other users who are constantly self-promoting. Newbies would do well to make sure they build relationships and limit their advertising.
Of course link building is way better, and it should be. i don’t use to social media, because it only gives you hits, not unique traffic, and maybe even subscibers! So don’t waste your time with Facebook and start building up some links!
Thanks to both Deanna and Search engine Optimization.
So what would you say if i start working on Forums..?? Would that be helpful to promote my websites or not..??
Nice post. Really informative, will surely help me in writing future posts for my blog. One more thing, I have started a new blog and offering a dofollow backlink for comluv members. So take this opportunity to check out my blog, leave some feedback and get a backlink.
Let us all remember that links are not votes of approval for the site they link to, they can also have the opposite effect and damage your sites popularity. You have to understand just how smart the search engine bots are today, if they can detect a thousand links to your site they can also detect whether or not live humans are casting a vote for that link by clicking on it and visiting the site. Leaving your links all over the Internet is nothing more than an attempt to cast a vote for yourself, however, if someone else posts a link to your website this becomes a useful link. With the technology in use today the search engine bots know exactly who posted the link, who clicked the link, they know how to track everyone that you are personally associated with that you may be using to help drive traffic to your site, the bots know you better than you know yourself. With all this said, if the bots find thosands of links to your site but these links are rarely clicked on by others this tells the bots that your site is not popular for the terms found in these links.
Excellent. Social media link building is the key to all the most successful link building campaigns.
thank you for differentiating the two.
I believe that both can be an effective online marketing tool depending on what goals you want to achieve.
buying backlinks does it effect your rank in the serps?
Thank you ! I had keeping look for something like this.
The way that you have explained about the social media and link building processes is very impressive. Good post.